"For the CIA legally to carry out a covert action, the president must sign off on -- that is, authorize -- a document called a 'finding.' Crile repeatedly says that President Carter signed such a finding ordering the CIA to provide covert backing to the mujahideen after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. The truth of the matter is that Carter signed the finding on July 3, 1979, six months before the Soviet invasion, and he did so on the advice of his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in order to try to provoke a Russian incursion. Brzezinski has confirmed this sequence of events in an interview with a French newspaper, and former CIA Director [today Secretary of Defense] Robert Gates says so explicitly in his 1996 memoirs. It may surprise Charlie Wilson to learn that his heroic mujahideen were manipulated by Washington like so much cannon fodder in order to give the USSR its own Vietnam. The mujahideen did the job but as subsequent events have made clear, they may not be all that grateful to the United States."

I don't even have a problem with assisting the Mujahedin resist the Soviet Invasion...

As nanne points out, the reality was different from what most Americans believe - that the Soviets invaded and the US then provided military aid to the noble rebels:

Brzezinski: ... But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth.

http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html

Cf.Robert Scheer:

The movie does not mention that the mujahedeen went to war against the Soviet-backed government then in power in Kabul after the government committed the unpardonable crime of allowing female students to attend rural schools. The film casually notes that Gen. Zia, the U.S. ally in this effort to bring "freedom" to Afghanistan, was, like so many of the movie's heroes, a hard case full of contradictions, as exemplified by his having murdered Pakistan's previous ruler, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.

Bhutto was, of course, the father of Benazir Bhutto, killed last week in Pakistan. What is not noted is that not only Zia but every ruler of Pakistan since him, including Benazir Bhutto, supported increasingly virulent forms of Islamic fanaticism in Afghanistan, ending with the Taliban and the al-Qaida terrorists who attacked America on 9/11, and that all rulers of Pakistan enthusiastically amplified the successful effort initiated by Benazir's now mythically beloved father to build an Islamic nuclear bomb.

... his time, the subject of our nation-building fantasy does have weapons of mass destruction and, thanks to our previous military sales of advanced jets, the means to deliver them. This time the blowback price of our incessant meddling could prove quite high. Even Tom Hanks can't put a pretty face on that one.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080101_what_good_time_charlie_brought/

As to reason for the film's evasion of the connection to "the 9/11 thing" - from the alternet link you included:

Melissa Roddy, a Los Angeles film-maker with inside information from the Charlie Wilson production team, notes that the film's happy ending came about because Tom Hanks, a co-producer as well as the leading actor, "just can't deal with this 9/11 thing."

http://www.alternet.org/story/73010/?page=2

One bit of accuracy in the film relates to your comment about Charlie's angels:

Crile recounts with relish Wilson's partying. There are many anecdotes of his overseas travels, first-class at taxpayers' expense, accompanied by former beauty queens who seem to pop up at events in conservative Islamic countries wearing skintight jumpsuits.

I'm all for a big tent green movement, but including crooks like Woolsey who call for bombing Syria and Iran on and off is going a bit too far.

Somehow I doubt he's advising St. John on energy issues. In fact:

He has endorsed Senator John McCain for president and serves as one of McCain's foreign policy advisors.

It is a beautiful story. IT IS. the man who knew too much [and would not keep quiet in exchange for a safe job]. Richard Barlow should have a film after him.