Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan

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Ted Rall is a journalist and editorial cartoonist who has traveled
extensively throughout Central Asia. Most recently he covered the frontlines
of the war from northern Afghanistan during November and December 2001 for
the Village Voice and KFI Radio in Los Angeles. That experience, in which it
became painfully clear that the war was going poorly for both ordinary
Afghans and Americans considered about future terrorist attacks, was
chronicled in the critically-acclaimed "graphic travelogue" TO AFGHANISTAN
AND BACK.

Upon returning from Afghanistan Rall began researching American motivations
for the war. The September 11th hijackers, after all, were neither Afghan
nor members of Al Qaeda. And Al Qaeda's operations in Afghanistan were
merely a sideshow for their main base in Pakistan. Attacking Islamist
extremism was clearly not a priority of the U.S. airwar, as demonstrated by
strategies that were almost guaranteed to ensure Osama bin Laden's escape.
Why then, Rall and many other Americans wondered, did the U.S. really invade
Afghanistan?

Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Invasion of Afghanistan ties together
the loose threads to form a searing indictment against the Bush
Administration: that the world's richest nation launched a devastating war
against its poorest, killing more than 15,000 Afghans and Americans, for
reasons that had nothing to do with Islamist terrorism, September 11, or
safeguarding the American people.

Beginning with the rise of the Taliban in 1995-6, the United States and
various oil companies, including California's Unocal Corporation, began
planning to build an oil and natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan. The
idea was to bring oil and gas from the landlocked former Soviet republics of
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to ports on the Indian Ocean. While
all three countries had huge reserves, Kazakhstan hit the motherlode in 1999,
finding oil reserves that are now estimated to be as high as six times those
of Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest producer.

The shortest route for a pipeline from Kazakhstan's Caspian Sea strike to the
ocean runs through Iran, but that country is currently subject to United
States-backed trade sanctions. The second-shortest route runs across
Afghanistan, but the instability and internal volatility of the Taliban
leadership made that project difficult to justify financing throughout the
late 1990s.

Nonetheless, the health of the United States economy is predicated on access
to low-cost energy. Since U.S. interests require high production at all
times, both the Clinton and Bush Administrations worked hard with the Taliban
to try to build Unocal's pipeline.

After September 11, 2001, the Bush Administration decided not to avenge the
deaths in New York and Washington, but rather to use the attacks as an excuse
to invade Afghanistan, establish a U.S. puppet government in Kabul and begin
construction of the pipeline that would carry Central Asian oil and gas to
market. Mainstream and conservative journalists and pundits ridiculed those
who referenced these plans as "conspiracy theorists," yet the facts--as
reported in those same mainstream and conservative publications and media
outlets--prove that the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline project was and is the
true motivation for American involvement in Afghanistan.

Ted Rall's extensive research, thoroughly footnoted and referenced and
including maps and charts explaining the New Great Game over Central Asian
oil and gas, proves that the "war on terrorism" has, so far, been little more
than an old-fashioned energy grab. It proves that the United States is not
only failing to make Americans safer, it is actually putting them at risk.
It demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the excuses given by
President Bush to attack Afghanistan--avenging 9/11, liberating Afghan women,
reducing the risk from Al Qaeda--were bald-faced lies. And now, as the U.S.
prepares to invade yet another energy-rich nation with no ties to Islamist
terrorism--Iraq--it is absolutely vital to examine exactly how and why
American foreign policy has become motivated by a doctrine of "total energy
dominance."

Certain to be one of the most controversial books of 2003, Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Invasion of Afghanistan</>, is the one book George W. Bush does not
want you to read.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780595261758
Publisher: iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date: 12/11/2002
Edition number: 0
Pages: 136
Product dimensions: 8.06 (w) x 7.90 (h) x 0.39 (d)

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Anonymous

Posted September 16, 2003

NOTHING BUT FANTASY

TRY REAL HARD TO FIND SOME HARD HITTING DATA: YOU WON'T. NOT ALOT GETS BACKED UP HERE, LOTS OF THEORIES AND OPINIONS BUT IT JUST DOES'NT JIVE W/ THE FACTS THAT WE DO KNOW TO BE TRUE. FICTION READ....
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Gas War: The Truth Behind the American Occupation of Afghanistan

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NOTHING BUT FANTASY