Eric Margolis:"The current war in Afghanistan is not really about al-Qaida and `terrorism,’

[JohnyCanuck]

but about opening a secure corridor through Pashtun tribal territory to export the oil and gas riches of the Caspian Basin of Central Asia to the West."

Time To Face The Facts On Afghanistan

By Eric S. Margolis

SNIP

The US economy is in grave peril and its big three automakers may soon face bankruptcy. In a crazy sidebar, as Wall Street and the Us banking system faced meltdown, the insouciant Pentagon just announced it would spend $300 million with American `contractors’ to spread pro-US propaganda in Iraq. This remarkable idiocy notwithstanding, Washington could soon run out of money necessary to keep paying for operations in Iraq, and bribing Pakistan with $250-300 million a month to wage war against its own rebellious Pashtun tribes people along the Afghanistan border.

The able and forthright US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, urgently called for at least 10,000 more troops. US and NATO forces in Afghanistan are increasingly on the defensive, hard pressed to defend vulnerable supply lines in spite of massive fire power and total control of the air.

Attacks on US and NATO convoys are even beginning at the port of Karachi. The prospect of the US spreading a war it can’t win in Afghanistan into Pakistan is military and political madness.

SNIP

By sharp contrast, I recently asked Karl Rove, President Bush’s former senior advisor, how the US could ever hope to win the war in Afghanistan. His eyes dancing with imperial hubris, Rove brightly replied, `More Predators(missile armed drones) and helicopters! Then we’ll go into Pakistan.’

Which reminded me of poet Hilaire Beloc’s wonderful line about 19th century British imperialism that I use in my new book, `American Raj:’ `Whatever happens/we have got/the Maxim gun* /and they have not.’

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20971.htm

[JohnyCanuck]

1. KICK N/T

[Disturbed]

5. Afghanistan has always been about the Pipeline.

The US & NATO are losing this War on the Afghan people. Most Afghans probably aren't pleased with the Taliban or al Q but they are even more displeased with the Imperialist West for occupying their Country.

Karazi, a former Unical Exec, is merely a US Puppet that most Afgahns have not little respect for or loyalty to.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Yup: The Taliban were in power for five years before 2001--

aided and abetted by the CIA, which preferred them to the other Mujahedin factions.

[magellan]

3. Yes, this is why we wanted the Soviets out of there

So badly that we trained and armed the mujahideen to fight a proxy war for us.

And that worked out so well for us....

[alfredo]

4. When 911 happened, my first thought it was a business deal gone

terribly wrong.

[leftofthedial]

6. it is about control of the territory for the pipeline

and about control of the poppy crop.

[JohnyCanuck]

7. US/Britain plan for rural development under the occupation.

Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time
By CRAIG MURRAY (a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan)

SNIP

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

SNIP

That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure. Nobody has denied the sincerity of the Taliban's crazy religious zeal, and they were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war.

That is about the only good thing you can say about the Taliban; there are plenty of very bad things to say about them. But their suppression of the opium trade and the drug barons is undeniable fact.

SNIP

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government ? the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-469983/Britain-protecting-biggest-heroin-crop-time.html

[conspirator]

8. And also some CIA drug dealing. They want more control over the poppy fields nt

[JohnyCanuck]

9. kick n/t

[JohnyCanuck]

10. Tomgram: Anand Gopal Asks, Who Rules Afghanistan?

The Surge That Failed: Afghanistan under the Bombs

By Anand Gopal

A bit past midnight on a balmy night in late August, Hedayatullah awoke to a deafening blast. He stumbled out of bed and heard angry voices drawing closer. Suddenly, his bedroom doors banged open and dozens of silhouetted figures burst in, some shouting in a strange language.

The intruders blindfolded Hedayatullah and, screaming with fury, forced him to the ground. An Afghan voice told him not to move or speak, or he would be killed. He listened for sounds from the next room, where his brother Noorullah slept with his family. He could hear his nephew, eight months old, crying hysterically. Then came the sound of an automatic rifle, after which his nephew fell silent.

The rest of the family -- 18 people in all, including aunts, uncles, and cousins -- was herded outside into the darkness. The Afghan voice explained to Hedayatullah's terrified mother, "We are the Afghan National Army, here to accompany the American military. The Americans have killed one of your sons and his two children. They also shot his wife and they're taking her to the hospital."

"Why?" Hedayatullah's mother stammered.

"There is no why," the soldier replied. When she heard this, she started screaming, slamming her fists into her chest in anguish. The Afghan soldiers left her and loaded Hedayatullah and his cousin into the back of a military van, after which they drove off with an American convoy into the black of night.

The next day, the Afghan forces released Hedayatullah and his cousin, calling the whole raid a mistake. However, Noorullah's wife, months pregnant, never came home: She died on the way to the hospital.


SNIP

One day, as Zubair was walking home, he noticed that the carpet factory near his house in the southern province of Ghazni was silent. That's strange, he thought, because he could usually hear the din of spinning looms as he approached. As he rounded the corner, he saw a crowd of people, villagers and factory workers, gathered around his destroyed house. An American bomb had flattened it into a pancake of cement blocks and pulverized bricks. He ran toward the scene. It was only when he shoved his way through the crowd and up to the wreckage that he actually saw it -- his mother's severed head lying amid mangled furniture.

He didn't scream. Instead, the sight induced a sort of catatonia; he picked up the head, cradled it in his arms, and started walking aimlessly. He carried on like this for days, until tribal elders pried the head from his hands and convinced him to deal with his loss more constructively. He decided he would get revenge by becoming a suicide bomber and inflicting a loss on some American family as painful as the one he had just suffered.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/17797

[Supersedeas]

11. the Oligarchy will get their Oil Profits by hook or by thief of elections