Guadalajara Reporter - Metting Charlie Wilson

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Metting Charlie Wilson

Written by GR Staff
Saturday, 29 March 2008
Those who have seen the propagandistic but entertaining movie, Charlie Wilson's War, might find this true story amusing. In the 1980's, while living in Washington, D.C., I needed to buy a computer for word processing. Then big Digital Equipment Corporation's DECMate, though being supplanted by the PC as a general-purpose computer, was an excellent word processor. Responding to a For Sale ad in the Washington Post, I found myself in the sedate suburban Viginia home of Congressman Wilson (not the stylish apartment shown in the movie) where several DECMates were displayed for my selection. When I asked how come he had so many, Wilson's unresponsive reply was "I just like 'em." I knew nothing about the apparently high flying and devious Congressman until I read about the movie, when I wondered again about the origin of the DECMate I had puchased from him, which, I hasten to add, bore no indication that it had ever been U.S. Government property. Weapons that Wilson and the CIA provided to rebels against the Russian-supported government of Afghanistan, not mentioned in the movie, are now, of course, being used by the same people rebelling against the U.S.-sponsored regime, but I trust that U.S. pilots are not gloating as they strafe rebel villages like the Russians shown in the film. Kenneth Crosby San Antonio Tlayacapan