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Getbig Main Boards => Politics and Political Issues Board => Topic started by: Dos Equis on March 30, 2009, 02:15:07 PM
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HH6 would like your thoughts on this. Was talking to a friend about the surge. We're fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but there is really no command and control for them. Cannot just cut off the head. They're across the border in Pakistan mingled with the general population.
He said the problem is we didn't go in with a large enough force to begin with. Best we can hope for is to stabilize the border and have a Korea situation where there is a DMZ. Then we have to deal with the drug crops controlled by the warlords.
Sort of depressing. What do you see is the end game over there?
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There's no mission at all.
It's more or less one of those places we'll transition out of once people have forgotten about Bin Laden.
If there is a mission it's to hope Musharef (sp?) will finally find a military solution to the areas they don't control that works yet keeps him in power. I sort of doubt the US can tolerate the body count solving the problem would take.
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Ah..Musharif is long gone there drkaje and the current government is very weak. Obama likes to say that we ignored the war while fighting in Iraq....yet he forgets some major facts.
We launched offensive after offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan.
We killed or captured tons of them from 2001-2008
We've won in Iraq so many of the AQ fighters have fled to the border lands, so there is a bigger surge of foreign fighters there then when we in Iraq.
Musharif wasn't about to do anything that would upset his gov, including stirring up the Taliban/AQ..he turned a blind eye to what we were doing across the border...we were careful not to undermine his gov.
We appear to be ignoring the current gov, this started under Bush..make no mistake.
Pakistan does not want a stable Afghanistan
We will have to kill the die hard foreign fighters and leaders
Pay off or kill the Taliban leaders and help the people.
If u have a problem with paying these guys off, thats how it works in Afghanistan.
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based upon the fact that we negotiated with the taleban from 1998 until summer 2001 over oil drilling rights...
based upon the fact that the taleban runs about 1/2 of the country now de facto...
based upon the fact the Taleban has a pretty big "say" in what the govt does...
based upon the fact the drug trade is bigger than it was in 2001...
I'd say it's safe to say that in a year or two, we'll STILL be negotiating with - the Taleban - for oil drilling rights in their country (casian basin). Except for now, we'll have a shitload of bases which coincidentally are right along that path the oil pipeline will take. If they sell out to some other country, you can betcha we'll be finding ways to ruin their days. he with the guns makes the rules, ya know?
it is what it is. we gotta control their oil. Russia and china can't. In 15 years when that shit needs tapped for our survival, if Putin owns it, we're screwed.
BB, the goal is a perpetual conflict. As long as the war isn't over, we don't leave. And if we don't leave, nobody else moves in on that pipeline. You scoffed when I said it 5 years ago. however it's 2009 and yes, the taleban is STRONGER than they were in 2001. After 8 years of war.
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based upon the fact that the taleban runs about 1/2 of the country now de facto...NO
based upon the fact the Taleban has a pretty big "say" in what the govt does...NO
based upon the fact the drug trade is bigger than it was in 2001...yeah what else are they gonna do..and the TALIBAN are also drug runners.
If u libs are so worried about Afghanistan and quick to blame Bush u can...
enlist
join US AID
donate money or goods to the Afghan people
allow the US Military to triple in size so we don't have to listen to u idiots whine that we "took our eye off the ball"
All this from pols who never served in the military, set foot in the country, understand how the US military works etc.
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HH6,
Would you be surprised one bit, if we're still in this exact same spot in afghanistan in 2016?
Would anyone?
How many decades of stalemate war until we realize the goal isn't to win the war - it's to be present in that nation (aka bases along the piepline) with war as the pretext?
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If Obama gets re elected..I'd be surprised. he doesn't have a stomach for war..he wants to conduct his dismantling of the US , unhindered by messy wars. He would love to dismantle the US Military. Terrorists and foreign affairs aren't really his thing. He will continue to threaten Pakistan in public and cause problems for a weak gov with nukes. He can do all of that in private. We have to be able to operate in Pakistan, but it can't be blatant. Bush took care to keep these things low key. Thus someof u guys not fully understanding the issues, operations, terrain..military considerations on a baseline level. The media is playing catch-up. Front Line had a good program on it a few months back.
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If Obama gets re elected..I'd be surprised. he doesn't have a stomach for war..he wants to conduct his dismantling of the US , unhindered by messy wars.
Why is Obama adding thousands (17k?) more men to fight in afghanistan, if he wants to lose?
Anyway, Bush had US support, all the $ he could borrow, the best technology in the world, and the support of the afghan govt. In 8 years, all he did was shuffle shit around in Afghanistan and set up a bunch of bases. The bases arent in "taleban country". They're on the path the pipeline will take one day.
I'm not against it. Hell, I like the idea of owning all that oil. And I'm sure the romanticism of "freeing the afghans" feels a lot better than "protecting future oil shares". But the fighting is a stalemate and the bases are where they are. You draw your own conclusion.
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Christ..I'm done. U have no idea what ur talking about. I spent plenty of time at FOBS that were in Taliban country. What good does a stealth fighter do when the moron ur trying to kill lives in a cave and doesnt have radar. U have to go and dig him out. Please point outa map that shows all our bases? We have major bases where we can fly aircraft. Kandarhar, Bagram and Maz...we have a few larger FOBs, and then a bunch of tiny ones. If u can't fly...u can't supply. This isn't Iraq or friggen Florida. Get on a plane and go over there..short of that get on google earth and look at the ground.
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After eight hours of fierce gun battles, Pakistani security forces are claiming victory against as yet unidentified gunmen who attacked a police-training facility on the outskirts of Lahore — the country's second largest city and cultural hub — in a siege that Pakistani media is comparing to the Mumbai massacre in India last November. At least 13 police trainees were killed and more than 90 people were injured and taken to hospitals. The death toll is expected to rise, as bodies still need to be recovered from inside the building. More than 400 trainees are believed to have been present at the time of the attack. Authorities say they have one of the attackers in custody, while four have been killed. Two others blew themselves up to evade capture.
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Paramilitary troops and élite police commandos were called to the facility on Monday morning after an estimated 15 gunmen stormed onto the premises at 7 a.m., blasting their way in with the use of grenades and sophisticated weapons. In a brazen, military-style operation, the attackers — some of whom wore police uniforms, while others were masked and clothed in white — entered the grounds while the trainees were performing their morning drill on the parade ground. (See pictures from the assault.)
Eyewitnesses told reporters that the attackers approached the premises from four directions, moving in groups of three or four. The attackers began hurling grenades before shooting the trainees on sight. Local television footage later showed bloodied bodies of uniformed trainees lying on the parade ground. Survivors of the initial assault were shown crawling to safety. The attackers then entered the three-story building, spraying bullets indiscriminately. "I jumped from the second floor," an injured police officer later told reporters. "There were dead bodies all over the place." (See pictures of the surviving attacker from the Mumbai massacre.)
The police recruits were not trained to confront armed terrorists, Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik told reporters. They were shown fleeing the building in a panic as the rangers — a paramilitary force — and members of the Punjab police's élite commando unit arrived. The security forces mounted nearby buildings and worked their way into the besieged facility. Fierce gun battles ensued as they sought to push back the attackers. In scenes reminiscent of the three-day siege of Mumbai's luxury hotels, there was a relentless exchange of gunfire, with ammunition crackling loudly in the background. The local area, Manawan, near the Wagah border with India, was placed under curfew as local residents fled the area.
Several rounds of tear gas were fired into the building in a bid to subdue the attackers. On the grounds outside, a bearded man who was among the attackers was caught as he attempted to throw a grenade at the security forces. A thick crowd gathered around him as he was beaten and dragged away into custody. At 3:30 p.m., security forces on the roof of the building began to celebrate, firing several rounds in the air, raising clenched fists and dancing as they issued cries of "Alhamdulillah" to thank God for their victory.
Moments later, Interior Minister Malik appeared on local media to hail the operation as a success. Some of the attackers were captured alive, he said, adding, "I can confirm one man, who was caught outside the building when he tried to throw a grenade." The heavy teargassing had slowly pushed the gunmen up to the top floor, where they were holding some 35 police hostages. Malik said the hostages were released and four of the attackers killed. Three of the men were killed by snipers, Rao Iftikhar, a government official, said.
Precise details are still emerging. The fact that the attackers managed to sustain their assault for several hours is being seen as evidence of sophisticated training. Monday's siege comes less than a month after a dozen gunmen carrying backpacks and wielding Kalashnikovs attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team in the heart of Lahore. On that occasion, which was also widely compared to Mumbai, the gunmen managed to escape after killing half a dozen police officers. The gunmen were not captured, while the government was accused of a major security lapse and of floundering in its pursuit of the perpetrators. (See pictures of the attack on the cricket team.)
By contrast, the capture of surviving suspects marks a rare breakthrough. A series of previous terrorist attacks has gone unpunished. It is still not known who carried out the attack on the cricket team, and there are confusing claims about the authors of the Marriott Hotel bombing in Islamabad last September.
The U.S. has named al-Qaeda operative Usama al-Kini, who was killed in a drone attack on Jan. 1, as being responsible for the Marriott attack, while the Interior Ministry blames Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), a militant group that has fought in Indian-administered Kashmir. LeJ, which has links with al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban commander, is also widely suspected of mounting the attack on the cricket team. Other names floated include Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group blamed for the Mumbai massacre, and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another such group that has fought in Kashmir and more recently in Pakistan's tribal areas. Given the chilling similarities in the tactics deployed in the two attacks in Lahore, many analysts believe the same group could have been involved. All these militant organizations have a strong presence in the country's richest province, Punjab.
The attack on the police cadets underscores the growing threat that Islamist militancy poses to Pakistan on a widening geographic scale. It comes just days after a suicide bomber attacked a mosque on the edge of Pakistan's tribal areas, killing more than 70 in one of the deadliest attacks the country has seen in recent months. The city of Lahore was long considered immune to terrorism strikes, but it suffered its first suicide bombing in January 2008. With the second full-frontal attack in less than a month, there are fears that the militants are training their sights on Pakistan's major cities. In the face of it all, the government seems ineffective. There has yet to be a successful prosecution of a terrorist suspect.
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hey, you know more about this than I do. I defer to your knowledge and experience.
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Gee you guys are more clueless than I thought...Here is the real reason behind the attack on Afghanistan...and remember Al Quaida is an american creation and the Taliban are friends with america.
Is an Oil Pipeline Behind the War in Afghanistan?
by Bill Sardi
Testimony before the US Congress is circulating on the internet. It pertains to a proposed oil pipeline through Central Asia that is applicable to the current war in Afghanistan.
On February 12, 1998, John J. Maresca, vice president, international relations for UNOCAL oil company, testified before the US House of Representatives, Committee on International Relations. Maresca provided information to Congress on Central Asia oil and gas reserves and how they might shape US foreign policy. UNOCAL's problem? As Maresca said: "How to get the region's vast energy resources to the markets." The oil reserves are in areas north of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. Routes for a pipeline were proposed that would transport oil on a 42-inch pipe southward thru Afghanistan for 1040 miles to the Pakistan coast. Such a pipeline would cost about $2.5 billion and carry about 1 million barrels of oil per day.
Maresca told Congress then that: "It's not going to be built until there is a single Afghan government. That's the simple answer."
Dana Rohrbacher, California congressman, then identified the Taliban as the ruling controllers among various factions in Afghanistan and characterized them as "opium producers."
Then Rohrbacher asked Maresca: "There is a Saudi terrorist who is infamous for financing terrorism around the world. Is he in the Taliban area or is he up there with the northern people?"
Maresca answered: "If it is the person I am thinking of, he is there in the Taliban area." This testimony obviously alluded to Osama bin Laden.
Then Rorhbacher asked: "... in the northern area as compared to the place where the Taliban are in control, would you say that one has a better human rights record toward women than the other?"
Maresca responded by saying: "With respect to women, yes. But I don't think either faction here has a very clean human rights record, to tell you the truth."
So women's rights were introduced into Congressional testimony by Congressman Rohrbacher as the wedge for UNOCAL to build its pipeline through Afghanistan. Three years later CNN would be airing its acclaimed TV documentary "Under The Veil," which displayed the oppressive conditions that women endure in Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban (a propaganda film for the oil pipeline?).
Rohrbacher then went on to say that a democratic election should take place in Afghanistan and "if the Taliban are not willing to make that kind of commitment, I would be very hesitant to move foreward on a $2.5 billion investment because without that commitment, I don't think there is going to be any tranquility in that land."
Beginning in 1998 UNOCAL was chastized, particularly by women's rights groups, for discussions with the Taliban, and headed in retreat as a worldwide effort mounted to come to the defense of the Afghani women. This forced UNOCAL to withdraw from its talks with the Taliban and dissolve its multinational partnership in that region. In 1999 Alexander's Gas & Oil Connections newsletter said: "UNOCAL company officials said late last year (1998) they were abandoning the project because of the need to cut costs in the Caspian region and because of the repeated failure of efforts to resolve the long civil conflict in Afghanistan." [Volume 4, issue #20 - Monday, November 22, 1999]
Three days following the attack on the World Trade Centers in New York City, UNOCAL issued a statement reconfirming it had withdrawn from its project in Afghanistan, long before recent events. [www.unocal.com September 14, 2001 statement]
UNOCAL was not the only party positioning themselves to tap into oil and gas reserves in central Asia. UNOCAL was primary member of a multinational consortium called CentGas (Central Asia Gas) along with Delta Oil Company Limited (Saudi Arabia), the Government of Turkmenistan, Indonesia Petroleum, LTD. (INPEX) (Japan), ITOCHU Oil Exploration Co., Ltd. (Japan), Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co., Ltd. (Korea), the Crescent Group (Pakistan) and RAO Gazprom (Russia).
Just because CentGas had dissolved does not mean that the involved parties have totally abandoned their interest in building an oil pipeline out of Central Asia. There is also talk of another pipeline thru Iran. India and Pakistan are bidding to be the pipeline terminal ocean port since they would obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.
So, in 1998 Osama bin Laden was identified as the villain behind the Taliban, Afghanistani women the victims of an oppressive Taliban regime, and the stage was set for a future stabilization effort (i.e. a war). Was all this a cover story for a future oil pipeline?
In November 2000, Bruce Hoffman, director of the Rand Institute office in Washington DC, indicated that the next US President would have to face up to the growing threat is Islamic terrorism. Hoffman: "The next administration must turn its immediate attention to knitting together the full range of US counterterrorist capabilities into a cohesive plan." [Los Angeles Times, November 12, 2000]
All that was needed was a triggering event.
AMERIICA IN BED WITH THE TALIBAN
http://www.counterpunch.org/tomenron.html
A Creeping Collapse in Credibility at the White House:
From ENRON Entanglements to UNOCAL Bringing the Taliban to Texas and Controlling Afghanistan
By Tom Turnipseed
The Bush Administration's entanglement with ENRON is beginning to unravel as it finally admits that Enron executives entered the White House six times last year to secretly plan the Administration's energy policy with Vice-President Cheney before the collapse of the Texas-based energy giant. Meanwhile, even more trouble for our former-Texas-oil-man-turned-President is brewing with reports that unveil UNOCAL, another big energy company, for being in bed with the Taliban, along with the U.S. government in a major, continuing effort to construct pipelines through Afghanistan from the petroleum-rich Caspian Basin in Central Asia. Beneath their burkas, UNOCAL is being exposed for giving the five star treatment to Taliban Mullahs in the Lone Star State in 1997. The "evil-ones" were also invited to meet with U.S. government officials in Washington, D.C.
According to a December 17, 1997 article in the British paper, The Telegraph, headlined, "Oil barons court Taliban in Texas," the Taliban was about to sign a "£2 billion contract with an American oil company to build a pipeline across the war-torn country. ... The Islamic warriors appear to have been persuaded to close the deal, not through delicate negotiation but by old-fashioned Texan hospitality. ... Dressed in traditional salwar khameez,Afghan waistcoats and loose, black turbans, the high-ranking delegation was given VIP treatment during the four-day stay."
At the same time, U.S. government documents reveal that the Taliban were harboring Osama bin Laden as their "guest" since June 1996. By then, bin Laden had: been expelled by Sudan in early 1996 in response to US insistence and the threat of UN sanctions; publicly declared war against the U.S. on or about August 23, 1996; pronounced the bombings in Riyadh and at Khobar in Saudi Arabia killing 19 US servicemen as 'praiseworthy terrorism', promising that other attacks would follow in November 1996 and further admitted carrying out attacks on U.S. military personnel in Somalia in 1993 and Yemen in 1992, declaring that "we used to hunt them down in Mogadishu"; stated in an interview broadcast in February 1997 that "if someone can kill an American soldier, it is better than wasting time on other matters." Evidence was also developing which linked bin Laden to: the 1995 bombing of a U.S. military barracks in Riyadh which killed five; Ramzi Yuosef, who led the 1993 World Trade Center attacks; and a 1994 assassination plot against President Clinton in the Philippines.
Back in Houston, the Taliban was learning how the "other half lives," and according to The Telegraph, "stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company minibus." The Taliban representatives "...were amazed by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal, they marveled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course and six bathrooms." Mr. Miller, said he hoped that UNOCAL had clinched the deal.
Dick Cheney was then CEO of Haliburton Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed Cheney in 1998, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is." Would Cheney bargain with the harborers of U.S. troop killers if that's where the business was?
The Telegraph reported that Unocal had promised to start building the pipeline and paying the Taliban immediately, with the added inducements and a donation of £500,000 to the University of Nebraska for courses in Afghanistan to train 400 teachers, electricians, carpenters and pipefitters.
The Telegraph also reported, "The US government, which in the past has branded the Taliban's policies against women and children "despicable", appears anxious to please the fundamentalists to clinch the lucrative pipeline contract." In a paper prepared by Neamatollah Nojumi, at the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Nojumi wrote in August 1997 that Madeline Albright sat in a "full-dress CIA briefing" on the Caspian region. CIA agents then accompanied "some well-trained petroleum engineers" to the region. Albright concluded that shaping the region's policies was "one of the most exciting things that we can do."
It's also exciting to the Bush Administration. According to the authors of Bin Laden, the Hidden Truth, one of the FBI's leading counter terrorism agents, John O'Neill, resigned last year in protest over the Bush Administration's alleged obstruction of his investigation into bin Laden. (A similar complaint has been filed on behalf of another unidentified FBI Agent by the conservative Judicial Watch public interest group.) Supposedly the Bush Administration had been meeting since January 2001 with the Taliban, and was also reluctant to offend Saudi Arabians who O'Neill had linked to bin Laden. Mr. O'Neill, after leaving the FBI, assumed the position of security director at the World Trade Center, where he was killed in the 911 attacks.
As America's New War now begins focusing on other "rogue nations," UNOCAL's stars have magically aligned. About two months after the Houston parties, UNOCAL executive John Maresca addressed the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific and urged support for establishment of an investor-friendly climate in Afghanistan, "... we have made it clear that construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, lenders and our company." Meaning that UNOCAL's ability to construct the Afghan pipeline was a cause worthy of U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Maresca's prayers have been answered with the Taliban's replacement. As reported in Le Monde, the new Afghan government's head, Hamid Karzai, formerly served as a UNOCAL consultant. Only nine days after Karzai's ascension, President Bush nominated another UNOCAL consultant and former Taliban defender, Zalmay Khalilzad, as his special envoy to Afghanistan.
When UNOCAL makes big bucks from the pipeline they should donate 50% of all pretax profits to the 911 Fund. And they should also cut a very special check to the widow of FBI Agent O'Neill.
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HH6 would like your thoughts on this. Was talking to a friend about the surge. We're fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but there is really no command and control for them. Cannot just cut off the head. They're across the border in Pakistan mingled with the general population.
He said the problem is we didn't go in with a large enough force to begin with. Best we can hope for is to stabilize the border and have a Korea situation where there is a DMZ. Then we have to deal with the drug crops controlled by the warlords.
Sort of depressing. What do you see is the end game over there?
Make Afghanistan an untenable place for Al Qaeda to base their operations. To capture and/or kill as much of their leadership as can be located. Period.
This can be attempted in a myriad of ways (laid out rather clearly in President Obama's latest proposal), but that is the overriding objective. Not to "colonize" Afghanistan as the Russians desired, create a U.S.-like democracy as GWB attempted, or any of that bullshit. Simply to keep AQ from running cozy, unimpeded terrorist camps that plot acts to kill Americans indiscriminately around the world.
Case closed, end of thread.
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Stop wasting money in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Instead set up a joint mission under UN command - I'm sure the Russians and a few others are game. They definitely want to put an end to the drug production in Afghanistan.
Wasting money in Iraq and Afghanistan was GWB and Dick Cheney's private perverted adventurous fantasy war dream.
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Stop wasting money in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Money is not being "wasted" necessarily in Afghanistan eurotrash. ::) Certainly a good trillion or so was blown in the illegal Iraq debacle.
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HH6 would like your thoughts on this. Was talking to a friend about the surge. We're fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but there is really no command and control for them. Cannot just cut off the head. They're across the border in Pakistan mingled with the general population.
He said the problem is we didn't go in with a large enough force to begin with. Best we can hope for is to stabilize the border and have a Korea situation where there is a DMZ. Then we have to deal with the drug crops controlled by the warlords.
Sort of depressing. What do you see is the end game over there?
We want to build and control pipelines:
Tomgram: Pepe Escobar, Welcome to Pipelineistan
ShareThis (Click to E-mail this Tomgram, or post to Facebook, Digg, Reddit and many others)
At one point last week, the price of a barrel of crude oil -- which had risen as high as $147 last July and, with the global economic meltdown, hit a low of $32 in 2009 -- rebounded above $51. Prices at the local gas pump are expected to rise as well in the coming weeks. However, given a worldwide falloff in oil use, these price jumps may not hold for long. Still, cheap or not, oil and natural gas (as well as coal) are what drives global civilization, and that's clearly not going to change any time soon.
That, in turn, means the major powers are going to be no less eager to secure key energy reserves and control the flow of energy in bust times as they were in boom times, which is where Pepe Escobar comes in. In a long, typically vigorous essay just published in book form, "Obama Does Globalistan," he refers to his earlier book Globalistan as a "warped geopolitical travel book." That makes him a wonderfully "warped geopolitical traveler." In fact, he regularly circumnavigates the globe from Central Asia and the Middle East to Latin America, even sometimes landing in Washington, writing pyrotechnically for an online publication on which I have long been completely hooked, Asia Times.
Knowing his proclivity for following energy flows the way normal tourists might follow the sun, I asked him if he might offer TomDispatch readers periodic "postcards" from the energy heartlands of the planet and what he calls the Tower of Babel of "nations, mercenary peoples, terrorists, dictatorships, tribes, nomad mafias, and religious outfits" that are in conflict upon them. This is the first of his postcards. More will follow. Tom
Liquid War
Postcard from Pipelineistan
By Pepe Escobar
What happens on the immense battlefield for the control of Eurasia will provide the ultimate plot line in the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order, also known as the New Great Game.
Our good ol' friend the nonsensical "Global War on Terror," which the Pentagon has slyly rebranded "the Long War," sports a far more important, if half-hidden, twin -- a global energy war. I like to think of it as the Liquid War, because its bloodstream is the pipelines that crisscross the potential imperial battlefields of the planet. Put another way, if its crucial embattled frontier these days is the Caspian Basin, the whole of Eurasia is its chessboard. Think of it, geographically, as Pipelineistan.
All geopolitical junkies need a fix. Since the second half of the 1990s, I've been hooked on pipelines. I've crossed the Caspian in an Azeri cargo ship just to follow the $4 billion Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan pipeline, better known in this chess game by its acronym, BTC, through the Caucasus. (Oh, by the way, the map of Pipelineistan is chicken-scratched with acronyms, so get used to them!)
I've also trekked various of the overlapping modern Silk Roads, or perhaps Silk Pipelines, of possible future energy flows from Shanghai to Istanbul, annotating my own DIY routes for LNG (liquefied natural gas). I used to avidly follow the adventures of that once-but-not-future Sun-King of Central Asia, the now deceased Turkmenbashi or "leader of the Turkmen," Saparmurat Niyazov, head of the immensely gas-rich Republic of Turkmenistan, as if he were a Conradian hero.
In Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan (before it was moved to Astana, in the middle of the middle of nowhere) the locals were puzzled when I expressed an overwhelming urge to drive to that country's oil boomtown Aktau. ("Why? There's nothing there.") Entering the Space Odyssey-style map room at the Russian energy giant Gazprom's headquarters in Moscow -- which digitally details every single pipeline in Eurasia -- or the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)'s corporate HQ in Tehran, with its neat rows of female experts in full chador, was my equivalent of entering Aladdin's cave. And never reading the words "Afghanistan" and "oil" in the same sentence is still a source of endless amusement for me.
Last year, oil cost a king's ransom. This year, it's relatively cheap. But don't be fooled. Price isn't the point here. Like it or not, energy is still what everyone who's anyone wants to get their hands on. So consider this dispatch just the first installment in a long, long tale of some of the moves that have been, or will be, made in the maddeningly complex New Great Game, which goes on unceasingly, no matter what else muscles into the headlines this week.
Forget the mainstream media's obsession with al-Qaeda, Osama "dead or alive" bin Laden, the Taliban -- neo, light or classic -- or that "war on terror," whatever name it goes by. These are diversions compared to the high-stakes, hardcore geopolitical game that follows what flows along the pipelines of the planet.
Who said Pipelineistan couldn't be fun?
Calling Dr. Zbig
In his 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard, Zbigniew Brzezinski -- realpolitik practitioner extraordinaire and former national security advisor to Jimmy Carter, the president who launched the U.S. on its modern energy wars -- laid out in some detail just how to hang on to American "global primacy." Later, his master plan would be duly copied by that lethal bunch of Dr. No's congregated at Bill Kristol's Project for a New American Century (PNAC, in case you'd forgotten the acronym since its website and its followers went down).
For Dr. Zbig, who, like me, gets his fix from Eurasia -- from, that is, thinking big -- it all boils down to fostering the emergence of just the right set of "strategically compatible partners" for Washington in places where energy flows are strongest. This, as he so politely put it back then, should be done to shape "a more cooperative trans-Eurasian security system."
By now, Dr. Zbig -- among whose fans is evidently President Barack Obama -- must have noticed that the Eurasian train which was to deliver the energy goods has been slightly derailed. The Asian part of Eurasia, it seems, begs to differ.
Global financial crisis or not, oil and natural gas are the long-term keys to an inexorable transfer of economic power from the West to Asia. Those who control Pipelineistan -- and despite all the dreaming and planning that's gone on there, it's unlikely to be Washington -- will have the upper hand in whatever's to come, and there's not a terrorist in the world, or even a long war, that can change that.
Energy expert Michael Klare has been instrumental in identifying the key vectors in the wild, ongoing global scramble for power over Pipelineistan. These range from the increasing scarcity (and difficulty of reaching) primary energy supplies to "the painfully slow development of energy alternatives." Though you may not have noticed, the first skirmishes in Pipelineistan's Liquid War are already on, and even in the worst of economic times, the risk mounts constantly, given the relentless competition between the West and Asia, be it in the Middle East, in the Caspian theater, or in African oil-rich states like Angola, Nigeria and Sudan.
In these early skirmishes of the twenty-first century, China reacted swiftly indeed. Even before the attacks of 9/11, its leaders were formulating a response to what they saw as the reptilian encroachment of the West on the oil and gas lands of Central Asia, especially in the Caspian Sea region. To be specific, in June 2001, its leaders joined with Russia's to form the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It's known as the SCO and that's an acronym you should memorize. It's going to be around for a while.
Back then, the SCO's junior members were, tellingly enough, the Stans, the energy-rich former SSRs of the Soviet Union -- Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan -- which the Clinton administration and then the new Bush administration, run by those former energy men, had been eyeing covetously. The organization was to be a multi-layered economic and military regional cooperation society that, as both the Chinese and the Russians saw it, would function as a kind of security blanket around the upper rim of Afghanistan.
Iran is, of course, a crucial energy node of West Asia and that country's leaders, too, would prove no slouches when it came to the New Great Game. It needs at least $200 billion in foreign investment to truly modernize its fabulous oil and gas reserves -- and thus sell much more to the West than U.S.-imposed sanctions now allow. No wonder Iran soon became a target in Washington. No wonder an air assault on that country remains the ultimate wet dream of assorted Likudniks as well as Dick ("Angler") Cheney and his neocon chamberlains and comrades-in-arms. As seen by the elite from Tehran and Delhi to Beijing and Moscow, such a U.S. attack, now likely off the radar screen until at least 2012, would be a war not only against Russia and China, but against the whole project of Asian integration that the SCO is coming to represent.
Global BRIC-a-brac
Meanwhile, as the Obama administration tries to sort out its Iranian, Afghan, and Central Asian policies, Beijing continues to dream of a secure, fast-flowing, energy version of the old Silk Road, extending from the Caspian Basin (the energy-rich Stans plus Iran and Russia) to Xinjiang Province, its Far West.
The SCO has expanded its aims and scope since 2001. Today, Iran, India, and Pakistan enjoy "observer status" in an organization that increasingly aims to control and protect not just regional energy supplies, but Pipelineistan in every direction. This is, of course, the role the Washington ruling elite would like NATO to play across Eurasia. Given that Russia and China expect the SCO to play a similar role across Asia, clashes of various sorts are inevitable.
Ask any relevant expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing and he will tell you that the SCO should be understood as a historically unique alliance of five non-Western civilizations -- Russian, Chinese, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist -- and, because of that, capable of evolving into the basis for a collective security system in Eurasia. That's a thought sure to discomfort classic inside-the-Beltway global strategists like Dr. Zbig and President George H. W. Bush's national security advisor Brent Scowcroft.
According to the view from Beijing, the rising world order of the twenty-first century will be significantly determined by a quadrangle of BRIC countries -- for those of you by now collecting Great Game acronyms, that stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China -- plus the future Islamic triangle of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Add in a unified South America, no longer in thrall to Washington, and you have a global SCO-plus. On the drawing boards, at least, it's a high octane dream.
The key to any of this is a continuing Sino-Russian entente cordiale.
Already in 1999, watching NATO and the United States aggressively expand into the distant Balkans, Beijing identified this new game for what it was: a developing energy war. And at stake were the oil and natural gas reserves of what Americans would soon be calling the "arc of instability," a vast span of lands extending from North Africa to the Chinese border. No less important would be the routes pipelines would take in bringing the energy buried in those lands to the West. Where they would be built, the countries they would cross, would determine much in the world to come. And this was where the empire of U.S. military bases (think, for instance, Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo) met Pipelineistan (represented, way back in 1999, by the AMBO pipeline).
AMBO, short for Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation, an entity registered in the U.S., is building a $1.1 billion pipeline, aka "the Trans-Balkan," slated to be finished by 2011. It will bring Caspian oil to the West without taking it through either Russia or Iran. As a pipeline, AMBO fit well into a geopolitical strategy of creating a U.S.-controlled energy-security grid that was first developed by President Bill Clinton's Energy Secretary Bill Richardson and later by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Behind the idea of that "grid" lay a go-for-broke militarization of an energy corridor that would stretch from the Caspian Sea in Central Asia through a series of now independent former SSRs of the Soviet Union to Turkey, and from there into the Balkans (thence on to Europe). It was meant to sabotage the larger energy plans of both Russia and Iran. AMBO itself would bring oil from the Caspian basin to a terminal in the former SSR of Georgia in the Caucasus, and then transport it by tanker through the Black Sea to the Bulgarian port of Burgas, where another pipeline would connect to Macedonia and then to the Albanian port of Vlora.
As for Camp Bondsteel, it was the "enduring" military base that Washington gained from the wars for the remains of Yugoslavia. It would be the largest overseas base the U.S. had built since the Vietnam War. Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) would, with the Army Corps of Engineers, put it up on 400 hectares of farmland near the Macedonian border in southern Kosovo. Think of it as a user-friendly, five-star version of Guantanamo with perks for those stationed there that included Thai massage and loads of junk food. Bondsteel is the Balkan equivalent of a giant immobile aircraft carrier, capable of exercising surveillance not only over the Balkans but also over Turkey and the Black Sea region (considered in the neocon-speak of the Bush years "the new interface" between the "Euro-Atlantic community" and the "Greater Middle East").
How could Russia, China, and Iran not interpret the war in Kosovo, then the invasion of Afghanistan (where Washington had previously tried to pair with the Taliban and encourage the building of another of those avoid-Iran, avoid-Russia pipelines), followed by the invasion of Iraq (that country of vast oil reserves), and finally the recent clash in Georgia (that crucial energy transportation junction) as straightforward wars for Pipelineistan? Though seldom imagined this way in our mainstream media, the Russian and Chinese leaderships saw a stark "continuity" of policy stretching from Bill Clinton's humanitarian imperialism to Bush's Global War on Terror. Blowback, as then Russian President Vladimir Putin himself warned publicly, was inevitable -- but that's another magic-carpet story, another cave to enter another time.
Rainy Night in Georgia
If you want to understand Washington's version of Pipelineistan, you have to start with Mafia-ridden Georgia. Though its army was crushed in its recent war with Russia, Georgia remains crucial to Washington's energy policy in what, by now, has become a genuine arc of instability -- in part because of a continuing obsession with cutting Iran out of the energy flow.
It was around the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, as I pointed out in my book Globalistan in 2007, that American policy congealed. Zbig Brzezinski himself flew into Baku in 1995 as an "energy consultant," less than four years after Azerbaijan became independent, and sold the idea to the Azerbaijani elite. The BTC was to run from the Sangachal Terminal, half-an-hour south of Baku, across neighboring Georgia to the Marine Terminal in the Turkish port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean. Now operational, that 1,767-kilometer-long, 44-meter-wide steel serpent straddles no less than six war zones, ongoing or potential: Nagorno-Karabakh (an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan), Chechnya and Dagestan (both embattled regions of Russia), South Ossetia and Abkhazia (on which the 2008 Russia-Georgia war pivoted), and Turkish Kurdistan.
From a purely economic point of view, the BTC made no sense. A "BTK" pipeline, running from Baku through Tehran to Iran's Kharg Island, could have been built for, relatively speaking, next to nothing -- and it would have had the added advantage of bypassing both mafia-corroded Georgia and wobbly Kurdish-populated Eastern Anatolia. That would have been the really cheap way to bring Caspian oil and gas to Europe.
The New Great Game ensured that that was not to be, and much followed from that decision. Even though Moscow never planned to occupy Georgia long-term in its 2008 war, or take over the BTC pipeline that now runs through its territory, Alfa Bank oil and gas analyst Konstantin Batunin pointed out the obvious: by briefly cutting off the BTC oil flow, Russian troops made it all too clear to global investors that Georgia wasn't a reliable energy transit country. In other words, the Russians made a mockery of Zbig's world.
For its part, Azerbaijan was, until recently, the real success story in the U.S. version of Pipelineistan. Advised by Zbig, Bill Clinton literally "stole" Baku from Russia's "near abroad" by promoting the BTC and the wealth that would flow from it. Now, however, with the message of the Russia-Georgia War sinking in, Baku is again allowing itself to be seduced by Russia. To top it off, Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev can't stand Georgia's brash President Mikhail Saakashvili. That's hardly surprising. After all, Saakashvili's rash military moves caused Azerbaijan to lose at least $500 million when the BTC was shut down during the war.
Russia's energy seduction blitzkrieg is focused like a laser on Central Asia as well. (We'll talk about it more in the next Pipelineistan installment.) It revolves around offering to buy Kazakh, Uzbek, and Turkmen gas at European prices instead of previous, much lower Russian prices. The Russians, in fact, have offered the same deal to the Azeris: so now, Baku is negotiating a deal involving more capacity for the Baku-Novorossiysk pipeline, which makes its way to the Russian borders of the Black Sea, while considering pumping less oil for the BTC.
President Obama needs to understand the dire implications of this. Less Azeri oil on the BTC -- its full capacity is 1 million barrels a day, mostly shipped to Europe -- means the pipeline may go broke, which is exactly what Russia wants.
In Central Asia, some of the biggest stakes revolve around the monster Kashagan oil field in "snow leopard" Kazakhstan, the absolute jewel in the Caspian crown with reserves of as many as 9 billion barrels. As usual in Pipelineistan, it all comes down to which routes will deliver Kashagan's oil to the world after production starts in 2013. This spells, of course, Liquid War. Wily Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev would like to use the Russian-controlled Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) to pump Kashagan crude to the Black Sea.
In this case, the Kazakhs hold all the cards. How oil will flow from Kashagan will decide whether the BTC -- once hyped by Washington as the ultimate Western escape route from dependence on Persian Gulf oil -- lives or dies.
Welcome, then, to Pipelineistan! Whether we like it or not, in good times and bad, it's a reasonable bet that we're all going to be Pipeline tourists. So, go with the flow. Learn the crucial acronyms, keep an eye out for what happens to all those U.S. bases across the oil heartlands of the planet, watch where the pipelines are being built, and do your best to keep tabs on the next set of monster Chinese energy deals and fabulous coups by Russia's Gazprom.
And, while you're at it, consider this just the first postcard sent off from our tour of Pipelineistan. We'll be back (to slightly adapt a quote from the Terminator). Think of this as a door opening onto a future in which what flows where and to whom may turn out to be the most important question on the planet.
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based upon the fact that we negotiated with the taleban from 1998 until summer 2001 over oil drilling rights...
based upon the fact that the taleban runs about 1/2 of the country now de facto...
based upon the fact the Taleban has a pretty big "say" in what the govt does...
based upon the fact the drug trade is bigger than it was in 2001...
I'd say it's safe to say that in a year or two, we'll STILL be negotiating with - the Taleban - for oil drilling rights in their country (casian basin). Except for now, we'll have a shitload of bases which coincidentally are right along that path the oil pipeline will take. If they sell out to some other country, you can betcha we'll be finding ways to ruin their days. he with the guns makes the rules, ya know?
it is what it is. we gotta control their oil. Russia and china can't. In 15 years when that shit needs tapped for our survival, if Putin owns it, we're screwed.
BB, the goal is a perpetual conflict. As long as the war isn't over, we don't leave. And if we don't leave, nobody else moves in on that pipeline. You scoffed when I said it 5 years ago. however it's 2009 and yes, the taleban is STRONGER than they were in 2001. After 8 years of war.
Ever the pragmatist Rob; QFT.
BTW, some people don't like to hear it.
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Money is not being "wasted" necessarily in Afghanistan eurotrash. ::) Certainly a good trillion or so was blown in the illegal Iraq debacle.
You seem quite violent and foulmouthed; are you sure you don't need any medication?
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The idiots at counterpunch ::) aren't a crediable source. Who cares if we delt with the Taliban in 1998. Bin laden wasn't based in Afghanistan, he moved around. We went after the Taliban because they didn't turn over OBL and basically were part of the deal. What, the Afghan people aren't better off now? Any idiot pitching a pipeline scheme through that part of the world would have been laughed at.
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Who cares if we delt with the Taliban in 1998.
We gave them $43 million in spring of 2001.
Google 'carpet of bombs, carpet of gold'.
They F'ed us over in summer of 2001, we told UK and India to get their people out, and that a mid-october attack was in the works.
Larry silverstein bought the towers right around then. 911 coincidentally happened, which gave public support for invading afghanistan.
Can you see why 911 skeptics - aside from all the fishiness of the day itself - question the war in afghanistan? It was about getting bin laden, but we're not building bases where he is, we're building them where the pipeline will go.
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Yeah ok 240...show me where the pipeline was supposed to go...Bin laden was in a cave on a mountain....
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You seem quite violent and foulmouthed; are you sure you don't need any medication?
*yawn*
I've always been foulmouthed, and there is no hint of violence in what you quoted. Nice try at spinning my jabs leveled at you on this board, but you and I know that you have been the individual in serious need of meds for your psychological problems. ;D
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*yawn*
I've always been foulmouthed, and there is no hint of violence in what you quoted. Nice try at spinning my jabs leveled at you on this board, but you and I know that you have been the individual in serious need of meds for your psychological problems. ;D
No violence huh?
As far as Afghanistan, if you cannot see the purpose of our presence in that country "drkaje", I would like to see you and your getbig boyfriend personally flown to Waziristan, made personal guests of Mullah Omar, beheaded on video tape, and have that shit put up on youtube so all of us here can put up comments laughing at your heads rolling across the desert.
::) ::)
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No violence huh?
::) ::)
Where is that quote you searched for in THIS thread, dummy. :P
Are you terrified now that I stated I would like to see that empty vessel known as your head cut off by the Taliban and AQ members you feel are no threat to American citizens? The same groups that killed 3000+ Americans yet by your account apparently deserved no retaliatory response? Will this be yet another reason you won't be able to sleep tonight? ;D
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Where is that quote you searched for in THIS thread, dummy. :P
Are you terrified now that I stated I would like to see that empty vessel known as your head cut off by the Taliban and AQ members you feel are no threat to American citizens? The same groups that killed 3000+ Americans yet by your account apparently deserved no retaliatory response? Will this be yet another reason you won't be able to sleep tonight? ;D
I just hope you weren't serious, otherwise you are psychopathic.
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based upon the fact that we negotiated with the taleban from 1998 until summer 2001 over oil drilling rights...
based upon the fact that the taleban runs about 1/2 of the country now de facto...
based upon the fact the Taleban has a pretty big "say" in what the govt does...
based upon the fact the drug trade is bigger than it was in 2001...
I'd say it's safe to say that in a year or two, we'll STILL be negotiating with - the Taleban - for oil drilling rights in their country (casian basin). Except for now, we'll have a shitload of bases which coincidentally are right along that path the oil pipeline will take. If they sell out to some other country, you can betcha we'll be finding ways to ruin their days. he with the guns makes the rules, ya know?
it is what it is. we gotta control their oil. Russia and china can't. In 15 years when that shit needs tapped for our survival, if Putin owns it, we're screwed.
BB, the goal is a perpetual conflict. As long as the war isn't over, we don't leave. And if we don't leave, nobody else moves in on that pipeline. You scoffed when I said it 5 years ago. however it's 2009 and yes, the taleban is STRONGER than they were in 2001. After 8 years of war.
War cost >>>>>> any oil well price.
Have you missed that part? It's much cheaper to just buy oil wells or companies that own drilling rights.
Instead of going to a giant war for oil why not create some fake new billionares that will slowly and secretly buy all the oil companies in the world? It's much cheaper.
I can think of many other CT's you will like that are more financially profitable.
To be honest, the most crazy thing is that investing a fraction of the money on wars\oils drilling can provide the very small distance from having a reasonable green solutions, the research is very near it's target nowdays.
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I can think of many other CT's you will like that are more financially profitable.
List them.
We're talking 20 trillion barrels under afghanistan (known and saleable) and 50 trillion under Iraq. And if we have them, that's 70 trillion in the bank the other guy (russia and china) do not have.
If you know of any resource in the world worth more than ten trillion barrels of oil, let's hear it :) In the util sense, 2 small wars in order to control the biggest stash of oil in the world is well worth it.
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List them.
We're talking 20 trillion barrels under Afghanistan (known and saleable) and 50 trillion under Iraq. And if we have them, that's 70 trillion in the bank the other guy (Russia and china) do not have.
If you know of any resource in the world worth more than ten trillion barrels of oil, let's hear it :) In the until sense, 2 small wars in order to control the biggest stash of oil in the world is well worth it.
LOL, you only exaggerated in 1000-100 times more. Iraq is estimated at 200Bill that means 0.2Trill....like I said, you're awesome at math.
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2003/0512globalenvironment_luft.aspx
http://peakenergy.blogspot.com/2005/06/how-much-oil-does-iraq-have.html
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aairaqioil.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves_in_Iraq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_reserves - A summary for you, scroll down.
To conclude, yes, a war costs more than the oil not to mention the political BS around it.
It would be much cheaper to stay at home and buy the oil from people who don't hate you for invading countries.
Also...if the US went for the oil....why does fuel sill costs are high?
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I'm glad someone finally stated the obvious^
Also, why did we invade in the first place? For shits and giggles? I know 240 thinks 911 was an inside job ( and so was Katrina and the tsunami that swept across Asia in 2004) but who else here believes we went to Afghanistan for any other reason besides fighting Al Queda and the Taliban?
Obama is sending troops there because he doesn't want to appear weak and incompetent in fighting a war that most Americans support. Keep something else in mind my friends. Imagine if Obama by some miracle finds Bin Laden- I would venture to guess that unless our economy totally collapses, meaning the USSR in the 80's and early 90's, Obama will be reelected by a landslide. With half of our troops leaving Iraq in less than two years time and more resources being diverted to Afghanistan, it's clear Obama wants to leave Iraq and focus on catching Bin Laden. Can't say I disagree with him.
As far as this oil pipeline nonsense goes, give me a break. It would cost more money than could be printed, the entire Taliban would have to be exterminated and a security force rivaling an army of comic book superheros would be required to guard it and maintain it during the construction process and afterward. It would be a huge, gaping, terrorist target in the biggest hotbed of terrorism in the world. It would be like having a 1000 mile synagogue built from Pakistan to Egypt.
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I'm glad someone finally stated the obvious^
Also, why did we invade in the first place? For shits and giggles? I know 240 thinks 911 was an inside job ( and so was Katrina and the tsunami that swept across Asia in 2004) but who else here believes we went to Afghanistan for any other reason besides fighting Al Queda and the Taliban?
Obama is sending troops there because he doesn't want to appear weak and incompetent in fighting a war that most Americans support. Keep something else in mind my friends. Imagine if Obama by some miracle finds Bin Laden- I would venture to guess that unless our economy totally collapses, meaning the USSR in the 80's and early 90's, Obama will be reelected by a landslide. With half of our troops leaving Iraq in less than two years time and more resources being diverted to Afghanistan, it's clear Obama wants to leave Iraq and focus on catching Bin Laden. Can't say I disagree with him.
As far as this oil pipeline nonsense goes, give me a break. It would cost more money than could be printed, the entire Taliban would have to be exterminated and a security force rivaling an army of comic book superheros would be required to guard it and maintain it during the construction process and afterward. It would be a huge, gaping, terrorist target in the biggest hotbed of terrorism in the world. It would be like having a 1000 mile synagogue built from Pakistan to Egypt.
So various PhDs, scholars and professional journalists who believe we are over there for natural resources are off their rocker? ::)
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A decide if u haven't figured out by now that various PhDs, scholars and professional journalists all have agenda's ,most decidedly anti-American....then u live in a cave. Academics represent the nut bag left wing idiots in this country and the MSM is in the tank for the left. There isn't a hell of alot of anything in afghanistan that anybody wants.
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lol BRUTAL SELF OWNING.
Are these the same "professional journalists" that think there is no liberal bias in the media?
Are these the same "professional journalists" that disagree with the PhD economists that think the spending and stimulus packages are a disaster?
Since when do intelligent, informed people depend on "professional journalists" for defining our military operations or anything else?
Are you seriously espousing the view that in 2001 we invaded Afghanistan for natural resources? ::)
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I was unaware u could do much with dirt and rocks....Even if some nutcase said that they could build a pipe line through there, it would be impossible. U have 40 years of land mines, bandits and an almost impossible life line situation. Getting parts in, housing people etc..would be cost prohibitive. Thats in 1998....now its impossible.
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lol BRUTAL SELF OWNING.
Are these the same "professional journalists" that think there is no liberal bias in the media?
Are these the same "professional journalists" that disagree with the PhD economists that think the spending and stimulus packages are a disaster?
Since when do intelligent, informed people depend on "professional journalists" for defining our military operations or anything else?
Are you seriously espousing the view that in 2001 we invaded Afghanistan for natural resources? ::)
Chalmers Johnson is not 'left wing'; he is a former Cold Warrior and advisor to the CIA:
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Decide, stop posting videos and answer my question. Its very straight forward. Do you believe we invaded Afghanistan in 2001 for natural resources?
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Decide, stop posting videos and answer my question. Its very straight forward. Do you believe we invaded Afghanistan in 2001 for natural resources?
I think we invaded Iraq for several reasons; the spin reason would be 'getting Osama and liberating the poor people there'. The real reason indubitably is related to securing massive amounts of natural resources found in bordering countries.
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What countries.....Iran? Pakistan? One of the Stans....would could have just asked them......gimme a break? Let me guess we manufactured 911 and Bin laden so we could camp in Afghanistan, the asshole of the world.
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What countries.....Iran? Pakistan? One of the Stans....would could have just asked them......gimme a break? Let me guess we manufactured 911 and Bin laden so we could camp in Afghanistan, the asshole of the world.
No, I am not a 9/11 conspiracist. I think Osama did it for the reasons he cited: military occupation of the Arabian peninsula, sanctions imposed on Iraq, etc. In other words blow back.
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Wow, apologizing for Osama Bin laden...u really ought to stay out of my country. Can u turn in ur passport as well.
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Wow, never thought I'd see the day I agree (to a certain extent) with Georgie and HH6. :o :(
"240" and our resident moron "Deicide" must smoke some powerful shit to get through the day. :-\ This fucktard thinks the U.S. invaded Afghanistan for RESOURCES? What fucking resources? Forget the conspiracy retards...we have people who after SEVEN YEARS can't understand the Afghanistan invasion. ::) It must have been a dream I had seven and one half years ago when I was scared shitless that my brother was trapped in the Twin Towers coming home from work that Tuesday morning. All those people killed...a few who worked for the same company as me, and we should have just let AQ and the Taliban laugh and throw parties in celebration of what they did?
These must be the people who failed third grade so many times that the principal just says "fuck it," and they let these bozos pass. :-\ These are the people that should have been locked up in Guantanamo Bay, instead of people rounded up without trial just for being Arab and in the wrong place. There should be a law against this level of stupidity in America. >:(
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Also, why did we invade in the first place? For shits and giggles? I know 240 thinks 911 was an inside job ( and so was Katrina and the tsunami that swept across Asia in 2004)
See, you "know" something that I've never written.
katrina was a damn hurricane.
the tsunami was a tsunami.
You assign all these other silly theories to me, and it's just a plain lie.
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LOL- C'mon 240 admit you've thought about GW's ( meaning George W Bush's) secret weather catastrophe machine unleashing anarchy across the globe. ;D Even you can't think I'm being serious... but then again, when taking the serious tone of your previous posting into consideration, who knows?
Decide, once again I never said a word about Iraq. I don't agree with the invasion in Iraq either- (although I hardly think we did anything that made the world worse off than before) I am asking about AFGHANISTAN.
For the third time, do you believe we invaded AFGHANISTAN in 2001 for natural resources? A simple yes or no will suffice.
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LOL- C'mon 240 admit you've thought about GW's ( meaning George W Bush's) secret weather catastrophe machine unleashing anarchy across the globe. ;D Even you can't think I'm being serious... but then again, when taking the serious tone of your previous posting into consideration, who knows?
well, ppl always lump CTers together.
The 2 chairs (authors keane and hamilton) of the 911 commission believe we need another investigation. Do they believe in martians?
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How nice of 240 to completely ignore how I owned him :-* :-* :-*
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How nice of 240 to completely ignore how I owned him :-* :-* :-*
you're a phd candidate with an engineering degree who speaks 5 languages bragging about owning somebody on a bodybuilding message board.
sounds like you're owning yourself, hun ;)
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you're a phd candidate with an engineering degree who speaks 5 languages bragging about owning somebody on a bodybuilding message board.
sounds like you're owning yourself, hun ;)
Another post that was off topic, have a hard time dealing with the real numbers? You want me to buy you a pump for your birthday?
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A bump for our internet warrior who fake numbers :-*
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Wow, apologizing for Osama Bin laden...u really ought to stay out of my country. Can u turn in ur passport as well.
Rudi tried this same shit on Ron Paul... I am not apologing for Osama. I am citing his motives. Murderers have motives, understanding them doesn't make you sympathetic to the murderer or the crime.
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Wow, never thought I'd see the day I agree (to a certain extent) with Georgie and HH6. :o :(
"240" and our resident moron "Deicide" must smoke some powerful shit to get through the day. :-\ This fucktard thinks the U.S. invaded Afghanistan for RESOURCES? What fucking resources? Forget the conspiracy retards...we have people who after SEVEN YEARS can't understand the Afghanistan invasion. ::) It must have been a dream I had seven and one half years ago when I was scared shitless that my brother was trapped in the Twin Towers coming home from work that Tuesday morning. All those people killed...a few who worked for the same company as me, and we should have just let AQ and the Taliban laugh and throw parties in celebration of what they did?
These must be the people who failed third grade so many times that the principal just says "fuck it," and they let these bozos pass. :-\ These are the people that should have been locked up in Guantanamo Bay, instead of people rounded up without trial just for being Arab and in the wrong place. There should be a law against this level of stupidity in America. >:(
This coming from a psychopath who has openly called for the public decapitation of me and another poster. You Mr. Violent, have zero credibility.
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"240" and our resident moron "Deicide" must smoke some powerful shit to get through the day. :-\ This fucktard thinks the U.S. invaded Afghanistan for RESOURCES? What fucking resources?
From 1998 thru spring of 2001, Dick Cheney at haliburton worked with the state dept to negotiate with the taleban (the ruling party of afghanistan) for oil and gas drilling rights.
True or false, Benny?
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From 1998 thru spring of 2001, Dick Cheney at haliburton worked with the state dept to negotiate with the taleban (the ruling party of afghanistan) for oil and gas drilling rights.
True or false, Benny?
How many Trillion Gaziilion Billion barrels were they negotiation about? ;)
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How many Trillion Gaziilion Billion barrels were they negotiation about? ;)
shut up.
benny, true or false?
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shut up.
benny, true or false?
You said something, proved wrong, once again, now either admit it or counterclaim it.
If you won't you will only prove again what a coward and a liar you are.
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Bumpy bump bump ;)
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From 1998 thru spring of 2001, Dick Cheney at haliburton worked with the state dept to negotiate with the taleban (the ruling party of afghanistan) for oil and gas drilling rights.
True or false, Benny?
What's that got to do with the cost of tea in China, jackass?
Are you saying that America always negotiates with nations and governments before we invade them for their "resources?" Why invade Afghanistan for pipelines to oil when you were in the planning stages to invade Iraq and have direct access to oilfields. That would only make sense if you were a dumb ass conspiracy theorist without access to all of the facts. O course, I'd never say that about you, 240. ::)
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shut up.
benny, true or false?
I recently finished the Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright. Oddly enough, despite the accolades received by this book, it has not received the attention in the truth community as David Ray Griffin's New Pearl Harbor or even Kevin Barrett's Truth Jihad, so I figured I would review it here.
The book essentially covers the history of Islamic terrorism in the 20th century in general, from the post WWII era leading up to 9/11, and Al Qaeda in specific. One of the themes of the book is the reluctance of government agencies to share intelligence between each other. The CIA refused to share intel with the FBI because they were afraid it would interfere with their intelligence operations, and the FBI would be afraid to share intel with the CIA because it might interfere with their criminal cases. The most famous example of this is where the CIA knew that two Al Qaeda members, who would turn out to be hijackers, were in the country, but they failed to tell the FBI or INS about it. The problem was so bad that investigators would literally play Pink Floyd's "The Wall" during telephone calls in mocking tribute to this barrier.
Another interesting point is where Wright points out the decentralized nature of Al Qaeda. Bin Laden certainly founded Al Qaeda, provided much of its ideology and focus, as well as funding some of its operations, and training, but he was not involved in most of its operations. In fact there is very little tying bin Laden directly to any terrorist attack, although there is much evidence regarding Al Qaeda as a whole. He did apparently sign off on the 9/11 attacks, and was aware of when it would occur, but was not directly involved otherwise.
As I mentioned previously regarding Terry McDermott's Perfect Soldiers, the most striking thing about books of this quality and depth, is the amount of work that goes into them. In the appendix Wright lists 6+ pages just of people he interviewed.
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David Ray Griffin has written 5 books on the subject of 9/11, two of which I have read completely, and I can't think of a single person (other than other conspiracy theorists) that he has interviewed. One can't even imagine a conspiracy theorists going to this extensive length, talking to hundreds of witnesses in dozens of countries, to investigate a story. Heck, when Kevin Barrett unsuccessfully tried to interview a single person in Morocco it drew widespread attention in the truther community, because it was the first time any of them had attempted even that meager effort.
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List them.
We're talking 20 trillion barrels under afghanistan (known and saleable) and 50 trillion under Iraq. And if we have them, that's 70 trillion in the bank the other guy (russia and china) do not have.
If you know of any resource in the world worth more than ten trillion barrels of oil, let's hear it :) In the util sense, 2 small wars in order to control the biggest stash of oil in the world is well worth it.
The Looming Tower
Understanding the unthinkable
This book connects the dots.
It answers the question of why 9/11 happened.
It weaves together the many diverse strands from Arabia, Yemmen, Egypt, Sudan, Afghanistan, Germany, and the US, that lead to both al-Queda, and the bombing of the Twin Towers.
You see the final tapestry, and say, Aha!
The depth of the international research supporting the book is astounding.
Every page is full of news.
I was stunned, both by how much intelligence insiders knew of Bin Laden, and how much the agencies failed to act on that knowledge.
The book traces the saga of the Bin Laden family, the trajectory of Osama, who was a hero in Islam long before the Towers, the role of the heretics who influenced him, the fierce persecutions these radicals faced in their home country, the sad, tragic turf wars, and cultural ignorance in the US, that blinded us to the looming disaster.
This book will make you realize how ignorant we STILL are.
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Thank U JAMIE GERELICK.