Taliban Oil
Al Jazeera (2015)
Film Review
Taliban Oil is a documentary about secret negotiations between Unocal and the Taliban to build a pipeline transporting natural gas from Turkmenistan to Pakistan and India – via Afghanistan. It features interviews with the former president of Unocal (who entertained Taliban leaders in his home in Sugarland Texas), a female Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) operative who lost her security clearance for a report warning the Clinton administration for a against US collaboration with the Taliban.
This film contradicts the conventional wisdom that the US invaded Afghanistan because the Taliban refused to build the Unocal pipeline. Filmmakers maintain it was Unocal who canceled the pipeline project. Already by the late nineties, Afghanistan was suffering the ravages of a 20-years of civil war – the Taliban were extremely keen to use the $400 million/year transit fees for reconstruction. The Clinton administration was also heavily promoting the pipeline deal, arranging for Taliban leaders to meet with the State Department, CIA and NSA.
Unocal reportedly withdrew from the deal in 1998, after suicide bombers blew up US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania. Clinton blamed the suicide bombing on Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden, who was operating jihadist training camps in Afghanistan.
In addition to attacking various training camps with cruise missiles, Clinton made 30 separate requests for the Taliban to extradite bin Laden to the US. Although supreme Taliban leader Mullah Omar opposed the training camps, bin Laden was a national hero for his role in expelling the Soviets. It would have brought great shame on the Taliban leadership to hand him over to the Americans. .
In 2001 George W Bush and Dick Cheney reiterated the requests for bin Laden’s extradition, while simultaneously making deals for their own petroleum companies to build the pipeline.
Rejecting the Taliban’s offer to expel bin Laden to a third country, in summer 2001 the Bush administration made plans to invade Afghanistan in mid-autumn. One source* quoted in the film states the jihadists were aware of the impending attack and decided to launch a preemptive strike on the Twin Towers.
*For documentation filmmakers provide an old YouTube clip from Adam Gaddan, the Jewish-born “American” al-Qaeda spokesperson. Gaddan has long been suspected of either Israeli or US intelligence links.
The Most Revolutionary Act 
Reblogged this on The Narrow Edge.
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Why invade Afghanistan? I thought bin laden was hiding out in Pakistan. That was what the reasoning was behind the fake vaccination program in Pakistan, supposedly to get at bin laden.
CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden’s family DNA
“Senior Pakistani doctor who organised vaccine programme in Abbottabad arrested by ISI for working with US agents.
The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama bin Laden was hiding in an elaborate attempt to obtain DNA from the fugitive al-Qaida leader’s family, a Guardian investigation has found.
As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the “project” in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/11/cia-fake-vaccinations-osama-bin-ladens-dna
The U.S. has much to answer for. The shame of it is, it won’t. Giving fake vaccines to children, stealing opium out of Afghanistan, murdering Afghani civilians, invading Iraq over lies of WMDs and the list is endless and now America is descending into chaos, but the problem is, the poor will go down first. Those who set this mess in motion are still to get off scot-free.
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I think historian Alfred McCoy gave the best explanation of why we invaded Afghanistan in the book In the Shadows of the American Empire – if you’re an empire and you want to control the whole world you must control the Central Asian landmass. Britain and Russia have been battling over control of Afghanistan for centuries – Rudyard Kipling referred to it as The Great Game in the book Kim. In the 21st century, US has simply supplanted Britain (or tried to – they have failed miserably).
I think the whole bin Laden assassination story was a fairy tale – like nearly everything else we’re told about the war on terror. I agree with David Ray Griffin’s book Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? – that bin Laden died of kidney failure in 2001, after denying any responsibility for 9-11. Griffin has assembled extremely strong evidence that bin Laden died of kidney failure in Dec 2001 – after denying any responsibility for the Twin Tower attacks. And that all subsequent bin Laden audio and videotapes were forgeries.
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I can believe that! Because I stated at the time that no Seal Team 6 had found bin Laden hiding out in what amounted to a cave with a 10 inch television hooked up via extension cords. The man was son of a billionaire and was at one time, I believe, rubbing shoulders with those who later denounced him in America. “Fake News” continues to rear its ugly head.
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