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billions !
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
afghanistan were promised that the world would not walk away this time. so 24 countries agreed a total aid package £4 . 5 billion
to rebuild this desperate place. a lot of money ?
fucking peanuts if we are to believe that saddam has just payed
col gaddafi 3 and a 1/2 billion for somewhere his auntie phyllis can escape to when he loses. my mind doesn't deal with billions. the latest figure for the U.K's ilegal drug trade is now 20 billion !
no wonder i get confused...
to rebuild this desperate place. a lot of money ?
fucking peanuts if we are to believe that saddam has just payed
col gaddafi 3 and a 1/2 billion for somewhere his auntie phyllis can escape to when he loses. my mind doesn't deal with billions. the latest figure for the U.K's ilegal drug trade is now 20 billion !
no wonder i get confused...
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Comments
This is why in the end all Bush's rhetoric and claims of "victories" will be short-lived indeed and will only pave the way for increased future instability and insecurity both in the region and globally.
As long as his buddies in the oil industry get their grubby control of foreign oil reserves though he undoubtedly doesn't give a damn what happens to the poor sods we were lead to believe we were helping on the path to a brighter future of freedom and democracy.
That said, im sure the Warlords who are now reasserting regional control and getting rich again on poppy production (and their buyers in the West) are eternally grateful to Bush/Blair for having rid them of the Taliban.
I guess the politicians will now at least have more campaign material re: The War on Drugs at their disposal to further their bids for re-election. :rolleyes:
Or should the US foot the whole re-build of Afghanistan?
You should pay for what you break
In which case the Russians should be footing that majority of the bill, or even the Taliban. Perhaps we should also consider the decade of civil war and sugest that the Afghans rebuild themselves without help...
I didn't suggest that the US shouldn't help out - after all they are one of thr richest countries in the world. However, I do think that those Arab states who profess to support their Muslim brethern should be in a position to help their brethern financially...
1. Islam is not a cohesive entity, but extremely factious (as much so no doubt as "Christian" denominations are.
2. The arab states did not participate in the invasion of Afghanistan or the overthrow of the Taliban so are not immediately relevant to the promises made by the West (and yes, not just the US) to follow up with sufficient support to restore stability and speed the move to renewed self determination and prosperity.
3. The real underlying reason for the determination to invade Afghanistan (as much as with the obsession for regime change in Iraq) is access to previously inaccessible oil reserves ( a pipeline into central Asia in the case of Afghanistan).
Certainly in relation to the third point it was also convenient to satisfy the long running demand for an end to the oppression of females under the Taliban and to be shown to be "taking aggressive action" against Al Queda at the same time that further bolstered support for the Afghan invasion. However the greed factor has always been a prominent priority.
Given these facts, it is also a matter of principle that if we are prepared to ravage countries to play with our fancy toys of destruction (thereby pumping up our MIC political masters) in order to continue living fat and smug while the indigenous peoples have in most cases a subsistence level existence, then we must live up to our promises and give back with more than meager handouts, else we will find ourselves back in the same situation (or indeed worse) ona geo-political level in years to come.
The newest fantasy...
Stick to being a military man and following your orders like a good pitbull. Leave the intracacies of the political scene to those who have experience in that area.
when the soviets invaded Afghanistan, the C.I.A were already trying to deal with the issue of a pipline then. any of you old enough to remember the arguments in the guardian at the time ?
Greenhat just blatantly refuses to acknowledge any possible motivation for US policy beyond the surface headline rhetoric that he (and the general US public back home) is fed. But then not being of the political class, by his own admission, again its no surprise.
corruption? what corruption????
The relevance of that being????
If Islamic is factious, then just how do they feel about 'Christian' nations? Or are they just happy to take our money?
I don't dispute that there are differences but they are hardly more than the difference between Islam and Christianity...
Nope, they just provided the attackers of WTC. Or at least 15 of them came from Saudi Arabia. As did the 'architect' - OBL.
Still no level of responsibility there then.
You refer to it as the real reason and yet condemn Greenhat for his opinion, which has just as much validity as yours. But then coming from the person who thinks that the WTC was a Bush plot, I'm really not surprised.
I would be interested in finding out where these 'inaccessible' oil supplies are, as much as I was in finding out that the Al Qaeda terrorists used Afghanistan as a major training base...
Sorry, but I must have missed the moment when the oppression of females was a major motivating factor in the attacks on Afghanistan. I always thought that it was a useful bi-product and
was given as another example of what we in the west believed was wrong with the Taliban regime.
I really haven't seen any evidence to suggest that greed was a factor at all.
I did however, see footage of two planes flying into the WTC...
I really cannot believe you are so surface as to honestly believe Sept 11th was the only reason we invaded the country although it certainly provided the unquestioning public support Bush needed to take care of all the previous points I mentioned in relation to the various agendas at work there.
As for the inaccessible oil supplies, try researching the continued attempts of successive US administrations (right up to Dubyah's start in office) to "pay off" the Taliban regime in order to gain rights to build the pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to more complicit Pakistan and India and thus through to the Indian Ocean where it could be conveniently exported to our countries in the West.
http://www.iacenter.org/afghan_warcr.htm
http://www.iacenter.org/nowar_oil.htm
http://www.oz.net/~vvawai/sw/sw43/taliban.html
That should get you started if you really care to pick up some background in how important control of Afghanistan has been to the US for many many years before Sept. 11th.
(And one reason amongst many why the unanswered questions and inconsistencies of the events surrounding and on the day of Sept 11th are not truly answered by the generally accepted cover story, though we'll never know the whole truth behind it all either way now).
for an excellent timeline and many of the unanswered questions (again if you care to even bother) check out this:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/02_11_02_lucy.html
(and scroll down the left hand menu to "About Michael C. Ruppert" if you think its just some crackpot conspiracy theorist site. This guy is widely respected and a former LAPD narcotics officer with extensive background as a government watchdog)
Regardless of that, believe whatever you choose and which suits your comfort zone. Sometimes reality is far more sinister than what we are willing to accept, thats the benefit of plausible deniability.
Oh and by the way, a few last points:
1. The fact that some of the alleged hijackers were Saudi does not mean that their home country "provided" them, no more than America "provided" John Walker Lindh. Individuals make their own choices in life and must accept individual responsibility for them. to suggest otherwise is all too similar to the Bush mentality for you to advocate, MoK.
2. My contention isnt that 9/11 was necessarily a Bush plot, I doubt he has the wits to conceive something so dreadful and elaborate. There are plenty of other agencies within the government arena far more capable of pulling it off effectively, if in fact such was the case. I'm merely open to the possibility since it explains many of the inconsistencies of the cover story, as well as the sudden and continued empowerment of the previously flagging Bush administration immediately following 9/11 up to the present. People simply choose not to ask the standard question of any investigation, namely "who stood to benefit most?" (and who did?)
3. I never said the oppression of females was a major motivator, I said that it was a long running public demand to address one way or another.
4. OBL isnt Saudi, he's of Yemen origin.
A little research will do you good.
I expect you believe that our involvement in Somalia was over oil, don't you?
Ummm
I suggest you get a map and do a little analysis....there is plenty of oil in the world accessible without going through Afghanistan.
Mexico, Colombia, North Sea area, Alaska, Nigeria, Russia, Libya, Venezuela, China, Norway to name a few.
Perhaps you just forgot this....I can't think of how you would post such a bold statement without knowing this.
Its hardly worth the effort of replying to at all if that is the level of his willingness to examine matters before launching into counterattack. :rolleyes:
Like i said Greenhat, stick to your military duties and leave the geo-political activites to those of us with the background and experience.
No I'm not, I think that previous attacks by Al Qaeda may have been an influence too. NOting that the US attacked Afghanistan previously, under a different President who wasn't connected with the Oil Companies.
Thanks for that, do you know the meaning of the word "paranoid"?
Perhaps my perspective is slightly different but I cannot believe that the world is run by the oil companies to such an extent - which one of them is the cigarette smoking man?
Is it beyond the realm of belief that the attacks of Afghanistan were perfectly justified and that a side benefit (but not the motivator) was that the barrier to the oil pipeline would be removed.
I keep an open mind, on this and many other issues. Whilst you talk about "plausible deniability" have you considered that the denial may be correct and that a sense of paranoia about a political creed which you don't like affects your view?
Not what I meant, I'm actually suggesting something which may support your p.o.v, that in fact we are looking in the wrong place for the true AL Qaeda network. Funding from Saudi supports this too...
Thus implying that it was a Bush/Oil plot.
Ooh goody, someone else for us to target
Oh, we already have. Any oil there?
Wasn't speaking for the whole world. As I recall I was addressing the motivator behind US actions in the context of Afghanistan.
Hmm and under what administration did we attack Afghanistan previously? We did not invade Afghanistan prior to Dubyah's admin im afraid. previously we backed and trained the mujahadeen to do that task against the soviets.
Remember futher, we (the US) installed the Taliban originally thinking they would be our lapdogs. Fail once.. try again.
Yes, i do. which is why I pointed out that we will never be able to prove it either way. Nevertheless, Ive examined the cover story and the spin considerably and concluded that it falls considerably short of answering the all the questions surrounding 9/11 and does not link into the entire context of what America has been up to behind the scenes globally for a long time in the run up to that event.
But as I also said previously, believe what ever fits best into your worldview. I only asked you to consider the many inconsistencies and maintain your ability to question what the public is fed by the media.
Have you read what's on those websites?
They don't restrict things to Afghanistan...
This would be when Clinton dropped a couple of Cruise missiles...
and you will never get many of the answers. Like it or not there are somethings which we, the general public, should not have access to. I have deep suspicions about much of what goes on in the world, now I can rally against it, or I can accept that actually I am just a tiny insignificant cog in the world scheme of things.
Do you think that GWB even know all that is going on. Of course not. So what makes you think that anyone else does.
The impression that you give, as do the websites that you sent me to, is that there is an all seeing eye somewhere dictating world politics. Would that it were so...
Uh, Alessandro, perhaps you should do a quick check on your logical connectives. Greenhat's claim was that there is no source of oil that is inaccesible without going through Afghanistan. Tis is equivalent to
For all sources of oil on Earth, there is a route of access to that oil such that the route does not pass through Afghanistan.
So what you wrote was actually in support of Greenhat's claim, not against it.
Reread my statement. I said the exact same thing as you...actually I said that ALL oil in the world is accessible without going through Afghanistan.
Thank you for pointing out my oversight in this case. Nevertheless firing a few cruise missiles in reprisal for the embassy attacks is hardly comensurate with the full scale invasion and dislodgement of the ruling regime such as we did after 9/11. Since you so rightly pointed out that Clinton didnt have those oil interests, have you considered that that is one reason why we were attmpting to buy off the Taliban for authority to build the pipeline for so long, and why finally it provided an important factor in Dubyah's decision to invade? (since THIS administration does have big oil interests) or that since the US public would never have condoned a war for oil that Sept. 11th was a mightily convenient rallying point for giving Bush and his cronies the greenlight to get rid of the major obstacle in the way to US plans? Nevermind the fact that (as you might have learned from the links provided, the Bush administration was planning a war with Afghanistan even before Sept. 11th.
(undoubtedly you just cant believe that such intentions and plans could ever possibly have existed)
As for other possible routes of access to Turkmenistani oil reserves...
That may be Greenhat, but even so, it is irrelevant in terms of the pipeline which has been the focus of so much US effort to establish through Afghanistan from Turkmenistan and which was the point of this line of the discussion in the first.
What may or may not be possible is in this case a demonstration of your intention to dodge the issue with unrelated possibilities.
The history of what we have been up to there simply IS. Perhaps (to use your argument) you should try admitting reality for once even when it doesnt fit into your own political wishful thinking.
Of course, this new course of action may have occured becuase the first attempt proved unsuccessful. Had Clinton's attempt been a success WTC would probably not have happened.
That OBL stuck harder meant that a harder response was needed.
That Clinton didn't have any oil interests have you asked yourself why he was negotiating anyway?
How long had Bush been in power? Nine months?
Or are you suggesting that this was the first thing he did once in office, or that the oil companies have such excellent strategists that they can plan something like the strikes which took place, or that they had the contacts...unless of course they aslo infiltrated the CIA...(yes I know GBsnr was former CIA Director).
As I said the websites smack of paranoia, which detracts from their credibility. The internet is great for conspiracy theorists, you start a ball rolling and then pull together every tenuous link you can find...
I have no doubt that the oil companies would benefit from this move - as will many other US companies, in fact I'm surprised that you haven't suggested that Coca-Cola and McDonalds were in on the plot too...just think of all those new franchises
Once again you add something to what I wrote which i did not state. Nevertheless let me spell out to you the nature of government to be perfectly clear.
First off, the President is not the only agent for international negotiation, that is what the many depts and branches of the government are for. Now, within these branches and depts are officials who do not change (whilst the figureheads do) from administration to administration.
Now, given a train of consistency we arrive at a certain degree of continuity in our overall national policies and practices which are modifiable within a certain margin. Now, given that Unocal (as you might have noted from the links) has pursued this push for access to mid-Asian oil for some length of time and using differing methods to achieve their aims to no avail, it is perfectly understandable that it was only a matter of time until an administration condusive and "in bed" with such interests (i.e. the additional intent of Bush to screw up the Alaskan wildlife preserve for yet more oil sources) came along to take more aggressive steps to realise these aspirations.
Ask yourself this then MoK, why is it that one of the first things Bush did when he got into office was issue an executive order to the CIA to lay off pursuit of OBL. Mighty strange indeed for a President who subsequent to 9/11 wasted no time issuing the order to hunt him down. Now, you raise the matter of the prior embassy bombings which also figured largely in Bush's declaration of the evils for which OBL had to be put down. Funny then that those events which preceeded the Bush presidency were not an issue when he ordered a cessation in the CIA's ongoing efforts early in 2001.
Amongst other things that are too inconsistent to be accounted for by the cover story, this is what we would call a serious red flag.
Now you, like Greenhat, appear unwilling to concede that anything remotely smelling of US government complicity in 9/11 could even remotely be true. God, that would suggest the government was willing to go to any lengths to achieve its own personal agendas. That's certainly never happened before. :rolleyes:
Calling it paranoia is a convenient way of pretending that the status quo of general public perception is the whole truth and nothing but the truth whilst i can assure you that the machine of state conducts operations (miltarily or politically) which would leave mom and pop jones cold if it were broadcast on the evening news. Better to call anything that questions underlying agendas "conspiracy" so we dont have to look too deeply at what our governments are capable of.
That's fine, enjoy the warm comfort of unquestioning mediocrity. Not everyone who has seen the inside track of the political process shares that blinkered comfort.
Ehh, I should learn to read this language better.
Even when its a matter of record. lol. :rolleyes:
You know, if there were agents/agencies that were so good at doing things so secretely, so expertly...then they know who you are, don't they? And they know where you are, don't they? So why are you still alive? After all, they are all-seeing, all-knowing, and so evil... :rolleyes:
Just can never admit im right even when the facts are put in front of you. Nope, youd never succeed in the political arena thats for sure.
As for what the CIA might know about me, I certainly dont lose sleep over it. Freedom of speech and right of criticism are two things Ashcroft hasnt managed to rid America of quite yet, though im sure he's trying his darndest.
Note: Coming from one who has raised the point of OPSEC on numerous occasions, this is particularly humorous...
Hmm guess Military Intelligence, let alone the CIA, don't continually undertake operations of which the general public is kept blissfully ignorant. In fact, "Plausible Deniability" was a concept that arose out of covert military operations in the first place.
Or is Military Intelligence just a fantasy too? Its certainly an oxymoron!
You mean like The Bay of Pigs? Or the Phoenix Project?
The basic assumption to your way of thinking is that some organization can do all these terrible things deliberately and with forethought, actions which require the assistance and cooperation of hundreds, possibly thousands of people...and not one of them will say a word. Yeah, right.
The Bay of Pigs was not an operation conducted by the US military, it was ex-Batista Cuban insurgents promised backing by the US Government which never materialised.
So now you say that Military Intelligence undertakes no operations? Guess they just sit around twiddling their thumbs and wasting US tax dollars playing poker? lol.
Or perhaps they dont exist at all! ooooh maybe they are a figment of the combined military imagination.
Grow up and try admitting that your arguments are both pointless and insubstantial. Then perhaps your claim to living in the "real" world will have more credibility.