I take it you're beginning to get the picture. If not, consider also that Hamid Karzai, whom the U.S. selected as the first post-Taliban Prime Minister of Afghanistan, had previously been on UNOCAL's payroll (and here). Also on UNOCAL's payroll was Zalmay Khalilzad, who Bush appointed in 2001 to be his special envoy to Afghanistan, and who in 2003 would become the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.
Could the picture be any clearer? Well, yes it could. Uri Averny, writing for the Israeli newspaper Ma'ari in February 2002 (just a few months after the bombing began), notes: "If one looks at the map of the big American bases created, one is struck by the fact that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean." In other words, the U.S. began immediately to strategically position and build its military bases in Afghanistan with the security of the pipeline in mind.
However, providing security for the pipeline was not the only reason behind America's invasion of Afghanistan. The mission was not only to secure UNOCAL's projected pipeline route, but also to secure a strong military presence in oil-rich Central Asia. Within a month after the bombing began, the U.S. had already made arrangements for the establishment of military bases in Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.
Now, 10 years down the road and counting, tens of thousands of Afghanistan's civilian population lay dead as a result of this fiasco -- fodder for America's imperial ambitions and failing empire.
The Unprovoked American Invasion of Iraq
In a repeat performance of the role the media played in drumming up public support for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the media threw itself behind the invasion of Iraq, again engaging in a systematic cover-up of the real economic and geopolitical strategic interests the war was serving. Once again the media took on the role of the government's unquestioning propagandizing mouthpiece, inundating America's collective psyche with fabricated stories of the alleged connection between Iraq and al Qaeda that the Bush administration was pushing.
Of course, as most of us know by now, or should know by now, Iraq had nothing at all to do with the tragic deaths of 3,000 innocents on 9/11. Nearly everyone knows, or should know, that Iraq harbored no terrorists, had no strategic links to al Qaeda, had no WMD, and, after 10 years of harsh sanctions ensured that Iraq was a mere shell of the country it once was, posed no threat to the United states, its allies, or its regional neighbors. Nearly everyone also knows, or should know, that our government was well aware of all this prior to the invasion. What most of us don't know, however, is that plans for the American invasion of Iraq were developed by members of the Bush team months before Bush ever took office, and a full year before the events of 9/11 made tragic history. (Also here). This, too, is so outrageous that it bears repeating: Plans for the American invasion of Iraq were developed by members of the Bush team months before Bush ever took office, and a full year before the events of 9/11 made tragic history. As with the invasion of Afghanistan, 9/11 was the pretext for this invasion, not its cause.
How do we know this? It's all contained in a series of documents provided us by the now defunct conservative think-tank Project for A New American Century (PNAC). The most discussed of these documents, and perhaps the most revealing and disconcerting, was written in September 2000. Entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century," it's essentially a blueprint for U.S. military and economic global dominance. In fact, this is precisely how the PNAC report refers to itself, as a "blueprint" for the "creation of a "global Pax Americana."
According to this blueprint, the world is to be made to serve U.S. interests by whatever means necessary, and any resistance to this resolve is to be met with unyielding force. Thus, America must be prepared to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars." While this blueprint called for the removal of Saddam Hussein from power, it also made quite clear that "the need for a substantial American force presence in the [Persian] Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." Saddam was not the issue. Iraq had oil -- plenty of it -- and the U.S. wanted first dibs on that oil ( Pre-war estimates indicated that Iraq's proven oil reserves were the third largest in the world. Recent updated geological surveys and seismic data now reveal Iraq's oil reserves to be the largest in the world.) If Saddam stood in the way of that, then Saddam had to go. But Saddam or no Saddam, the PNAC was quite clear in stating that there would be a strong American military presence in the Persian Gulf to "secure energy supplies," and to prevent by any means necessary any other nation, including our allies, from rising up to challenge American hegemony in the oil-rich regions of the Middle east and Central Asia.
Of course, this fits the very definition of terrorism: the use of violence or the threat of violence as the means for achieving political ends. The PNAC was calling for an American global terrorist network. It all hinged on two things:
--the judicial coup that gave us George W. Bush as the first unelected, Supreme-Court selected president of the United States of America, and
--some unspecified as-yet-to-materialize attack on U.S. soil to serve as pretext and garner public support for America's imperialist ambitions.
In Bush's hands the PNAC directive became America's foreign policy playbook. From day one, Bush was on board with the PNAC agenda. And, not surprisingly, a number of PNAC's members went on to become major players in the Bush administration: Dick Cheney (vice president), Donald Rumsfeld (defense secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff), Elliot Abrams (Senior Director on the National Security Council), Richard Armitage (U.S. Deputy Secretary of State), Richard Perle (Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee), James Woolsey (Director CIA), Eliot Cohen (Defense Policy Advisory Board), John Bolton (Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs), Robert Zoellick (President of World Bank). And, surprise, surprise, Zalmay Khalilzad, UNOCAL's former employee and Bush's special envoy to Afghanistan was also a PNAC member. As was Bush's younger brother, Jeb (Governor of Florida, the state that delivered brother George's bid for the presidency into the hands of the courts).
As one might expect, despite the enormously destructive influence PNAC has had on world affairs over the course of Bush's two terms in office, and now nearly a full term of Obama, and despite the open availability of the aforementioned PNAC document to the media for more than a decade, there has been scarcely a mention of PNAC from the major media outlets.
Nowhere is this egregious omission more apparent than in the case of Fox News contributor William Kristol, co-founder and chairman of PNAC, as well as chief editor of the PNAC publication, the Weekly Standard. Kristol was a regular political contributor on Fox News throughout the Bush years, yet was never once identified by Fox as having anything at all to do with PNAC. Here was one of the chief architects of Bush's foreign policy presenting himself as an impartial journalist offering political commentary on that policy. Can there be any question of a media cover-up here?
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).