David Swanson / War Is a Crime.org & Christopher Bollyn – 2011-06-24 16:39:25
http://warisacrime.org/content/afghan-withdrawal-obama-lied-soon-many-will-have-died
Afghan Withdrawal: Obama Lied, Soon Many Will Have Died
David Swanson / WarIsACrime
(June 21, 2011) — The United States has about 200,000 military personnel in Afghanistan, half of them troops, half of them contractors. President Barack Obama put over two-thirds of that number there — first with a big escalation in 2009 that everyone refuses to pay the slightest attention to, then with a second escalation in 2010.
Obama made promises he is now breaking.
“After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home … [O]ur troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended – because the nation that I’m most interested in building is our own.”
– President Barack Obama, 1 December 2009
“I’m confident that the withdrawal will be significant. People will say this is a real process of transition; this is not just a token gesture.”
– President Barack Obama, 15 April 2011
“In July of 2011, you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out, bet on it.”
– Vice President Joe Biden, quoted in Jonathan Alter’s The Promise
The military publicly instructed Obama to break this commitment in May of this year through the Wall Street Journal. The commander-in-chief was instructed to withdraw 5,000 people in July and another 5,000 over the following five months. These would be out of the total of 200,000, meaning a withdrawal in July of 2.5 percent of the total forces, followed by a withdrawal in August of 0.5 percent, in September 0.5 percent, and so on.
The New York Times, in early June, did its bit for the cause of mass-murder by spinning 5,000 as a BIG number. In fact the New York Times claimed the number just might be as high as 3,000 or even 5,000.
Just as Obama has obeyed the military on escalations and withdrawals — and obeyed the CIA on refusals to prosecute torture — Obama appears to be doing exactly what he is told once again.
According to Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times, Obama will announce on Wednesday a plan to withdraw 10,000 personnel by the end of this year. There isn’t even any mention of how many of those will come home in July. So, assuming a steady glacial progress over six months, we’re looking at 0.83 percent withdrawn in July, 0.83 percent withdrawn in August, and so on.
This, the Los Angeles Times assures us, is more than the 3,000 to 4,000 that supposedly the Pentagon wanted to withdraw over the entire next six months. In fact:
“Taking out 10,000 troops over the next six months could create problems for the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, especially if other countries, which now contribute about 40,000 troops, pull out more personnel than expected, several officials said.”
Problems? For the US mission in Afghanistan? You’re kidding! Wouldn’t THAT be a novelty.
Oh, I know! Let’s blame the problems on the withdrawal of 0.83% of the forces, as imposed on Washington by the stupid leftwing liberal extremists.
Or, if that doesn’t work, and somebody points out that two-thirds of our country has wanted this war ENDED for a long time now, we could blame something even better. We could blame democracy.
Of course, we won’t be able to use that word. Let’s ask the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times to get to work on this right away!
UPDATE: I should have said 1.6% per month, but Politico has just underbid the LA Times, reporting 5,000 instead of 10,000, so I was right to say 0.8% afterall. Do I hear 2,500?
The TAPI Pipeline — The Real Reason for 4 More Years of War in Afghanistan”
Commentary by Christopher Bollyn / Bollyn.com
(December 20, 2010) — As I have reported since shortly after 9/11, the real reason for the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is to build and secure a 1,080-mile long gas pipeline designed to carry trillions of dollars of Israeli-owned gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India. In a 2009 article entitled “Why Afghanistan,” I wrote about the role of Israeli intelligence in the TAPI gas pipeline project and its connection to 9/11:
Following the break-up of the Soviet Union, Israeli agents sought to gain control of the strategic assets of the newly independent Soviet republics. In mineral-rich Turkmenistan, a Mossad agent named Yosef A. Maiman was very successful in gaining control of the republic’s immense resources of natural gas.
Yosef Maiman, born in Germany in 1946, grew up in Peru and studied in the United States before becoming an Israeli citizen in 1971. As an agent of Israeli intelligence, Maiman heads a network of Mossad-controlled companies that serve Israeli interests. As the chief executive of the Merhav Group, Maiman has controlled the development of Turmenistan’s gas resources. Maiman’s key colleagues at Merhav are the former head of the Mossad, Shabtai Shavit, and Nimrod Novik, chief adviser to Shimon Peres, the current president of Israel.
Maiman was described as “a leading miner” of Central Asian gas fields by the Jerusalem Post in 2004. Given their control of the immense gas resources of Turkmenistan, Maiman, Merhav, and the Mossad would all profit if and when the US-led coalition were able to “pacify” and control Afghanistan so that the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline could be built allowing the gas of Turkmenistan to be sold to energy-hungry India.
The TAPI pipeline project would bring billions of dollars into Mossad coffers every year. This is the real reason for the war in Afghanistan and why the Zionist-controlled Obama administration has increased the war effort in Central Asia. It has nothing to do with terrorism or 9-11.
The false-flag terror attacks of 9/11 were part of a strategic Israeli operation to bring the US military into Afghanistan on a long-term mission on behalf of Israel’s Turkmen gas enterprise. The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is the real reason that US soldiers are fighting and dying in the southwestern Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. 9/11 was just the cover story for this pre-planned war of aggression — and it is nothing but a complete hoax.
FATALITIES BY PROVINCE
The route of the proposed TAPI gas pipeline is exactly where most US troops have died in Afghanistan (the blood red provinces of Helmand and Kandahar). Americans, Canadians, and Europeans are fighting and dying in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) for Israeli profits. ( Source: Operation Enduring Freedom, iCasualties.org)
According to a recent audit, the gas reserves of the fields (largely controlled by Mossad’s Yosef Maiman and the Merhav Group) stand at between 4 and 14 trillion cubic metres. Under the pipeline framework agreement, Pakistan and India will each receive 1,325 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) of gas, while Afghanistan will receive 500 mmcfd. According to the deal, the pipeline will have a diameter of 56 inches and will stretch over a distance of 1,640 kilometres from Turkmenistan to Fazilka in India. The pipeline is expected to commence gas flow by 2015. “The Afghanistan government has guaranteed that it will deploy at least 5,000 troops for the protection of the pipeline within its territory,” said Naveed Qamar, Pakistan’s Federal Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources.
On December 11, a preliminary agreement was signed in Turkmenistan’s capital, Ashgabat, by representatives of the four countries to proceed with plans for the American and Israeli-backed pipeline. Here are the basic points about the TAPI pipeline:
Construction of pipeline will be completed by 2014 (note this is the new end-date given for the US military mission in Afghanistan, but don’t believe it)
1,680 kilometer gas pipeline will supply 3.2 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day (much of this gas will come from Israeli/Mossad-owned gas fields in Turkmenistan, meaning immense profits for the Mossadniks who pulled of 9/11)
US GANGSTER DIPLOMACY
US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan “back to the stone age” unless it joined the fight against al-Qaeda. General Musharraf said that Armitage delivered the threat to Pakistan’s intelligence director. “The intelligence director told me that Mr Armitage said, ‘Be prepared to be bombed. Be prepared to go back to the Stone Age’,” Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said. Armitage is most likely the same diplomat who threatened the Afghan government two months before 9/11 — “You will either accept our carpet of gold or we will carpet-bomb you.”
The CIA’s armchair warriors bomb targets in Pakistan on a daily basis and the United States has 3,000 Special Forces in Pakistan, according to Zainab Cheema’s recent article entitled “Return of Musharraf And Pakistan’s Balkanization” about what the Zionist “War on Terror” and Mossad’s TAPI project really mean for Pakistan:
Pakistan has been turned into a war-on-terror parking lot: 3,000 American Special Forces units operate in Pakistan at the present. Pakistan’s politicos have always shown remarkable generosity in passing down the costs of their decision-making to the people. Guantanamo is a thriving industry in Pakistan and the foremost field of Pakistan-US collaboration. Pakistan’s police, army and frontier corps are part of the American security system in Pakistan…
Pakistan’s balkanization is just as much about keeping rivals out as it is about securing the best perch in the playground. The Iran-Pakistan Friendship pipeline (IP) in the works (formerly the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline before the US weaned away India with its nuclear fuel deal) is planning its route through Balochistan.
While Pakistan can occasionally make such inconvenient deals with a neighbor that Israel and the US are determined to exterminate, the groomed Balochi tribes would follow more the acceptable Karzai pattern of subservient obedience. Meanwhile, terrorizing the PK is laying the ground for the US’s own pipeline project snaking its way through Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI).
Sources and Recommended Reading:
Bergen, Peter, “Analysis: Four more years of war in Afghanistan,” Special to CNN, December 17, 2010
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/12/17/us.afpak.review.analysis/?hpt=C2
“TAPI: Gas Reserves Audit Completed,” Express Tribune (Pakistan), December 14, 2010
http://tribune.com.pk/story/89750/tapi-gas-reserves-audit-completed/
“Energy Resources – ‘Saudi, Israel tie-up’ in Turkmenistan,” UPI, December 10, 2009
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/Resource-Wars/2009/12/10/Saudi-Israel-tie-up-in-Turkmenistan/UPI-95231260467100/
“US ‘threatened to bomb’ Pakistan”, BBC News, 22 September 2006
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5369198.stm
“Return of Musharraf And Pakistan’s Balkanization,” by Zainab Cheema, November 22, 2010
http://www.ahmedquraishi.com/2010/11/22/return-of-musharraf-and-pakistans-balkanization/
“$7.6bn TAPI gas pipeline project comes back to life,” Daily Times (Pakistan), December 12, 2010
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C12%5C12%5Cstory_12-12-2010_pg1_3
“Turkmen natural gas pipeline Tapi to cross Afghanistan,” BBC News, December 11, 2010
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11977744
“New Backing for Gas Line Through Asia,” by Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, December 11, 2010
“Facing Reality in Afghanistan”, by Christopher Bollyn, October 4, 2010
http://www.bollyn.com/the-self-inflicted-wounds-of-9-11
“US Wounded — The Hidden Toll of Obama’s Surge,” by Christopher Bollyn, November 26, 2010
http://www.bollyn.com/obamas-surge-of-us-wounded-in-afghanistan
“Dying in Vain oo Why Afghanistan?” by Christopher Bollyn, February 8, 2010
http://www.bollyn.com/dying-in-vain-why-afghanistan
“Afghanistan — Obama’s War for Israel,” by Christopher Bollyn, July 6, 2010
http://www.bollyn.com/afghanistan-obamas-war-for-israel
“The Spoils of War: The Minerals of Afghanistan,” by Christopher Bollyn, January 7, 2002
http://www.bollyn.com/the-spoils-of-war-the-minerals-of-afghanistan
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