Some further interesting comments on the case that Oil is affecting U.S. foreign policy in untoward ways. I don't subscribe to all these views, but I am passing them on for comment or consideration.
> > Earl you forgot to mention the wild card in the bunch -- China, the > dragon is waking up and will be hungry. Right. I figured it was a bit long as it was, and also I don't know as much about that part of the story. Here's a little that I do know. China is tenth on the list of countries with oil reserves (about 24 billion barrels), with less then one tenth of Saudi Arabia. (And much of this is in non-Chinese territories China invaded and annexed after the revolution: Xinjiang and Tibet. They're building a pipeline to move this oil to their east coast.) With more than a billion people, and its role as industrial production for the U.S., its potential appetite for oil is obvious. It used to be an oil exporter until 1993, and then became an importer instead. By 2020 over 50 percent of its petroleum is expected to be imported. There's another proposed pipeline to bring oil from Kazakhstan to China. [http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200103/23/eng20010323_65800.html] [http://www.cornellcaspian.com/pub/19_0108Kazakh-China.htm] By the way, a critical part of the whole Afghanistan story has the persistent dream of the oil companies and the U.S. government to get still another pipeline through Turkmenistan (which borders the Caspian Sea, along with Iran, Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan), Afghanistan, and Pakistan to extract Caspian sea oil while avoiding OPEC countries. This could be used to feed any part of the world, including China, via the Indian Ocean. (Iran wanted the pipeline to go through their country, and so provided aid to the Northern Alliance to keep the Taliban from taking complete control of Afghanistan thereby keeping the pipeline on hold.) Unocal of Texas was a primary player in the pipeline effort as part of the CentGas consortium (e.g. Taliban representatives traveled to Sugarland Texas to negotiate with Unocal). Since the consortium and the U.S. were negotiating with the Taliban during the late 1990s, actions against Al-Qaeda were probably restrained, until the embassy attacks in 1998, at which point Clinton started again trying to hit bin Laden with cruise missles (after this point he ordered 3 strikes, but each time the CIA concluded their information wasn't accurate enough to go ahead). It wasn't until 7/4/1999 that Clinton issued an executive order prohibiting commercial transactions with the Taliban, definitely signaling his administration was giving up on the pipeline. Then it was reborn: Despite Al-Qaeda's attack on the U.S.S. Cole, one of the first acts of the Bush administration was to re-open negotiations with the Taliban over the pipeline, again putting action on Al-Qaeda on the back burner over oil (the War on Terrorism is only a marketing ploy). Is it any wonder that Cheney refuses to hand over all of his energy task force minutes? Interestingly, threats to invade Afghanistan over the pipeline issue were made before 9/11; they were told they could choose between "carpets of bombs" or "carpets of gold". After we installed a new government in Afghanistan, the pipeline is finally moving ahead; Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, Turkmenistan's President Niyazov, and Pakistani President Musharraf signed a MOU on it on 5/30/2002. [http://www.centralasiatravel.com/central_asia_map.html] [http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/completetimeline/index.htm] By the way, there are now U.S. troops in almost every one of the central Asian countries mentioned here. One quote to ponder to close this post: "If one looks at the map of the big American bases created for the war, one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean." Uri Averny, in a Feb. 14 column in the daily Ma'ariv in Israel, as reported March 18, 2002 in the Chicago Tribune ("Pipeline Politics Taint US War"). [http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0318-02.htm] To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
