WOW...Somebody Please Explain This Article Re: US Aids Taliban in 2001 in Drug War >>

This is totally bizarre and I simply can't wrap my head around it. However I can't help but to think this is one reason for 9/11. But how? Why? And didn't the opium production INCREASE after the initial U.S. invasion? And why are troops there now, protecting the opium fields rather than destroying them?

the Taliban's effort to eradicate the opium production.

I read a little of "Crossing the Rubicon" which supposed it was because of the drug trade we had 9/11, to open up the opium fields that the Taliban had closed. And indeed the fields were reopened and are now guarded rather than eradicated. So why would Bush admin. pay the Taliban to eradicate the opium fields, only to reopen them after the war?

Just another piece of the Kabuki theater that is the US government. Act like they're anti-drug to provide cover for their own drug activities. Take the Taliban out of the drug business so that BFEE can get the proceeds. Chase the Taliban into their hidey-holes but don't actually take them out, let them come back and justify American occupation in perpetuity.

Wish I wasn't this cynical. Jeez.

Or is this all just heresay?

:wtf:

I know in Michael Moore's "Farenheit 9/11" he says the taliban "mostly got away."

Our invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan were planned well before 9/11. As to who actually was behind the 9/11 invasion, that's a whole different story.

Speaking of black ops.

money and power. Iran-Contra was very much about drugs, arms, and money for the terrorists and for the US, and it was very likely not the only operation like that, imo.

What pisses me off is that we caught the crooks red-handed and gave them a slap on the wrist, then a promotion.

Follow it up with "The Politics of Heroin" by Alfred McCoy. Then read "Dark Alliance" by Gary Webb. That book caused the CIA to admit (to congress) that they were involved in cocaine smuggling.

To answer your question, the drug war is a scam. The money paid to the Taliban was window dressing, part of the millions spent to make it look like the government is doing something to eradicate drugs. IMO, it was a case of the legitimate part of the government not knowing that the CIA had the Taliban in their sights. When we invadad Afghanistan, we let Bin Laden go, and put the heroin production in the hands of our allies, the warlords of the Northern Alliance. IIRC, Afghanistan now produces more heroin than the world uses. BTW, It is the drug money laundering that is the major draw for the CIA. The covert wing of the CIA includes people acting as a private army for Wall Street. For that you can read "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" by John Perkins.

There's lots of good stuff here:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/index.html

Bill

We knew we were going to attack the Taliban ever since the outgoing Clintonites said we weren't really interested in them, so Bush and Condi jumped right in there and sent the Taliban a whole lot of money that had teeny-tiny chips implanted in it which meant we could find any Taliban or al Queda with our GPS satellites.

It just took a long time for the money to be disseminated across the country, which is why we didn't act before 9/11 - had to make sure that we could find ALL the bad guys with the chip implanted bills.

The Bush Administration and their masters in the petroleum industry embraced the ultra-theo-fascist-freedom-haters of the Taliban as soon as Bush took office in January of 2001, because the Taliban could provide access for a pipeline corridor that those petroleum barons badly wanted .... UNOCAL had been pining and jockeying for that access since the 1990's, even inviting Mullah Omar and the Taliban to Sugarland Texas in an attempt to sway the Taliban leadership towards approving said pipeline ...

In the end: The Taliban and said oil barons have much in common when it comes to stifling personal freedoms .... They are brethren when it comes to restricting enlightenment values and mores which we take for granted ... The same mores that motivated Franklin, Jefferson and Washington to establish the 'Land Of The Free' ...

This administration could care less about the freedom of peoples around the world, as long as they can stuff their own pockets with trillions of ill gotten dollars ...

As soon as their relationship with the Good Mullah soured in July of 2001, there came 'chatter' about an attack on US Soil .... something about 'Bin Laden determined to attack ......'

"We offered you a carpet of gold, but instead you will get a carpet of bombs" (paraphrased) ...

I recall this Scheer editorial when it came out, and shared it with my friends at that time .... It reveals the outrageous perfidy to which this administration would stoop in order to gain, personally, from the suffering of whole populations ...

Halliburton would provide services and help build the pipeline ... Cheney stood to gain PERSONALLY from this effort ...

Hamid Karzai worked for UNOCAL ...

Zalmay Khalilzad worked for ENRON, another participant, and helped survey the pipeline project as part of ENRON's representatives ....

Zalmay worked tirelessly to install Karzai as supreme Afghani leader in early 2002, for reasons that should be obvious ....

One could reasonably conclude a strong nexus exists between the desire for Bush Cheney to succeed in this goal in Afghanistan, through war, if necessary, and the attacks on US soil on 9/11/2001 ...

ADD: One can also conclude that these plans figured prominently in the 'energy task force' discussions which the Vice President has so far refused to divulge to the public .... It is assumed that much is said about the Afghanistan pipeline project there, and that ugly facts might tarnish to reputation of the frat boy messiah if they were revealed ....

"As soon as their relationship with the Good Mullah soured in July of 2001"

From what I remember the Taliban demanded more money then the 43 million they were given, and that's when the threat was made to carpet bomb Afghanistan. The money really didn't have anything to do with the drug trade, it was payment for protection while the workers surveyed and built the pipeline.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/west_asia/37021.stm

Taleban in Texas for talks on gas pipeline


A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.

A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.

Unocal says it has agreements both with Turkmenistan to sell its gas and with Pakistan to buy it.

The Afghan economy has been devasted by 20 years of civil war
But, despite the civil war in Afghanistan, Unocal has been in competition with an Argentinian firm, Bridas, to actually construct the pipeline.

Last month, the Argentinian firm, Bridas, announced that it was close to signing a two-billion dollar deal to build the pipeline, which would carry gas 1,300 kilometres from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, across Afghanistan.

This comment from your article is interesting too:

"A BBC regional correspondent says the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea."

So...maybe it's not the drugs so much as it was ensuring UNOCAL/the U.S. would own, build, and operate that pipeline? It makes sense. Due to the civil war in Afghanistan the only way to secure the area was through a massive military operation. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Bridas won the contract .... NOT Unocal ....

US Oil Barons were not happy ....

Enter Dick and George ....

it all comes together. nt

why can't it be about both?

Bill

http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=5166

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/oneworld/20011115/wl/u_s_policy_towards_taliban_influenced_by_oil_-_say_authors_1.html

Thursday November 15 01:21 PM EST

U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil - Say Authors

By Julio Godoy, Inter Press Service

PARIS, Nov 15 (IPS) - Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.

In the book ''Bin Laden, la verité interdite'' (''Bin Laden, the forbidden truth''), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.

Brisard claim O'Neill told them that ''the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it''.

The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.

They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime ''as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia'', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.

Until now, says the book, ''the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that''.

But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, ''this rationale of energy security changed into a military one'', the authors claim.

''At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs','' Brisard said in an interview in Paris.

-snip-

While notions exist (and are expressed here) that cozying with the Taliban has something to do with the drug trade, such a notion is small potatos compared to control of global petroleum markets .....

Fellowship with the Taliban had LITTLE to do with clandestine drug trafficking, and much to do with access for multinational oil interest .... much as the Iraq and Iran debacles do ...

ADD: Another touch of fantastic irony: John O'Neill went on to accept a position as head of security for the WTC mere days before the attack, and died in the resulting catastrophe ....

Most Americans have no knowledge of this. Wow.

So does this mean we are in a sort of cold war with Russia again? I mean, they can't be happy we came in there and took control over the oil reserves they claimed as their own...

Wow. And to think this was all to "free the Iraqi people." (originally WMDs of course, before Bush changed the war rationale)

And it has been stifled from day one ....

The Bush White House clung to the Taliban from the get go, not caring ONE WHIT whether they were freedom hating fascists : All they cared about is that damned pipeline ....

When they didnt get it : Their world exploded ....

We today live in that awful stew ....

And yes: Russia considers this business to be on THEIR doorstep, and within their sphere .... There are bad feelings regarding this issue that have not been alleviated yet ....

And I didn't realize UNOCAL didn't get the pipeline contract at first...Argentina must be pissed at us too...

Geez, there's so much in the background. So much most people don't know about. Or how it ties into 9/11.

I remember Bush not too long ago standing behind the podium saying, "Ya know, some say it was for the oil which is simply not true..."

 
http://www.state.gov/secretary/former/powell/remarks/2001/2928.htm

- Make7
az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2235310&mesg_id=2238095

COLIN POWELL: "We distribute our assistance in Afghanistan through international agencies of the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations. We provide our aid to the people of Afghanistan, not to Afghanistan's warring factions. Our aid bypasses the Taliban, who have done little to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people, and indeed have done much to exacerbate it. We hope the Taliban will act on a number of fundamental issues that separate us: their support for terrorism; their violation of internationally recognized human rights standards, especially their treatment of women and girls; and their refusal to resolve Afghanistan's civil war through a negotiated settlement."

Somebody has their facts wrong, either the money went to the Taliban itself as stated in the OP or it went through NGOs and UN orgs as Colin Powell says above.

 

The Thursday before that column was printed was May 17, 2001 - the exact date of the press briefing that I linked to where Powell announced the $43 million humanitarian aid package.

So, either there was another announcement by Powell that day concerning $43 million dollars given to Afghanistan, or Robert Scheer somehow just knew that money was really going to the Taliban despite what was said by the Secretary of State at the time.

- Make7

:shrug:

Unless there is other evidence to back up his claims that the money went directly to the Taliban.

I can see it both ways...I did hear the money was given to the Taliban to secure the forthcoming pipeline.

One of them : PNAC 101 : http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=5648350

I cannot find Stephanie's incredible PNAC thread, which was required reading here in the early days ....

Perhaps someone else can find it .... I can only go back as far as 2004 ....