Paris Responds: Pt 2

TX: What's the deal about oil in the Caspian Sea? Where is the proof? It was more plausible when we dealt with the Persian Gulf war.

Paris: The Caspian Sea region has potentially the world's largest oil reserves (6 trillion dollars worth), likely making Central Asia the next Middle East. The problem is piping it out. Afghanistan occupies a strategic position between the Caspian and the markets of the Indian subcontinent and east Asia. It's prime territory for building pipelines, which is why the oil company Unocal -- as well as the U.S. government -- welcomed the Taliban's rise to power in 1996 as a promising source of "stability." And while this stability didn't materialize, people like Bush Jr. and the oil men around him have never given up on the tremendous profit possibilities that Central Asia offers.

Remember that both Bush and Vice President Cheney are wealthy oil men and Cheney's Haliburton Corporation will probably be building the multi-billion dollar oil pipeline across Afghanistan that will be needed to bring much of that oil to market. It is also important to be aware that Zalmay Khalilzad who is the US Envoy to Aghanistan was a Unocal advisor. (http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2002/01/113169.php). Therefore a forced conflict with people they already have no regard for was the perfect vehicle to enable them to set up shop with the U.S. population's explicit approval.

NEW YORK, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- After he signed an order allowing the use of military tribunals in terrorist cases, President George W. Bush insisted he alone should decide who goes before such a military court, his aides tell Newsweek. The tribunal document gives the government the power to try, sentence -- and even execute -- suspected foreign terrorists in secrecy, under special rules that would deny them constitutional rights and allow no chance to appeal. Bush's powers to form a military court came from a secret legal memorandum, which the U.S. Justice Department began drafting in the days after Sept. 11, Newsweek has learned. The memo allows Bush to invoke his broad wartime powers, since the U.S., they concluded, was in a state of "armed conflict." Bush used the memo as the legal basis for his order to bomb Afghanistan.

If that's not a dictator using his power for personal gain and the gain of corporate interests then I don't know what is. Now dig this:

WASHINGTON, D.C.: As the war winds down, the U.S. is eyeing Central Asia as a new colony. And as America projects its power across the region, it runs the risk of setting off a new cold war with Moscow. A few reasons why:

Big Oil is once again taking a hard look at prospects for building a pipeline carrying Caspian Sea oil across Afghanistan and down through Pakistan to ports on the Arabian Sea. "The large-scale projects aimed at building gas and oil pipelines linking the Caspian region with the attractive international market of the Arabian Sea may become the principal, if not the only, means to breathe a [new] life into Afghanistan,"

Martha Brill Olcott, a Carnegie Endowment scholar, told the Moscow paper Izvestia.

Turkmenistan, which used to be part of the Soviet Union and has huge natural gas deposits, is key to controlling the region. In late October, Turkmenistan's president, Saparmurat Niyazov, sent a letter to the UN leaders advocating construction of a pipeline bringing Turkmen gas across Afghan territory to Pakistan's Arabian Sea ports. The Far Eastern Economic Review reports Niyazov claimed the pipeline "will help rebuild this country [Afghanistan], normalize peaceful life and work of the Afghan people and also accelerate socio-economic development of the entire adjacent region."

In Moscow at the end of last month, Niyazov declared, "We could sell to foreign markets about 120 billion cubic meters of gas annually, but we can not do this due to the lack of pipelines."

Another important reason for the war in Afghanistan is for control of the opium poppies used to make most of the heroin in the world. One would think that President Bush with his 'War on Drugs/Terror' would seek to stop the manufacture of heroin in Afghanistan now that the U.S. has taken over control of the country. But instead it has been reported that the new ruling Northern Alliance is expanding substantially the growing of opium poppies and the manufacture of heroin in Afghanistan (http://www.orion-online.net/
vnews/display.v/ART/2001/12/12/3c16c334d37ad).

According to the Glasgow Herald, a United Nations survey showed that fields used for poppy production almost tripled in size in the last year, going from 5,000 to 13,000 acres. Those fields weren't bin Laden's. They were the Northern Alliance's. Could it be that the Bushes, Cheney and the CIA really are involved, as long-rumored, in heavy-duty drug trafficking all over the world?

Just food for thought...