I won't argue vehemently against the new Special Ops commander in Afghanistan, or for immediate withdrawal of our troops in order to reduce what may be unaffordable costs, in order to reallocate expenditures to domestic purposes. Maybe it's a wee bit too early. But after reading the following article http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq2.html my suspicions are at a pretty high level.

I guess it's pretty well-known that the U.S. CIA were the ones who funded and trained the Taliban in order for them to act as insurgents against the invading Russians back in the 1980's. In fact, our people used the Pakistani border villages that are now suspected as the headquarters for Osama bin Laden as our primary bases of operations to train the Afghan Taliban.

Now the Taliban have grown to a position of essentially being the government of Afghanistan, but they're a pretty brutal and repressive bunch. No different from when we funded and trained them, but now they're getting a bad rap because of their "human rights violations"--key words for the U.S. social firebrands. And because now they're shooting at us.

So I've been wondering--is that why we're willing to spend so many American lives and money? To quell human rights violations against the Afghan citizens? Our government is willing to spend as much as it would cost to reform our own healthcare system to assure that Afghan girls can go to school? So that women don't have to wear burkhas? To get water and electrical distribution built in the capital city? To stop the Taliban war lords from killing rural dirt farmers? We're willing to endure the deficit spending resultant from all those defense expenditures? That doesn't make sense.

Then I read in the article referred to earlier that it's about oil. There is no way to get the huge oil reserves from Turkmenistan to warm water ports so it can be shipped to the U.S. Building a pipeline across Iran to the big Iraqi oil facility at al Basrah on the Straits of Hormuz would be the best way. But we have no relations with Iran, so that ain't gonna happen. The only other alternative would be to build a much longer pipeline completely across the western border of Afghanistan, across Pakistan to a new port or Karachi on the Indian Ocean. The U.S. big oil companies want to build such a pipeline, so obviously they need a safe and secure route thru Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Did you ever wonder why we don't eradicate al the poppy fields in Afghanistan that provided so much of the heroin to the U.S.? I wondered about that too, until I looked at where they were. The big poppy production occurs in the western part of Afghanistan. Now we wouldn't want the residents in that part of the country to be unfriendly when we try to build a pipeline there, would we?

I'm quickly reaching the conclusion--regardless of whatever explanations our politicians provide for why sending 100,000 of our country's finest and trillions of dollars to Afghanistan makes sense--IT'S ABOUT THE OIL DUMMY!

And by the way, if we build a pipeline thru Afghanistan and Pakistan, who do you think will have to be there to protect it? The Taliban and the Pakistani army? A new Afghan defense force we might fund and train? That strategy isn't working too awfully well in Iraq and we've spent eight years and hundreds of billions of dollars trying to train those guys. No, once we get our troops there, they'll be staying--and we'll be paying--for a long, long time.

If we like this idea better than solving some of the domestic problems affecting Americans here at home--and if China will keep lending us the money do do it--this strategy will be a good deal. But we shouldn't forget...IT'S ABOUT THE OIL DUMMY!