afghan tanker madness
- Thread starter raffia
- Start date
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
vimothy
yurp
Interesting (and implicitly quite critical of the Germans) piece in the WaPo: Sole Informant Guided Decision On Afghan Strike (h/t AM)
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
who says that's why they're "supposed" to be there?
(in the military context of COIN, yes, of course. but protecting the population - however that is defined - was never a strategic/policy goal, had nothing to do with what motivated the original invasion. I mean, let's be clear.)
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unpardag73
Banned
id say its more to do with that rather large and important OIL PIPELINE built nearby .....
oh wait, you cant say its for OIL ..... that would be BAD .....
BTW, what was the military excercise that was going on on 9/11?
oh wait, you cant say its for OIL ..... that would be BAD .....
BTW, what was the military excercise that was going on on 9/11?
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
you mean natural gas pipeline, dude. there was a proposal for an oil pipeline in Afghanistan back in the late 90s by Unocal (now a part of Chevron) but the project was abandoned. and given that no one's even began construction on an oil pipeline in 8+ years of occupation you'd have to say that, no, it wasn't a big reason behind the war. and given that the natural gas pipeline began in 1995, that the Taliban made a deal with Unocal to build it 3 years before the Sept. 11th & the invasion and that construction on the pipeline has pretty much ground to halt since the invasion you'd have conclude it's not behind the war either. you can certainly attack the war on a lot of grounds but this isn't really one of them; this shit was discredited back in 2001.
what's ironic is that there is an oil pipeline in the area mostly owned by a conglomerate of Western oil companies, with sketchy American involvement, but it's on the other side of the Caspian Sea, through Azerbaijan and Georgia (see recent dustup w/Russia in re: tensions btwn that country & the West over energy). James Baker, Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft and John Sununu are all on the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce advisory council. Baker's law firm, Baker Botts LLP (whose client list is like a who's who of oil & other energy companies) is the Chamber's main counsel and his son is its chairman. you may also recall - or not - that G.W. sent Baker over to Georgia in 2003 to tell Eduard Shevardnadze to step the hell down and make way for for the pro-West Saakashvili.
the moral of the story is, if you're going to make asinine offhanded comments about the U.S. and our various dubious involvement in energy projects around the world, at least know what the hell you're talking about.
is that supposed to be some kind of clumsy nine-eleven truth dig? do you mean the one where NORAD was simulating plane-hijackings - b/c clearly there was no need to plan for that eventuality
- or the brilliant one where we sent planes to Alaska & Canada to monitor an exercise the Russians were doing? personally I'm a fan of the latter; its can't let go of the Cold War vibe is so out of touch as to be almost charming.
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scottdisco
rip this joint please
i blame the Jews myself
baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
When you get down to brass tacks, it is all the fault of the French. You can't trust them, ever.