More than US$ 3 trillion in rare earths and precious metals under Taliban feet
There's gold in that war!
Geologists working with the Pentagon claim to have discovered $1 trillion worth of precious and base metal deposits in Afghanistan.
U.S. and Afghan officials are hopeful that these mineral deposits will convert the war-torn country into a global mining giant, fundamentally altering the economy of Afghanistan and perhaps the war itself.
so now youre extending afghanistans strategic importance for the US to Russia, China and Pakistan? I don't need to check out a map.. Ive know where everything is for many years now.
so your pledge of allegiance and the fact that the words in god we trust printed on your money means nothing?
I'd consider it a key piece in the game of R.I.S.K. It's becoming less of a key piece as time goes on and technology advances. Scram Jets and carrier based drones will eliminate the need for foreign bases.
Using the term "god" in the pledge in public places can get you fired or suspended nowadays. Any sign of religion in public places will get you sued. Money gets a pass due to the amount of money it would take to redo the entire US currency circulation. My guess is that the “pass” has it’s days numbered.
Where does that happen that you can't say the pledge as it is currently written? We say the pledge and sing the national anthem at school every day and have a 'moment of silence'. No one is getting fired, suspended, or sued. Although, I really think the role of religion is far more subtle in that it informs most Americans value system and beliefs about our nation as a whole. Most people believe that we were founded as a Christian nation and that most, if not all, our founding fathers were religious fundamentalists in the same vein that people are today. I think it is that belief about our origins and our puritan 'work ethic', amongst other characteristics, that still brands us as a religious nation regardless of whether people attend church on a regular basis.
Are we getting something out of this all-encompassing trip?
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
More than US$ 3 trillion in rare earths and precious metals under Taliban feet
There's gold in that war!
Geologists working with the Pentagon claim to have discovered $1 trillion worth of precious and base metal deposits in Afghanistan.
U.S. and Afghan officials are hopeful that these mineral deposits will convert the war-torn country into a global mining giant, fundamentally altering the economy of Afghanistan and perhaps the war itself.
You tend to take broad strokes of information and make them definitive fact as it benefits your opinion. i.e. Reagan killed all those South Americans, not the South Americans who were killing the South Americans.
The Reagan administration funded, trained, and publicly defended those death squads. They also supplied them with the weapons and helicopters needed to carry out the genocide.
They were as guilty as those doing the actual killing. And if you can't see that then we have nothing more to discuss.
Did the Afghans offer to hand over Bin Laden if provided with evidence of his guilt, or didn't they? This has nothing to do with opinions.
Over three years and on as many continents, U.S. officials met in public and secret at least 20 times with Taliban representatives to discuss ways the regime could bring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice.
Talks continued until just days before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Taliban representatives repeatedly suggested they would hand over bin Laden if their conditions were met, sources close to the discussions said.
Throughout the years, however, State Department officials refused to soften their demand that bin Laden face trial in the U.S. justice system. It also remained murky whether the Taliban envoys, representing at least one division of the fractious Islamic movement, could actually deliver on their promises.
The exchanges lie at the heart of a long and largely untold history of diplomatic efforts between the State Department and Afghanistan's ruling regime that paralleled covert CIA actions to take bin Laden. In the end, both diplomatic and covert efforts proved fruitless.
In interviews, U.S. participants and sources close to the Taliban discussed the exchanges in detail and debated whether the State Department should have been more flexible in its hard-line stance. Earlier this month, President Bush summarily rejected another Taliban offer to give up bin Laden to a neutral third country. "We know he's guilty. Turn him over," Bush said.
Some Afghan experts argue that throughout the negotiations, the United States never recognized the Taliban need for aabroh, the Pashtu word for "face-saving formula." Officials never found a way to ease the Taliban's fear of embarrassment if it turned over a fellow Muslim to an "infidel" Western power.
"We were not serious about the whole thing, not only this administration but the previous one," said Richard Hrair Dekmejian, an expert in Islamic fundamentalism and author at the University of Southern California. "We did not engage these people creatively. There were missed opportunities."
U.S. officials struggled to communicate with Muslim clerics unfamiliar with modern diplomacy and distrustful of the Western world, and they failed to take advantage of fractures in the Taliban leadership.
"We never heard what they were trying to say," said Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief who oversaw U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up."
State Department officials assert that despite hours of talks and proposals that were infuriatingly vague, the Afghan rulers never truly intended to give up bin Laden.
U.S. negotiators started out "very, very patient," one official said. But over the course of many meetings, the envoys "lost all patience with them because they kept saying they would do something and they did exactly nothing."
The meetings took place in Tashkent, Kandahar, Islamabad, Bonn, New York and Washington. There were surprise satellite calls, one of which led to a 40-minute chat between a mid-level State Department bureaucrat and the Taliban's supreme leader, Mohammad Omar. There was a surprise visit to Washington, made by a Taliban envoy bearing a gift carpet for Bush.
The diplomatic effort to snare bin Laden began as early as 1996, when officials devised a plan to use back channels to Sudan, one of seven countries on the U.S. list of terrorist-supporting states. Under the plan, bin Laden would be arrested in Khartoum and extradited to Saudi Arabia, which would turn him over to the United States.
But the United States could not persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and Sudan instead expelled him to Afghanistan in May 1996 -- a few months before the Taliban seized power in Kabul.
The Clinton administration did not begin seriously pressing the Taliban for bin Laden's expulsion until the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured 4,600.
The bombings were "a seminal moment," changing Washington's view of the Taliban, an administration official said. The attacks convinced U.S. policymakers that Omar was no longer simply interested in conquering Afghanistan, but that his protection was allowing bin Laden, a longtime friend, to engage in terrorist ventures abroad.
U.S. officials launched a two-pronged policy to pressure the Taliban into handing over bin Laden. On the one hand, the United States used the United Nations and the threat of sanctions. On the other, it began a hard-nosed dialogue.
Within days of the embassy bombings, State Department officer Michael Malinowski began telephoning Taliban officials. On one occasion, Malinowski, lounging on the deck of his Washington home, spoke by telephone with Omar.
"I would say, 'Hey, give up bin Laden,' and they would say, 'No. . . . Show us the evidence,' " Malinowski said. Taliban leaders argued they could not expel a guest, and Malinowski responded, "It is not all right if this visitor goes up to the roof of your house and shoots his gun at his neighbors."
On Feb. 3, 1999, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. Inderfurth, the Clinton administration's point man for talks with the Taliban, and Michael Sheehan, State Department counterterrorism chief, went to Islamabad to deliver a stern message to the Taliban's deputy foreign minister, Abdul Jalil: The United States henceforth would hold the Taliban responsible for any terrorist act by bin Laden.
By that time, bin Laden had been indicted for his alleged role in the embassy bombings. The officials reviewed the indictment in detail with the Taliban and offered to provide more evidence if the Taliban sent a delegation to New York. The Taliban did not do so.
Immediately after the U.S. warning, Taliban security forces took bin Laden from his Kandahar compound and spirited him away to a remote site, according to media reports at the time. They also seized his satellite communications and barred him from contact with the media.
Publicly, the Taliban said they no longer knew where he was. Inderfurth now says the United States interpreted such statements "as an effort to evade their responsibility to turn him over."
Others, however, say the cryptic statements should have been interpreted differently. Bearden, for example, believes the Taliban more than once set up bin Laden for capture by the United States and communicated its intent by saying he was lost.
"Every time the Afghans said, 'He's lost again,' they are saying something. They are saying, 'He's no longer under our protection,' " Bearden said. "They thought they were signaling us subtly, and we don't do signals."
U.N. pressure steadily mounted. In October 1999, a Security Council resolution demanded the Taliban turn over bin Laden to "appropriate authorities" but left open the possibility he could be tried somewhere besides a U.S. court.
In response, the Taliban proposed bringing bin Laden to justice, either in Afghanistan or another Muslim country.
One Taliban proposal suggested bin Laden be turned over to a panel of three Islamic jurists, one each chosen by Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
When the United States rejected that proposal, the Taliban countered that it would settle for only one Islamic jurist on such a panel, a source close to the Taliban leadership said.
Taliban leaders also kept demanding the United States provide more evidence of bin Laden's terrorist activities.
"It became clear that the call for more evidence was more a delaying tactic than a sincere effort to solve the bin Laden issue," Inderfurth said.
Throughout 1999 and 2000, Inderfurth, Sheehan and Thomas R. Pickering, then undersecretary of state, continued meeting in Washington, Islamabad, New York and Bonn to review evidence against bin Laden. They warned of war if there were another terrorist attack.
"We saw a continuing effort to evade, deny and obfuscate," Inderfurth said. "They had no interest in an international panel, really. Their only intention was not to hand bin Laden over."
Phyllis E. Oakley, head of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the late 1990s, said her bureau concluded Omar would never give up bin Laden.
Last March, Rahmatullah Hashimi, a 24-year-old Taliban envoy, arrived in Washington on a surprise visit, meeting with reporters, middle-ranking State Department bureaucrats and private Afghanistan experts. He carried a gift carpet and a letter from Omar, both meant for President Bush.
Hashimi said he had come with a new offer, but U.S. officials now dismiss his visit as just another feint. They say Hashimi simply wanted to know whether the new administration had a fresh idea for breaking the deadlock.
Yet the two sides kept meeting, mostly in Islamabad. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca saw Taliban ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef there in early August, and U.S. embassy officials held secret talks with Taliban security chief Hameed Rasoli. The Taliban invited a U.S. delegation to Kandahar, but the United States refused unless a solution for handing over bin Laden was first reached, a source close to the Taliban said.
Even after Sept. 11, as U.S. aircraft carriers and warplanes rushed toward Afghanistan, the Taliban's mysterious maneuvering continued.
Bearden, the former CIA administrator, picked up his phone in Reston in early October and dialed a satellite number in Kandahar. Hashimi answered, still full of optimism that Saudi clerics and an upcoming conference of Islamic nations would give their blessing to Bush's demand that they "cough him up."
"There was a 50-50 chance something could happen," Hashimi told Bearden, "if the Saudis stepped in."
Five days later, bin Laden remained at large and the United States began pummeling Kandahar and other Taliban strongholds.
"I have no doubts they wanted to get rid of him. He was a pain in the neck," Bearden said of bin Ladenu. "It never clicked."
Staff writers Gilbert M. Gaul, Mary Pat Flaherty and James V. Grimaldi and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
The Taliban had chances before 9/11 to see the evidence against him and they declined to see it so why would you expect the US to cater to any demands they requested after 9/11?
So stealing another peoples land and erecting Jewish-only settlements on it doesn't constitute ethnic cleansing? I suggest you check the definition of 'ethnic cleansing'.
Ethnic cleansing usually involves attempts to remove physical and cultural evidence of the targeted group in the territory through the destruction of homes, social centers, farms, and infrastructure, and by the desecration of monuments, cemeteries, and places of worship.
Hmmm. Appears you got me there.
But I guess this defintion justifies the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.
no... the US needs no justification for occupation as they tend to not give a shit... besides afghanistan is a strategic asset. israels justification is based on religion and is therefore, bullshit... as religion was made up by men. it holds no water cause it isn't much more than myth. the west kowtows to them because of some sort of misguided guilt.
That is completely backwards. Afghanistan is in no way a strategic asset for the US. It is a dirt poor country with no strategic natural resources. The only strategic reason for the US being there that makes any sort of sense is to deny Al Qaida the use of the country as a safe haven, except we've already accomplished that and maintaining the status quo in that regard (given out penchant for drone strikes) doesn't require the US army to be in-country in force.
The West Bank, on the other hand, has immense strategic importance to Israel: it constitutes the high ground directly above the coastal plain, which is only 9 miles wide at its narrowest, where the majority of Israel's population is situated, and which is home to most of the economic drivers of the country; the West Bank also contains strategic water resources, and the jordan river valley acts as a strategic buffer against invasion from the east. Not saying that any of this justifies the occupation (which I'm vehemently against), but you're just flat wrong on the question of strategic significance.
You're also not quite right about the role of religion in all this - the Israeli governments that initiated the occupation were thoroughly secular. They were willing to coopt messianic ferver to "create facts on the ground," but the strategic concerns outlined above were their primary motivation. Religion has come to be a larger factor as the settlers have become a more powerful political force, but I still think it's largely a complicating distraction. At the end of the day I think the majority of Israelis, and the Israeli government, are concerned with strategic calculations, not religion.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
SIN EATERS--We take the moral excrement we find in this equation and we bury it down deep inside of us so that the rest of our case can stay pure. That is the job. We are morally indefensible and absolutely necessary.
The war in Afghanistan involves several factors that can’t be overlooked and the bulk of them DO have to do with energy resources. As was mentioned previously, the country holds up to 3 trillion dollars worth of untapped natural resources….that is the prize at the end of the rainbow. But will likely remain as such for decades to come as the ‘graveyard of empires’ will probably continue to be untamed…..
Probably the most important factor in the war is Afghanistan’s geographic location – it is essential as a pipeline partner to bring natural gas from Central asia (Turkmenistan in particular) to Pakistan, India, and China. These plans have been on the table for decades. The TAPI pipeline route excludes Russia and Iran from any control or influence over these natural gas reserves – a HUGE deal in geopolitics. So huge in fact that Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a book about it (The Grand Chessboard)….Brzezinski is the founder of the Trilateral Commission and a key architect of US foreign policy since the Carter admin (when the last major conflict in Afghanistan occurred)....he has served as a FP consultant to the current admin. (as an aside, some say Zbig began grooming Obama when they were both at Columbia University)….
Zbig claims that Central Asia is the key to global dominance as it holds the majority of the worlds population and resources. So it follows that controlling resource distribution is the key to controlling Central Asia….and Afghanistan is the only viable route to controlling those resources without allowing other regional powers (read: Iran and Russia) access to them. Remember the much-hyped 1997 meeting between the Taliban and Unocal in the US, when Rummy met with them? That was to talk pipelines. This has been going on for decades. US companies were still in talks wih the Taliban right up until 9/11 (at which point it became more convenient to try to force the issue).
The TAPI project is valued at 8 billion and the work will be done privately. In other words, the massive international (but usually US/UK based) energy and engineering firms that wield such massive lobby power in US and world politics see an 8 billion dollar paycheque on the horizon – you think they have no interest in Afghanistan?……8 billion in pork will cause a bit of lobbying, no?
The poppy production mentioned earlier is not an insignificant factor. The Taliban had virtually put a stop to it. If you believe that the CIA is involved in the drug trade (which ample evidence proves), and you realize that Afghanistan, since the invasion, has become the source of the vast majority of the world’s poppy production, you have to assume the CIA used their influence to push for military involvement in Afghanistan. It’s an unaccountable source of income for the black ops employed the world over.
To try to frame Afghanistan as insignificant geopolitically is a serious misstep if you're looking prove or disprove reasons for war..
I'm sorry, but the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan because the regime there was harboring the terrorist network that had just spectacularly murdered 3,000 Americans. They stayed because, for lack of a better metaphor, having broke the country they felt it was their responsibility to put it back together, and they misguidedly thought that they could nurture a stable democratic state there. All this about natural resources seems like blatantly post hoc attempts to paint Afghanistan as a resource-driven imperial adventure (further belied by the fact that the US is winding down its military involvement in the country). As for the CIA and narcotics trafficking, that's nothing more than wild conspiracy theories, for which no proof whatsoever has been adduced. The argument you've given is basically 1) everyone knows that the CIA has been involved in the narcotics trade 2) Afghanistan has become a center of the narcotics trade after the US invasion 3) therefore the CIA MUST be involved, and not only that, but this was a secret nefarious reason for the invasion! There are no logical connections there, nevermind actual proof. The facts actually tell the opposite story - poppy production has largely been used and (forcibly, in many instances) encouraged by the Taliban and local warlords as a source of funding for anti-US military activity, and the US, rather than encouraging this production, has spent enormous sums trying to combat it (which is hardly indicative of a CIA plot to exploit Afghan poppy production).
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,700
so now youre extending afghanistans strategic importance for the US to Russia, China and Pakistan? I don't need to check out a map.. Ive know where everything is for many years now.
so your pledge of allegiance and the fact that the words in god we trust printed on your money means nothing?
I'd consider it a key piece in the game of R.I.S.K. It's becoming less of a key piece as time goes on and technology advances. Scram Jets and carrier based drones will eliminate the need for foreign bases.
Using the term "god" in the pledge in public places can get you fired or suspended nowadays. Any sign of religion in public places will get you sued. Money gets a pass due to the amount of money it would take to redo the entire US currency circulation. My guess is that the “pass” has it’s days numbered.
Where does that happen that you can't say the pledge as it is currently written? We say the pledge and sing the national anthem at school every day and have a 'moment of silence'. No one is getting fired, suspended, or sued. Although, I really think the role of religion is far more subtle in that it informs most Americans value system and beliefs about our nation as a whole. Most people believe that we were founded as a Christian nation and that most, if not all, our founding fathers were religious fundamentalists in the same vein that people are today. I think it is that belief about our origins and our puritan 'work ethic', amongst other characteristics, that still brands us as a religious nation regardless of whether people attend church on a regular basis.
Pledge of alligence was altered to add the words "under god" by Ike, I think, in the 50's.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,700
Fuck em. They can go it alone. Sick and tired of being whipping post becasue of their bullshit security actions.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
I'm sorry, but the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan because the regime there was harboring the terrorist network that had just spectacularly murdered 3,000 Americans.
Except that the plans to invade were ready to go well before 9/11.
So you are willing to completely overlook the fact that one of America’s leading foreign policy planners wrote a book detailing the need to control resource flow from the Caspian region, and identified Afghanistan as the key to that plan, years before 9/11? You discount the fact that American businesses (with direct ties to the invading admin) were in negotiations with the Taliban over routes and royalties for said pipeline, right up until July 2001? I don’t see any mention of these business dealings in the article Bronx Bomber posted. I wonder why that is? Reading the official line on all of this, it would seem the US business community, the government, and the military are all completely separate entities, with no awareness of what the other is doing, and no revolving doors between the three sectors….right? :roll:
They stayed because, for lack of a better metaphor, having broke the country they felt it was their responsibility to put it back together, and they misguidedly thought that they could nurture a stable democratic state there. All this about natural resources seems like blatantly post hoc attempts to paint Afghanistan as a resource-driven imperial adventure (further belied by the fact that the US is winding down its military involvement in the country).
You paint america as surprised by the consequences of the invasion. I think the only consequence anyone cared about was the ouster of the regime and hopefully the assassination of bin laden. Remember all the chatter about 'exit strategy' a decade ago? Everyone knew there was no plan and no one in power gave a shit. So why are we now presented with all of these humanitarian, 'nurturing' excuses for war? women's rights? ....ok. The US wants strong, stable democracies in 'hostile' territory? Since when? Now THAT is some post hoc revisionism....almost as blatant as the grocery list of evolving reasons for invading Iraq. You cannot pretend that Bin Laden is the only US interest in Afghanistan. You just cant.
As for the CIA and narcotics trafficking, that's nothing more than wild conspiracy theories, for which no proof whatsoever has been adduced.
Right because whistle-blowing on the CIA is usually such a successful venture. Throw the negative connotation of 'conspiracy theory' at it all you like....if you actually believe that the CIA has never been involved in the drug trade, then have I got a bridge for you.....Do you honestly think there is nothing more to learn about the CIA's history with the trade? Air America? Iran/Contra? The drug violence in Mexico? Panama? Venezuela? The Clinton/Mena airport scandal? The CIA plane that crashed with 4 tons of coke on it a few years back? This is all conspiracy and because nothing was ever proven in court, it was all on the up n up, huh?
The argument you've given is basically 1) everyone knows that the CIA has been involved in the narcotics trade 2) Afghanistan has become a center of the narcotics trade after the US invasion 3) therefore the CIA MUST be involved, and not only that, but this was a secret nefarious reason for the invasion! There are no logical connections there, never mind actual proof.
Again, you want me to come up with proof of the CIA breaking the law...
1) yes, most people do accept this as fact. I can find you many quotes from CIA and DEA officials if you'd like
2)actually it became a center of the narcotics trade during the Soviet invasion, then again after the US one.
3)no logical connections between the CIA, with it's long history of drug trafficking allegations, and the country with the highest opiate production in the world? How can you say there is no connection to make, even absent proof? You don't think the biggest poppy producing nation in the world creates any corruption within american policy makers and enforcers?
The facts actually tell the opposite story - poppy production has largely been used and (forcibly, in many instances) encouraged by the Taliban and local warlords as a source of funding for anti-US military activity, and the US, rather than encouraging this production, has spent enormous sums trying to combat it (which is hardly indicative of a CIA plot to exploit Afghan poppy production).
Which facts are those? Not sure where you're getting your information from, but it is openly admitted US military policy to win 'hearts and minds' of afghan farmers by allowing poppy cultivation. The Taliban had virtually eliminated poppy production before the invasion. Theyre hoping for a record crop this year.
Anyway....sorry for contributing to the sidetracking of your thread Byrnzie (to be fair, you did too ).....
The West Bank, on the other hand, has immense strategic importance to Israel: it constitutes the high ground directly above the coastal plain, which is only 9 miles wide at its narrowest, where the majority of Israel's population is situated, and which is home to most of the economic drivers of the country; the West Bank also contains strategic water resources, and the jordan river valley acts as a strategic buffer against invasion from the east. Not saying that any of this justifies the occupation (which I'm vehemently against), but you're just flat wrong on the question of strategic significance.
I thought the occupation was about security against palestinians? All of this sounds like another one of those resource-driven imperial adventures/conspiracy theories. Glad to hear you're against the occupation, anyway.
The story in the OP is another obvious case of true intentions showing. Israel has no interest in peace, nor a two-state solution.
I'm sorry, but the U.S. went to war in Afghanistan because the regime there was harboring the terrorist network that had just spectacularly murdered 3,000 Americans.
If you believe that, then you'll believe anything.
Do also you believe that the U.S went into Iraq because the Iraqi's had Weapons of Mass Destruction that could hit London within 45 minutes?
All this about natural resources seems like blatantly post hoc attempts to paint Afghanistan as a resource-driven imperial adventure
Of course, because Afghanistan has never been of any strategic importance for the imperial powers, right? Which is why that country has been the target of outside interference for at least the past 200 years.
I will never understand the hate towards Israel on this forum.
You think people should be ok with Apartheid and ethnic cleansing then?
Anyway, there's a difference between opposing and criticising a countries governments policies, and hating a country. But then I'm sure you know that already, right?
Have you ever been to the region? Israel,te West Bank, or gaza?
I will never understand the hate towards Israel on this forum.
You think people should be ok with Apartheid and ethnic cleansing then?
Anyway, there's a difference between opposing and criticising a countries governments policies, and hating a country. But then I'm sure you know that already, right?
Have you ever been to the region? Israel,te West Bank, or gaza?
No, and I never visited Apartheid South Africa either. Did you?
This is great. The hubris of thinking that you know all there is to know about the situation, so that actually being there and experiencing life in Israel/Palestine yourself wouldn't teach you anything. You really are a piece of work B.
you couldn't swing if you were hangin' from a palm tree in a hurricane
This is great. The hubris of thinking that you know all there is to know about the situation, so that actually being there and experiencing life in Israel/Palestine yourself wouldn't teach you anything. You really are a piece of work B.
You really need to climb down off of that smug high-horse and quit the personal insults.
And I didn't say that visiting Israel and Palestine wouldn't teach me anything. I responded to a poster who appeared to say that visiting Israel and an occupied area of the West Bank would help me gain perspective. How does visiting one side of the equation help one gain perspective?
That is your explanation from a pic (that could be taken anywhere), depicting a situation explained by many causes (feel free to create any other caption), pulled by a third party of Facebook and later rehashed on a blog.
This is great. The hubris of thinking that you know all there is to know about the situation, so that actually being there and experiencing life in Israel/Palestine yourself wouldn't teach you anything. You really are a piece of work B.
You really need to climb down off of that smug high-horse and quit the personal insults.
And I didn't say that visiting Israel and Palestine wouldn't teach me anything. I responded to a poster who appeared to say that visiting Israel and an occupied area of the West Bank would help me gain perspective. How does visiting one side of the equation help one gain perspective?
Thanks. And I appreciate your honesty. I can't tell you how it's going to change your experience. From my life experience, first hand knowledge builds opinion and perspective. Our senses are pretty amazing...
That being said, you are undeniably the most vocal poster on this subject. I find it interesting that you have gained your experience from cyber-stine.
That being said, you are undeniably the most vocal poster on this subject. I find it interesting that you have gained your experience from cyber-stine.
That, and reading books, and watching documentaries, and talking with people, attending demonstrations, and corresponding on the subject with my local MP in England.
Comments
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/More-than-US$-3-trillion-in-rare-earths-and-precious-metals-under-Taliban-feet-20817.html
More than US$ 3 trillion in rare earths and precious metals under Taliban feet
There's gold in that war!
Geologists working with the Pentagon claim to have discovered $1 trillion worth of precious and base metal deposits in Afghanistan.
U.S. and Afghan officials are hopeful that these mineral deposits will convert the war-torn country into a global mining giant, fundamentally altering the economy of Afghanistan and perhaps the war itself.
http://www.wealthdaily.com/articles/afghanistan-mineral-discovery-a-1-trillion-find/2553
Where does that happen that you can't say the pledge as it is currently written? We say the pledge and sing the national anthem at school every day and have a 'moment of silence'. No one is getting fired, suspended, or sued. Although, I really think the role of religion is far more subtle in that it informs most Americans value system and beliefs about our nation as a whole. Most people believe that we were founded as a Christian nation and that most, if not all, our founding fathers were religious fundamentalists in the same vein that people are today. I think it is that belief about our origins and our puritan 'work ethic', amongst other characteristics, that still brands us as a religious nation regardless of whether people attend church on a regular basis.
Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
They would be there already.
shameful.
the fact that the american government's policy is to support this kind of rogue behavior is an embarrassment.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
The Reagan administration funded, trained, and publicly defended those death squads. They also supplied them with the weapons and helicopters needed to carry out the genocide.
They were as guilty as those doing the actual killing. And if you can't see that then we have nothing more to discuss.
And you accuse me of burying my head in the sand?
Did the Afghans offer to hand over Bin Laden if provided with evidence of his guilt, or didn't they? This has nothing to do with opinions.
Over three years and on as many continents, U.S. officials met in public and secret at least 20 times with Taliban representatives to discuss ways the regime could bring suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden to justice.
Talks continued until just days before the Sept. 11 attacks, and Taliban representatives repeatedly suggested they would hand over bin Laden if their conditions were met, sources close to the discussions said.
Throughout the years, however, State Department officials refused to soften their demand that bin Laden face trial in the U.S. justice system. It also remained murky whether the Taliban envoys, representing at least one division of the fractious Islamic movement, could actually deliver on their promises.
The exchanges lie at the heart of a long and largely untold history of diplomatic efforts between the State Department and Afghanistan's ruling regime that paralleled covert CIA actions to take bin Laden. In the end, both diplomatic and covert efforts proved fruitless.
In interviews, U.S. participants and sources close to the Taliban discussed the exchanges in detail and debated whether the State Department should have been more flexible in its hard-line stance. Earlier this month, President Bush summarily rejected another Taliban offer to give up bin Laden to a neutral third country. "We know he's guilty. Turn him over," Bush said.
Some Afghan experts argue that throughout the negotiations, the United States never recognized the Taliban need for aabroh, the Pashtu word for "face-saving formula." Officials never found a way to ease the Taliban's fear of embarrassment if it turned over a fellow Muslim to an "infidel" Western power.
"We were not serious about the whole thing, not only this administration but the previous one," said Richard Hrair Dekmejian, an expert in Islamic fundamentalism and author at the University of Southern California. "We did not engage these people creatively. There were missed opportunities."
U.S. officials struggled to communicate with Muslim clerics unfamiliar with modern diplomacy and distrustful of the Western world, and they failed to take advantage of fractures in the Taliban leadership.
"We never heard what they were trying to say," said Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief who oversaw U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up."
State Department officials assert that despite hours of talks and proposals that were infuriatingly vague, the Afghan rulers never truly intended to give up bin Laden.
U.S. negotiators started out "very, very patient," one official said. But over the course of many meetings, the envoys "lost all patience with them because they kept saying they would do something and they did exactly nothing."
The meetings took place in Tashkent, Kandahar, Islamabad, Bonn, New York and Washington. There were surprise satellite calls, one of which led to a 40-minute chat between a mid-level State Department bureaucrat and the Taliban's supreme leader, Mohammad Omar. There was a surprise visit to Washington, made by a Taliban envoy bearing a gift carpet for Bush.
The diplomatic effort to snare bin Laden began as early as 1996, when officials devised a plan to use back channels to Sudan, one of seven countries on the U.S. list of terrorist-supporting states. Under the plan, bin Laden would be arrested in Khartoum and extradited to Saudi Arabia, which would turn him over to the United States.
But the United States could not persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and Sudan instead expelled him to Afghanistan in May 1996 -- a few months before the Taliban seized power in Kabul.
The Clinton administration did not begin seriously pressing the Taliban for bin Laden's expulsion until the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans, and injured 4,600.
The bombings were "a seminal moment," changing Washington's view of the Taliban, an administration official said. The attacks convinced U.S. policymakers that Omar was no longer simply interested in conquering Afghanistan, but that his protection was allowing bin Laden, a longtime friend, to engage in terrorist ventures abroad.
U.S. officials launched a two-pronged policy to pressure the Taliban into handing over bin Laden. On the one hand, the United States used the United Nations and the threat of sanctions. On the other, it began a hard-nosed dialogue.
Within days of the embassy bombings, State Department officer Michael Malinowski began telephoning Taliban officials. On one occasion, Malinowski, lounging on the deck of his Washington home, spoke by telephone with Omar.
"I would say, 'Hey, give up bin Laden,' and they would say, 'No. . . . Show us the evidence,' " Malinowski said. Taliban leaders argued they could not expel a guest, and Malinowski responded, "It is not all right if this visitor goes up to the roof of your house and shoots his gun at his neighbors."
On Feb. 3, 1999, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. Inderfurth, the Clinton administration's point man for talks with the Taliban, and Michael Sheehan, State Department counterterrorism chief, went to Islamabad to deliver a stern message to the Taliban's deputy foreign minister, Abdul Jalil: The United States henceforth would hold the Taliban responsible for any terrorist act by bin Laden.
By that time, bin Laden had been indicted for his alleged role in the embassy bombings. The officials reviewed the indictment in detail with the Taliban and offered to provide more evidence if the Taliban sent a delegation to New York. The Taliban did not do so.
Immediately after the U.S. warning, Taliban security forces took bin Laden from his Kandahar compound and spirited him away to a remote site, according to media reports at the time. They also seized his satellite communications and barred him from contact with the media.
Publicly, the Taliban said they no longer knew where he was. Inderfurth now says the United States interpreted such statements "as an effort to evade their responsibility to turn him over."
Others, however, say the cryptic statements should have been interpreted differently. Bearden, for example, believes the Taliban more than once set up bin Laden for capture by the United States and communicated its intent by saying he was lost.
"Every time the Afghans said, 'He's lost again,' they are saying something. They are saying, 'He's no longer under our protection,' " Bearden said. "They thought they were signaling us subtly, and we don't do signals."
U.N. pressure steadily mounted. In October 1999, a Security Council resolution demanded the Taliban turn over bin Laden to "appropriate authorities" but left open the possibility he could be tried somewhere besides a U.S. court.
In response, the Taliban proposed bringing bin Laden to justice, either in Afghanistan or another Muslim country.
One Taliban proposal suggested bin Laden be turned over to a panel of three Islamic jurists, one each chosen by Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
When the United States rejected that proposal, the Taliban countered that it would settle for only one Islamic jurist on such a panel, a source close to the Taliban leadership said.
Taliban leaders also kept demanding the United States provide more evidence of bin Laden's terrorist activities.
"It became clear that the call for more evidence was more a delaying tactic than a sincere effort to solve the bin Laden issue," Inderfurth said.
Throughout 1999 and 2000, Inderfurth, Sheehan and Thomas R. Pickering, then undersecretary of state, continued meeting in Washington, Islamabad, New York and Bonn to review evidence against bin Laden. They warned of war if there were another terrorist attack.
"We saw a continuing effort to evade, deny and obfuscate," Inderfurth said. "They had no interest in an international panel, really. Their only intention was not to hand bin Laden over."
Phyllis E. Oakley, head of the State Department's intelligence bureau in the late 1990s, said her bureau concluded Omar would never give up bin Laden.
Last March, Rahmatullah Hashimi, a 24-year-old Taliban envoy, arrived in Washington on a surprise visit, meeting with reporters, middle-ranking State Department bureaucrats and private Afghanistan experts. He carried a gift carpet and a letter from Omar, both meant for President Bush.
Hashimi said he had come with a new offer, but U.S. officials now dismiss his visit as just another feint. They say Hashimi simply wanted to know whether the new administration had a fresh idea for breaking the deadlock.
Yet the two sides kept meeting, mostly in Islamabad. Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca saw Taliban ambassador Abdul Salam Zaeef there in early August, and U.S. embassy officials held secret talks with Taliban security chief Hameed Rasoli. The Taliban invited a U.S. delegation to Kandahar, but the United States refused unless a solution for handing over bin Laden was first reached, a source close to the Taliban said.
Even after Sept. 11, as U.S. aircraft carriers and warplanes rushed toward Afghanistan, the Taliban's mysterious maneuvering continued.
Bearden, the former CIA administrator, picked up his phone in Reston in early October and dialed a satellite number in Kandahar. Hashimi answered, still full of optimism that Saudi clerics and an upcoming conference of Islamic nations would give their blessing to Bush's demand that they "cough him up."
"There was a 50-50 chance something could happen," Hashimi told Bearden, "if the Saudis stepped in."
Five days later, bin Laden remained at large and the United States began pummeling Kandahar and other Taliban strongholds.
"I have no doubts they wanted to get rid of him. He was a pain in the neck," Bearden said of bin Ladenu. "It never clicked."
Staff writers Gilbert M. Gaul, Mary Pat Flaherty and James V. Grimaldi and researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
The Taliban had chances before 9/11 to see the evidence against him and they declined to see it so why would you expect the US to cater to any demands they requested after 9/11?
That is completely backwards. Afghanistan is in no way a strategic asset for the US. It is a dirt poor country with no strategic natural resources. The only strategic reason for the US being there that makes any sort of sense is to deny Al Qaida the use of the country as a safe haven, except we've already accomplished that and maintaining the status quo in that regard (given out penchant for drone strikes) doesn't require the US army to be in-country in force.
The West Bank, on the other hand, has immense strategic importance to Israel: it constitutes the high ground directly above the coastal plain, which is only 9 miles wide at its narrowest, where the majority of Israel's population is situated, and which is home to most of the economic drivers of the country; the West Bank also contains strategic water resources, and the jordan river valley acts as a strategic buffer against invasion from the east. Not saying that any of this justifies the occupation (which I'm vehemently against), but you're just flat wrong on the question of strategic significance.
You're also not quite right about the role of religion in all this - the Israeli governments that initiated the occupation were thoroughly secular. They were willing to coopt messianic ferver to "create facts on the ground," but the strategic concerns outlined above were their primary motivation. Religion has come to be a larger factor as the settlers have become a more powerful political force, but I still think it's largely a complicating distraction. At the end of the day I think the majority of Israelis, and the Israeli government, are concerned with strategic calculations, not religion.
What are you talking about?! No one disputed who was responsible. Bin Laden gleefully claimed credit for the attack on video.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world ... d=all&_r=0
By JAMES RISEN
Published: June 13, 2010
U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
Probably the most important factor in the war is Afghanistan’s geographic location – it is essential as a pipeline partner to bring natural gas from Central asia (Turkmenistan in particular) to Pakistan, India, and China. These plans have been on the table for decades. The TAPI pipeline route excludes Russia and Iran from any control or influence over these natural gas reserves – a HUGE deal in geopolitics. So huge in fact that Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a book about it (The Grand Chessboard)….Brzezinski is the founder of the Trilateral Commission and a key architect of US foreign policy since the Carter admin (when the last major conflict in Afghanistan occurred)....he has served as a FP consultant to the current admin. (as an aside, some say Zbig began grooming Obama when they were both at Columbia University)….
Zbig claims that Central Asia is the key to global dominance as it holds the majority of the worlds population and resources. So it follows that controlling resource distribution is the key to controlling Central Asia….and Afghanistan is the only viable route to controlling those resources without allowing other regional powers (read: Iran and Russia) access to them. Remember the much-hyped 1997 meeting between the Taliban and Unocal in the US, when Rummy met with them? That was to talk pipelines. This has been going on for decades. US companies were still in talks wih the Taliban right up until 9/11 (at which point it became more convenient to try to force the issue).
The TAPI project is valued at 8 billion and the work will be done privately. In other words, the massive international (but usually US/UK based) energy and engineering firms that wield such massive lobby power in US and world politics see an 8 billion dollar paycheque on the horizon – you think they have no interest in Afghanistan?……8 billion in pork will cause a bit of lobbying, no?
The poppy production mentioned earlier is not an insignificant factor. The Taliban had virtually put a stop to it. If you believe that the CIA is involved in the drug trade (which ample evidence proves), and you realize that Afghanistan, since the invasion, has become the source of the vast majority of the world’s poppy production, you have to assume the CIA used their influence to push for military involvement in Afghanistan. It’s an unaccountable source of income for the black ops employed the world over.
To try to frame Afghanistan as insignificant geopolitically is a serious misstep if you're looking prove or disprove reasons for war..
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
So you are willing to completely overlook the fact that one of America’s leading foreign policy planners wrote a book detailing the need to control resource flow from the Caspian region, and identified Afghanistan as the key to that plan, years before 9/11? You discount the fact that American businesses (with direct ties to the invading admin) were in negotiations with the Taliban over routes and royalties for said pipeline, right up until July 2001? I don’t see any mention of these business dealings in the article Bronx Bomber posted. I wonder why that is? Reading the official line on all of this, it would seem the US business community, the government, and the military are all completely separate entities, with no awareness of what the other is doing, and no revolving doors between the three sectors….right? :roll: You paint america as surprised by the consequences of the invasion. I think the only consequence anyone cared about was the ouster of the regime and hopefully the assassination of bin laden. Remember all the chatter about 'exit strategy' a decade ago? Everyone knew there was no plan and no one in power gave a shit. So why are we now presented with all of these humanitarian, 'nurturing' excuses for war? women's rights?
1) yes, most people do accept this as fact. I can find you many quotes from CIA and DEA officials if you'd like
2)actually it became a center of the narcotics trade during the Soviet invasion, then again after the US one.
3)no logical connections between the CIA, with it's long history of drug trafficking allegations, and the country with the highest opiate production in the world? How can you say there is no connection to make, even absent proof? You don't think the biggest poppy producing nation in the world creates any corruption within american policy makers and enforcers? Which facts are those? Not sure where you're getting your information from, but it is openly admitted US military policy to win 'hearts and minds' of afghan farmers by allowing poppy cultivation. The Taliban had virtually eliminated poppy production before the invasion. Theyre hoping for a record crop this year.
Anyway....sorry for contributing to the sidetracking of your thread Byrnzie (to be fair, you did too
I thought the occupation was about security against palestinians? All of this sounds like another one of those resource-driven imperial adventures/conspiracy theories. Glad to hear you're against the occupation, anyway.
The story in the OP is another obvious case of true intentions showing. Israel has no interest in peace, nor a two-state solution.
If you believe that, then you'll believe anything.
Do also you believe that the U.S went into Iraq because the Iraqi's had Weapons of Mass Destruction that could hit London within 45 minutes?
Of course, because Afghanistan has never been of any strategic importance for the imperial powers, right? Which is why that country has been the target of outside interference for at least the past 200 years.
Have you ever been to the region? Israel,te West Bank, or gaza?
2013- Brooklyn2, Philly1, Philly2, NOLA
No, and I never visited Apartheid South Africa either. Did you?
Been to Israel/west bank in 91, South africa in 96, and Israel again in 06 and 12. I think you would gain perspective if you traveled to those areas.
2013- Brooklyn2, Philly1, Philly2, NOLA
In what way?
Did you visit a settlement in the West Bank, or did you travel to the Palestinian side?
http://angryarab.net/2013/05/23/demolit ... jerusalem/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v-ShaFpiVE
You really need to climb down off of that smug high-horse and quit the personal insults.
And I didn't say that visiting Israel and Palestine wouldn't teach me anything. I responded to a poster who appeared to say that visiting Israel and an occupied area of the West Bank would help me gain perspective. How does visiting one side of the equation help one gain perspective?
That is your explanation from a pic (that could be taken anywhere), depicting a situation explained by many causes (feel free to create any other caption), pulled by a third party of Facebook and later rehashed on a blog.
Sweet!
2013- Brooklyn2, Philly1, Philly2, NOLA
Thanks. And I appreciate your honesty. I can't tell you how it's going to change your experience. From my life experience, first hand knowledge builds opinion and perspective. Our senses are pretty amazing...
That being said, you are undeniably the most vocal poster on this subject. I find it interesting that you have gained your experience from cyber-stine.
2013- Brooklyn2, Philly1, Philly2, NOLA
That, and reading books, and watching documentaries, and talking with people, attending demonstrations, and corresponding on the subject with my local MP in England.