Whoever was arguing earlier that there is no such "thing" as "The Taliban" is a straight up moron, by the way. I guess Mullah Omar wasn't a real person, and he wasn't head of it's supreme council either. I'm not really going to get in to the argument about whether or not it was a good idea to invade or attack Afghanistan, but at that time the Taliban was for all intents and purposes the governing body of the vast majority of the country, Mullah Omar was the defacto leader, and he had explicitly stated his goal was the destruction of America:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1657368.stm
Granted that specific link is
afterthe US had attacked. However prior to September 11, the Taliban and Al Qaeda didn't just coexist in Afghanistan with one ignoring the other as some have seemingly claimed. The two had become very closely associated, with each supporting the other explicitly in their respective activities. Al Qaeda helped the Taliban take over the country by bringing in experienced fighters, and the Taliban was more than happy to let them set up shop knowing what their goals were. That shit went back to the mid 90's of course, with Bill Clinton lobbing cruise missiles at Al Qaeda camps and Omar getting right pissed about it.
So again, you can debate all the geopolitical/strategic aspects about whether attacking/occupying Afghanistan was a bright idea if you want. But several people have made some claims that are just straight up untrue. The Taliban was and still is an actual organization (and is in fact currently somewhat split between the Afghani and Pakistani versions), it was the ruling power of Afghanistan at the time even if it was only recognized by 3 nations, it did closely associate with Al Qaeda and for all intents of purposes the September 11 attacks were a declaration of war by Afghanistan (ignoring the previous history of the US bombing it in the 90's, of course).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban#Al_Qaeda
Bin Laden was able to forge an alliance between the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The Al Qaeda-trained 055 Brigade integrated with the Taliban army between 1997 and 2001. Several hundred Arab Afghan fighters sent by bin Laden assisted the Taliban in the Mazar-e-Sharif slaughter.[250] The so-called Brigade 055 was also responsible for massacres against civilians in other parts of Afghanistan.[22] From 1996 to 2001 the organization of Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri had become a virtual state within the Taliban state.
None of the above is intended to ignore or downplay the US' previous support of the Taliban during the civil war when Unocal was looking to set up shop, nor support even before that for Bin Laden during the Soviet occupation.
BrutulTM_sl said:
It's just another core that is set off by the first one. Over simplifying a bit but that's basically all it is.
No, it's a lot more complicated than that. The initial fission reaction is the imploding first stage, and then there's subsequent second and even third fusion or fission stages that are not necessarily imploded. I don't pretend to know how it actually works, but the Clancy book The Sum of All Fears has a fair amount of explanation in it that is pretty interesting and not too dense.