Bush Condems China's Human right's

S.L.F said:
I've done a bit more research and found [broken link removed]

It tells some of the dirty story of the Americans and the Afghanistan problem of their own making.
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Fair play - but I'm not even going to open the page let alone read it given the url is greenleft...more propagandist rubbish - maybe include some links to al jazeera while you're at it for completely unbiased impartial reporting.
 
DavyJones said:
That I would belive

Going back to the OP, rmelly, do you agree or disagree? in a word.
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Yes. Better to have said what he said than to have said nothing at all. I would have liked him to go further e.g. not attending the event at all and having no or low ranked governemnt officials present, but wouldn't have expected the US team to boycott the event - after all the main ones to benefit then would be the chinese athletes winning more medals.
 
S.L.F said:
I doubt very much the hundreds of thousands of dead people who depended on the UN to be impartial would be heartened with your last comment
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rmelly said:
If the UN is so impartial, what's the problem?
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I never said they were impartial if you read the post you'd see that.

rmelly said:
No one believes they want it for anything other than producing nuclear weapons.
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Why not?

Let's face facts we heard that Iraq had big bad boogyman WMDs

but it didn't did it?
rmelly said:
I'll be back to prove that bin laden is actually Dick Cheney in disguise.
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That I'd like to see,

it would prove that the USA are controlling their students.
 
S.L.F said:
Did they legitimately invade after Sept 11?
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People seem to equating the motives of the two wars America is currently engaged in as being one and the same. To my mind they are not comparable. Afghanistan was a country run by the Pakistani-funded Taliban, which overthrew the Northern Alliance militias (recognised by the UN as the legitimate government of Afghanistan). The Taliban aided the 9/11 attackers and refused to hand over Osama bin Laden, hence the US attacks (alongside the Northern Alliance) leading to the overthrowing of the Taliban.

I believe the war in Iraq was spawned out of a Neo-con fantasy about breaking the power of the OPEC cartel. Despite having the world's fourth largest proven oil reserves, in a relatively unexplored country, Iraq was generally constrained to pumping no more than 2 million barrels of oil a day. The Neo-con fantasy then, was that US-led coalition would take control in Iraq then finance the invasion by privatising all the oil fields. It was hoped that by increasing output to nearly 10 million barrels the world market would become flooded crushing the power of OPEC. Quite apart from the logistics involved, I believe the oil companies were not particularly keen on sabotaging their own very profitable industry.

So in my opinion, while there is enormous justification for the US involvement in Afghanistan, there is little justification for their involvement in Iraq.


I think this notion of Afghanistan as some kind of natural resource powerhouse needs to be knocked on the head. Even if they had as much oil as Saudi Arabia, it is a much more inhospitable environment for drilling (since it is very mountaineous). It is never going to be as easy to drill there as in a desert. Under Russian control in the seventies, Russia estimated their "proven and probable" oil reserves as a paltry 100 million barrels. This compares with 115 billion proven reserves in Iraq. The Russians had plans to build a 10,000 barrel a day refinery but it never happened. Currently Afghanistan imports all of its oil requirements. The World CIA Factbook still lists its proven oil reserves as none. I have read that US geological surveys in the region post-invasion have put potential reserves at estimates variously between several hundred million and over 3 billion. How easy or viable this will be to extract is anyone's guess. If you have any reputable sources of data on Afghanistan's oil reserves please share them, as it is difficult to find reliable data.

If Afghanistan has an importance in the oil and gas world it is more likely as a pipeline route bringing oil and gas from neighbours such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

S.L.F said:
Why shouldn't Iran have nuclear power?
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Because President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will most likely use it to build a nuclear weapon with the intention of annihilating Israel, sparking nuclear armageddon when Israel and the United States retaliate. It's been foretold in the prophecies don't you know?
 
The invasion in Afghanistan was planned long before 9/11 because the Taliban would not cooperate with outside forces with regard to the central Asian pipeline, which is key to opening up world oil supply.
Afghanistan lack the techology to seroiusly look for reserves until now that is, with a little help from the US trade and development agency and other private US firms.

I also belive the position of both countries (Afghanistan and Iraq) are key because of their proximity to Iran. How many US and Allied soldiers now surround Iran?
 
rmelly said:
Fair play - but I'm not even going to open the page let alone read it given the url is greenleft...more propagandist rubbish - maybe include some links to al jazeera while you're at it for completely unbiased impartial reporting.
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In your opinion who doesn't report unbiased and impartially? CNN, SKY news, BBC etc?
 
DavyJones said:
In your opinion who doesn't report unbiased and impartially? CNN, SKY news, BBC etc?
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why, so you can go off and find some articles from the news sites and piece together another fantastic story?
 
Afghanistan lack the techology to seroiusly look for reserves until now that is, with a little help from the US trade and development agency and other private US firms.
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I've asked for details on official proven or provable oil reserves in Afghanistan a couple of times - now it sounds like (you think) they invaded on a complete hunch that there MIGHT be oil reserves - why would they bother and not just go straight for Iraq if it was all about oil?

DavyJones said:
I also belive the position of both countries (Afghanistan and Iraq) are key because of their proximity to Iran. How many US and Allied soldiers now surround Iran?
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And it's still acting up - maybe they need to locate allied troops in some more of the neighbours, or get it over with and liberate the people of Iran?
 
DavyJones said:
Do you think western news agencies report with an unbiased or impartcial view?

In answer to your question see here: www.azom.com/News.asp?NewsID=5071
Or here for copper [broken link removed]
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The second link doesn't work, however based on the first:

Natural Gas: The highest Afghanistan estimate is 36.462 trillion cubic feet. US proven reserve are put at 190 trillion cubic feet.

Oil: The highest Afghanistan estimate is 3.559 billion barrels. US proven reserves are put at 21 billion barrels.

Neither of the figures for Afghanistan is proven - these are the highest, most optimistic 'estimates'.

Both of the Afghanistan figures are fractions of the US figures, so to claim the invasion was to get hands on these is fanciful at best.

One also wonders why they waited until 2004 to start the analysis if it was the main reason for the invasion.
 
DavyJones said:
Do you think western news agencies report with an unbiased or impartcial view?
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No, do you think al jazeera does?

Do you agree or disagree that Afghanistan has significant natural resources?
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You've asked me that a few times, and I have said I haven't seen the details to say that they do have 'significant' natural resources, so no I don't believe they have, but am open to being shown otherwise.

The optimistic estimates you have linked to are much less than the comparable PROVEN US figures for oil, gas and coal (see earlier response). They are not insignificant by Irish standards, but in the context of the US figures, they are not significant.

If these really were the motive, why was the country left largely untouched after the end of the war with Russia? Also, why did the US not invade Iraq in the initial Gulf war? They could have invaded and occupied and then had much less reliance on Saudi Arabia both in terms of oil and for baseing of troops in the area.

Do you agree or disagree that the Central Asian pipeline is a key part to accessing vast amounts of oil?
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Can you point me to some details on this pipeline? Who built it, where does the oil come from, who does it supply?
 


See here please :http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2608713.stm
 
DavyJones said:
See here please :http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2608713.stm
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Thanks, just wanted to conform we were talking about the same pipeline.

1. This is a gas pipeline, not oil.
2. This article makes no mention of US involvement. Who built it or will build it?
3. The gas is from Turkmenistan - what is US involvement in extracting gas in Turkmenistan?
4. The article says India is the largest potential buyer, where is the US involvement? Given the previous references to the US having significantly larger PROVEN gas reserves.

Check out the last paragraph of this related article - seems apt: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1626889.stm
 


Those reports are a bit old, Check these out:


and
.

Check out the paragraph headed oil pipe dreams:

[broken link removed]

These link American national interests on the oil and gas pipe lines. As I have said this war is a long term investment for the US and just because they have a lot of something doesn't mean they don't want more.

This is also quite interesting: http://english.aljazeera.net/archive/2003/04/2008491314568943.htm
 
I think we'll have to agree to disagree. While I don't accept the invasion was staged to take control of the resources & move the pipeline project forward, to me it is a positive side effect that should benefit all concerned - except maybe Iran & Russia but I won't lose sleep over that.
 
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