Jun 15 2010

What I didn’t find in Afghanistan

(11AM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

Borrowing from Joe Wilson’s take on “What I didn’t find in…” comes a story today from the NY Times that Afghanistan is rich in untapped natural resources.

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.

Do you remember Osama Bin Laden? The reason we went to war. Or was it?  

Oh I’ll bet it will alter the economy and the war itself. Yet another nation we will never leave from.

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.

Lets rewind….is there any question that we were in Iraq for the oil? Maybe not just to steal it .. because being a politician you have to see a positive for any side. So maybe just keeping oil off the market is just as good to drive the price.

Then there was the Trans Afghan Oil Pipeline

Aug. 13, 1996

Unocal and Delta Oil Co. of Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of understanding (9) with Russia’s Gazprom and Turkmenistan’s Turkmenrusgaz to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan.

1998

VP Dick Cheney, then CEO of the giant oil services company, Halliburton, stated: “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.” (13)

Feb. 28, 1998

Unocal VP International Relations addressed US House of Representatives(14) clearly stating that the Taliban government should be removed and replaced by a government acceptable to his company. He argued that creation of a 42 inch oil pipeline across Afghanistan would yield a Western profit increase of 500% by 2015.

May 15, 2001

Regarding the placement of the Unocal Pipeline, a US Official delivered this ultimatum to the Taliban (via the Pakistani delegation acting as their interlocutors): “Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.” (Ref: Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie in “Forbidden Truth” (31) (Book’s Preface online-pdf format (32) )


Dec. 22, 2001

The US-backed interim government headed by Hamid Karzai took office in Kabul, Afghanistan (44a). (Hamid Karzai had formerly functioned as a Unocal Corporation consultant  )

Its a good thing our military is now searching under every rock … what a boon for Haliburton to be in the area to exploit all these untapped resources.

Can you imagine mining in a country known for the worlds largest deposits of land mines?

16 comments

Skip to comment form

  2. Sure hope that wasn’t in the cables the intelligence officer gave to wikileaks!

    KBR will loot, not Halliburton.

    And we’ve had these maps since the 1950s, the last time we were there!

    And oh, the actual report they are citing in the NY Times, that’s from 2006.

    So yeah…

  3. What did “they” know and when did “they” know it.

  4. stop burning oil, to fight for more oil  

    • banger on June 15, 2010 at 14:08
    • #

    … what to think about this. It’s sounds suspicious and very “convenient” to me. Now that things are going south in the “war” over there suddenly riches are found. I don’t know.  

  6. in Afghanistan

    Since the first oil field was discovered in Afghanistan in 1959, more than 150 million barrels of oil (mmbo) reserves and more than 4,500 billion cubic feet of gas (bcfg) reserves have been identified, using Soviet methodologies and technologies, in 29 fields in the Afghan portion of the Amu Darya and Afghan-Tajik basins (fig. 3). Only a very small portion of this reported resource base has been exploited. The country has not been well explored for oil and gas potential using the latest techniques. There is enormous opportunity for further discoveries to add to Afghanistan’s energy resource base. That resource base is essential to the economic development of the country.

    from USGS

    http://afghanistan.cr.usgs.gov…

    • RUKind on June 16, 2010 at 05:09
    • #

    It’s merely coincidence that their mention coincides with the ongoing failures at Marja and Kandahar.

    It’s merely coincidence that their mention coincides with the supplemental war funding bill and the denial of unemployment and COBRA extensions to those Americans hurt most by trillion dollar wars and bailouts.

    Greed is good. It will keep simple minds off America losing its third war in a row. illions unemployed, millions uninsured, hundreds of thousands sent to senseless slaughter. So the rich get obscenely rich and the rest of us scramble to keep our mortgages and bills paid, put food on the table and send our kids to decent schools.

    WTF? How much longer? How many more straws until our backs break?

Comments have been disabled.