Thursday, October 23, 2008

The Taliban Phenomenon - 25



Shaikh Mohommad wrote:

UK Vacuum Bombs in Afghanistan

What we find is that USA has become a rogue state violating and trampling upon agreements which USA itself signed. International law accepts the right of occupied people to resis the aggressors.

Shaikh Mohommad
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USA is using this since 2001 in Afghanistan, I wonder what the hell Talibans were discussing [from 1996 - 2001] with the Former US Assistant Deputy Secretary of State Ms. Robin Raphel? Read about the Thermobaric Bomb after reading about the Taliban - US Axis of 90s.

"QUOTE"

It wouldn't make any sense at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group-described by the Industry Standard as 'the world's largest private equity firm', with $12 billion under management. Carlyle invests in the defense sector and makes its money from military conflicts and weapons spending.

Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US defense secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's chairman and managing director (he was a college roommate of Donald Rumsfeld's). Carlyle's other partners include former US secretary of state James A. Baker III, George Soros, Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An American paper-the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel-says that former President George Bush Sr is reported to be seeking investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets. He is reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make 'presentations' to potential government-clients.

Ho Hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family.

Then there's that other branch of traditional family business-oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working in the US oil industry.

Turkmenistan, which borders the northwest of Afghanistan, holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's energy requirements for a couple of centuries.) America has always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it by any means it deems necessary. Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest in oil.

Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently moves northward to European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney-then CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry-said: "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." True enough.

For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian Sea. From here, Unocal hopes to access the lucrative 'emerging markets' in South and Southeast Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs traveled to America and even met US State Department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they are now. Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration. Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil industry's big chance.

War Is Peace by Arundhati Roy, October 18, 2001

Originally Published on OutlookIndia.com via Znet.com

http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2001/10/18_roy_war-peace_print.htm


Glimpses of US Support to Taliban.

Robin Raphel and Karl Inderfurth Supported Terrorists Mullah Omar and Bin Laden's friends at State Department Documents confirm Pak aid to Taliban MANOJ JOSHI


The September 11th Sourcebooks Volume VII: The Taliban File



New Thermobaric Bomb a Powerful Addition to US Arsenal in Afghanistan

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1222-01.htm


The US military is about to use a powerful new weapon in the ongoing war in Afghanistan, a "thermobaric" bomb which can suck oxygen out of the cavernous hideouts where Osama bin Laden and remnants of his al-Qaeda terror network may be holed up. The laser-guided weapons contain an explosive that can penetrate deep into caves, as the hunt for bin Laden enters a new, more perilous stage, top Pentagon officials said Friday. Officials said 10 of the newly designed bombs were being shipped to Afghanistan after a successful test last week in Nevada.

Each thermobaric bomb -- also called fuel-air explosives -- contains two explosive devices and a highly flammable chemical that sends a deadly shock wave through enclosed spaces such as caves and tunnels without collapsing them. The weapons consist of a container of fuel and two explosive charges. When the first charge detonates, the fuel is dispersed. A second charge then detonates the billowing cloud of fuel.

Experts say such bombs tend to be far more powerful than conventional high explosives, and are more likely to kill or injure people hiding in caves, bunkers and similar shelters because they can suck the air out of such places. Earlier versions of thermobaric bombs were used in Vietnam by the United States and in Chechnya by Russia. The new version, called the BLU-1186, was developed specifically for use in the war against terrorism, officials here said.

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