The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan are a modern version of Nazism and Fascism, the U.S. president told the world last week.

But what George W. Bush didn't tell the international community is how his government was supporting this newly branded evil as recently as this past spring.

Consider the following article that appeared in the Los Angeles Times in May.

"Enslave your girls and women, harbour anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeleand, and the Bush administration will embrace you," syndicated columnist Robert Scheer wrote.

"All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously."

The country Scheer was talking about was Afghanistan, which had declared the opium trade against the will of Allah. The U.S. government, busy fighting its own anti-drug jihad, gave the Taliban $43 million in aid.

Yes, the same Taliban group that harbours suspected terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, and which has been called everything from psychotic to demonic.

Following the September 11 terrorist massacre on the United States — when two hijacked planes smashed into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon and one in a field in Pennsylvania — Washington has been comparing the Taliban to Hitler.

But prior to the attack, the American government was singing an entirely different tune. This fact hasn't been lost on some U.S. journalists.

"If you're following developments in the terrorist attack story, you're probably learning to hate irony," John L. Smith recently wrote for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

"The more you know about Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia, the more you're bound to be disgusted by the irony of the U.S. government's role in supporting it."

Washington did not officially recognize the new government in Kabul —- only the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan established diplomatic links with the Taliban.

"But who needs official status when this country in May was happy to cut a check for $43 million as a reward for the Taliban crushing opium poppy production by desperate Afghan farmers?" Smith argued.

And in an even darker irony, the U.S. trained, equipped and financed some of the same people who they now compare to the devil.

"From 1979 to 1989, the Soviet Union poured the equivalent of $45 billion into a losing war that tried to subdue Afghan rebel groups, collectively called the Mujaheddin, which opposed a president installed by the Soviets," said the Baltimore Sun in a recent article.

"The United States poured in between $4 billion and $5 billion, including deliveries of weapons, to help fight the Soviets."

The paper then adds: "Before the Soviet invasion of the country, Islamic radicals had little influence in Afghanistan . . .  but aided by money and arms supplied by the CIA, the Islamists gained influence."

It's enough to make you throw up in disgust upon hearing the word irony.