You Can Trust Us.
Facts
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But Mah Narrative
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Prove your (false) assertion that I do not know which countries these pictures were taken in. My statement was that I don’t know which country they were from, not that you don’t. Putting a timer on people’s responses before banning them isn’t fair for those of us who have lives outside the internet. Timers should only apply to you and FM since you are the only 2 who can be here 24/7 without the necessity of working for your own livelihoods. Side: Facts
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At a ceremony at Unocal headquarters, the visitors [Taliban] were presented with their first-ever fax machine, along with a generator to power it. The first document to come cranking out predicted that the pipeline could net them at least $100, 000 a year. To complete their American experience, the Taliban were flown to the NASA space centre and Mount Rushmore, where the profiles of presidents of the United States are carved in the hillside, and finally to a vast shopping mall, where they went on a spree in a cutprice Target store, buying toothpaste, soap, combs and, interestingly, women's stockings. For the American 'oil and gas' junta, as the oil lobby is known these days in Washington, everything was going swimmingly. When Unocal cut its deal with the Taliban, it did so on behalf of a consortium of Enron, Amoco, British Petroleum, Chevron, Exxon and Mobil. The principal deal-makers were Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary and future Vice-President, then chairman of Halliburton, the giant oil facilities company, and James Baker, former Secretary of State under George Bush Senior. Condoleeza Rice, future National Security Advisor to George W. Bush and now Secretary of State [2007], was then a vice-president of Chevron Oil with responsibility for Central Asia. Enter Osama bin Laden, already a sworn enemy of the United States living in Afghanistan. Worried that if the pipeline deal progressed the Taliban might end up in the American camp, bin Laden is reckoned to have planned the bombing of two American embassies in East Africa in 1998 as a warning to the Americans to get out of 'Islamic countries', specifically Afghanistan. The American response was not to attack Afghanistan, where bin Laden was ensconced, but to send missiles into his former sanctuary, Sudan. The target of this 'smokescreen' attack was the al-Shifta pharmaceutical plant, which Washington described as a 'chemical weapons facility'. This was absurd; al-Shifta was famous throughout the continent as the manufacturer of chloroquine, the most effective treatment for malaria, and anti-tuberculosis drugs that were lifelines to a hundred thousand patients in sub-Saharan Africa." (Pilger 2007, p373-375) PILGER, J., 2007. Freedom next time. 2nd ed. Great Britain: Bantam press. Side: But Mah Narrative
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The reason given by the United States for its invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 was to 'destroy the infrastructure of al-Qaida, the perpetrators of 9/11'. However, there is evidence that the invasion was planned two months earlier, and that the most pressing problem was not the Taliban's links with Osama bin Laden, but the prospect of the mullahs losing control of Afghanistan to other mujahedin factions in the Northern Alliance. (Pilger 2007, p376) Believing it was the presence of Osama bin Laden that was souring their relationship with Washington, the Taliban tried to get rid of him. Under a deal negotiated by the leaders of Pakistan's two Islamic parties, bin Laden was to be held under house arrest in Peshawar. The plan was said to have been approved by bin Laden himself and Mullah Omar. An international tribunal would then hear evidence and decide whether to try him or hand him over to the Americans. Under pressure from Washington, Pakistan's President Musharraf vetoed the plan. According to Pakistani foreign minister Niaz Naik, a senior American diplomat told him on July 21, 2001 that it had been decided to dispense with the Taliban 'under a carpet of bombs'. (Pilger 2007, p376) When September 11, 2001 had finally ended America's affair with the Taliban, a US Justice Department prosecutor, John Loftus, revealed that a captured member of al-Qaida described in detail a 'cover up [that] US energy companies were secretly negotiating with the Taliban to build a pipeline' and that 'multiple sources confirm that American law enforcement agencies were deliberately kept in the dark and systematically prevented from connecting the dots before 9/11 in order to aid Enron's secret and immoral Taliban negotiations'. Enron was a major bankroller of George W. Bush's presidential campaign. (Pilger 2007, p375-376) 'Our response should have been a police action. Instead, the crazies played on the fears of the population, introducing distasteful elements of vengeance, so that at least as many people perished in the attack on Afghanistan as on 9/11. Everything that followed was PR, public relations, black propaganda. This administration has shown itself to be incredibly adept at this.' (Pilger 2007, p407-408) 'Is there evidence that a great deal of this was planned before September 11?' 'Yes, there is, in documents I have seen. Some of them actually say that what they are doing is a long-term process, a strategic plan, and there could be intervening events which would be great blessings and would accelerate the implementation of their plans.' (Pilger 2007, p408) PILGER, J., 2007. Freedom next time. 2nd ed. Great Britain: Bantam press. Side: But Mah Narrative
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