Quote:
Originally Posted by Michaelangelica
Are we in Afghanistan so USA multinationals can put an oil/gas pipeline though it?
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YES!
Watch Fahrenheit 9/11 (again if you've already seen it).
Plans were developed long ago to capitalize on the vast natural gas resources in the Caspian Sea. To do this, a pipeline would have to pass through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in order to bypass Iran, and be pumped into India.
In 1997, a senior delegation of the Taliban was invited to Houston, TX to meet with Unocal officials in an effort to convince them that it would be in their interests to allow the pipeline project to go through their territory. (
edit: According to Wiki, the Taliban signed an agreement in January 1998 in favor of CentGas, but by December, the deal broke up and Unocal withdrew from the consortium)
After our invasion in 2001, Hamid Karzai, allegedly a former consultant with Unocal, was named interim leader of Afghanistan once the Taliban were routed, and his first order of business was to sign the agreement that allowed the pipline project to commence.
.....and we were off to Iraq.
AlterNet: War on Iraq: From Afghanistan to Iraq: Connecting the Dots with Oil
Currently in Iraq, we are awaiting their passage of the new "Hydrocarbon Law" which contains language relating to PSAs (
Production Sharing Agreements) that would give the major US and UK oil corporations control of approximately 75% of Iraqs oil development, production and distribution over the next 30 years. The law is stalling in the Iraqi congress over concerns that they are giving too much control over to the Westerners. Once this agreement is in place, I would expect our role in Iraq to begin to change. But I don't think we're going anywhere any time soon. Our primary interest is to protect those resources.
Crude Designs: The Rip-Off of Iraq’s Oil Wealth - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum
Those of you who still think our involvement in the Middle East has anything to do with fighting terrorism are easy fodder for the wolves in sheep's clothing. If anything, we are confirming the fears of the radical Islamists and providing a cause for recruitment of more terrorists. As long as we have our hands on the oil and gas, we don't really care.
