[BITList] mine baby, mine!

[CT's]

the locals don't want us, but the pentagon is prospecting in Afghanistan!

oh, what a lovely war? [see Wikipedia]

ct

     
     


Alchemy in Afghanistan
by Ann Marlowe Info 

Ann Marlowe is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. and blogs for World Affairs. She just completed her sixth embed with American troops in Afghanistan and her fourteenth trip to that country.

Bidding for the rights to explore more than $1 trillion of mineral reserves could begin this year. Ann Marlowe explains why the political truth is much more sordid than easy profits. 
Something is rotten in Afghanistan, and unfortunately it's us. Today's announcement of "nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan" is a symptom of what's wrong, not a cause for rejoicing.

Recent Afghan news has been resoundingly bad. The top U.S. commander on the ground, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, admitted that the Kandahar offensive will go slower than anticipated, basically because the locals don't want us there. The Washington Post reported yesterday that the reason for the delay is the opposition of President Karzai's brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai, the Mafia boss of southern Afghanistan.

I'd suggest that we ask why "Pentagon officials" have enough time to scout out mineral deposits, while our soldiers are being blown up by IEDs in increasingly high numbers. 

But let's listen to Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus: "There is stunning potential here." Really? Where would that be? Not in security or governance or anything else remotely under his responsibility. It's the minerals offensive, stupid! And today's breathless page one New York Times piece by James Risen even implies that the Pentagon, which perhaps should be engaged in trying to turn the war around, instead has been out prospecting. Risen writes that the mineral deposits were "discovered by a team of Pentagon officials and American geologists."








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