On Sun, 26 Jun 2005, Doug Henwood wrote
responding to Mycos:
>> Now here's something you can be sure has the neocon's full attention.
>> Many, including myself, feel that a great deal of US behaviour in the
>> Middle East, particularly Afghanistan and Iraq, can be traced back to the
>> Unocal pipeline that is being proposed to run through those very areas.
>
> Oh really? Can you think of any sane businessperson that would invest
> billions in a pipeline across Afghanistan, one of the least stable places in
> the world (and with little hope for that changing in the forseeable future),
Not to mention the fact that in the original plan, the Taliban was the precondition for the whole pipeline deal. Unocal (who stole the idea from Carlos Bulgheroni and Bridas) based their whole business plan on the idea that in the Taliban, Afghanistan finally had someone who could guarantee military peace sufficiently to make it work. 9/11 and the war ruined this all for them. There hasn't been safety since.
Unocal's support for the Taliban is notorious, not least from the movie Farenheit 9/11, which has footage of Unocal officials being really chummy with a Taliban guy in full regalia who they were taking on a tour of DC (where the feminist Barbara Bick threw a burqa in his face and screamed at him about the treatment of women, and he responded "You are clearly a terrible woman. Your husband must have a lot of trouble with you." And all the oilmen chuckled.)
Also btw, for the last frigging time -- the Unocal pipeline was a *gas* pipeline. Not only was the war not about oil -- not even the pipeline was about oil.
Michael