I did some reading today.
http://money.cnn.com/2003/05/05/news...htel/index.htm
(from May 2003) Bechtel Corp., a private construction firm based in San Francisco, recently was awarded a State Department contract, potentially worth more than $600 million, to help rebuild Iraq's infrastructure after the recent U.S.-led war there….
According to an article in the May 5 issue of New Yorker magazine, several bin Laden family members -- part of a large, Saudi Arabian family that made a fortune in the construction business -- invested about $10 million in a private equity fund operated by former subsidiary of Bechtel before Sept. 11.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/NEW304A.html
(from 4/6/03) Directors of one of the world’s largest armament companies are planning on meeting in Lisbon in three weeks time. The American based Carlyle Group is heavily involved in supplying arms to the Coalition forces fighting in the Iraqi war. The 12 billion dollar company has recently signed contracts with United Defence Industries to equip the Turkish and Saudi Arabian armies with aviation defence systems.
Top of the meeting’s agenda is expected to be the company’s involvement in the rebuilding of Baghdad’s infrastructure after the cessation of current hostilities. Along with several other US companies, the Carlyle Group is expected to be awarded a billion dollar contract by the US Government to help in the redevelopment of airfields and urban areas destroyed by Coalition aerial bombardments.
The Group is managed by a team of former US Government personnel including its president Frank Carlucci, former deputy director of the CIA before becoming Defence Secretary. His deputy is James Baker II, who was Secretary of State under George Bush senior. Several high profile former politicians are employed to represent the company overseas, among them John Major, former British Prime Minister, along with George Bush senior, one time CIA director before becoming US President.
The financial assets of the Saudi Binladen Corporation (SBC) are also managed by the Carlyle Group. The SBC is headed up by members of Osama bin Laden’s family, who played a principle role in helping George W. Bush win petroleum concessions from Bahrain when he was head of the Texan oil company, Harken Energy Corporation - a deal that was to make the Bush family millions of dollars. Salem, Osama bin Laden’s brother, was represented on Harken’s board of directors… The connection between the Bush and bin Laden families can also be traced to the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in the 1990s.
The Portugal News has been told by a reliable source that the Carlyle Group meeting in Lisbon will discuss the relationship between the Saudi Binladen Corporation (SBC) and Osama bin Laden. Many US officials claim that the SBC continues to finance his political activities, and has done so for many years. If true, this would place George Bush senior and his colleagues at the Carlyle Group in an embarrassing position. As managers of SBC’s financial investments they might well be accused of indirectly aiding and abetting the United States’ number one enemy.
http://www.hereinreality.com/carlyle.html
The offices of the Carlyle Group are on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, midway between the White House and the Capitol building, and within a stone's throw of the headquarters of the FBI and numerous government departments. The address reflects Carlyle's position at the very center of the Washington establishment…. since the start of the "war on terrorism", the firm - unofficially valued at $13.5bn - has taken on an added significance. Carlyle has become the thread which indirectly links American military policy in Afghanistan to the personal financial fortunes of its celebrity employees, not least the current president's father. And, until earlier this month, Carlyle provided another curious link to the Afghan crisis: among the firm's multi-million-dollar investors were members of the family of Osama bin Laden.
In running what its own marketing literature spookily calls "a vast, interlocking, global network of businesses and investment professionals" that operates within the so-called iron triangle of industry, government, and the military, the Carlyle Group leaves itself open to any number of conflicts of interest and stunning ironies. For example, it is hard to ignore the fact that Osama bin Laden's family members, who renounced their son ten years ago, stood to gain financially from the war being waged against him until late October, when public criticism of the relationship forced them to liquidate their holdings in the firm. Or consider that U.S. president George W. Bush is in a position to make budgetary decisions that could pad his father's bank account.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/1685.shtml
The former president, the father of President Bush, worked for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlyle Group, meeting with them at least twice. The terrorist leader Osama bin Laden had supposedly been “disowned” by his family, which runs a multi-billion dollar business in Saudi Arabia and was a major investor in the senior Bush’s firm. Other reports have stated his Saudi family have not truly cut off Osama bin Laden.
In the wake of Judicial Watch and other criticism of its ties to the bin Laden family business, the Carlyle Group reportedly no longer does business with the bin Laden conglomerate. Yet the Group, among other conflicts of interest, reportedly has a major business relationship with the Saudi Arabian government, which many have criticized for its lack of cooperation in America’s war on terrorism and its financial and other support for terrorist attacks on Israel and U.S. interests.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...-senate-report
Rumsfeld let bin Laden escape?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worl....html#comments
-- This is an account by “Dalton Fury,” special forces commander at Tora Bora, who recounts orders from” higher up” to not seal off all possible escape routes for bin Laden. I think he was on "60 Minutes" a year ago, probably in silhouette and disguised voice, although I didn't see it.
And then of course there was Bush’s dismissive response a couple years back when questioned about bin Laden—“I just don’t spend that much time on him.”
It all makes one think, doesn’t it? Or it should. And this is only the Big Defense side of it. Big Oil is certainly interested in these ventures too, wouldn't you say? I realize this might all be "old news" to some people (at least peripherally), and I realize Michael Moore was the target of a huge smear campaign when he spelled out these sketchy connections in F-911 (a few specific objections somewhat justified perhaps), but in my opinion it all deserves another mention and a second look. And third and fourth. And I realize many will dismiss all of this information as "conspiracy ravings" or something-- it only looks suspicious but really isn't, we're only dealing with a series of unfortunate coincidences. Man, that's an awful lot of "coincidences."
And again, even if this could all be properly investigated and a conspiracy of some degree proven, I've no doubt some people would be okay with fighting these wars primarily for mega interests if there's a chance "some good could come out of it." I suppose one could argue from that POV. I don't think I could go there however. I do think we should approach this ever shape-shifting "War on Terror" with our eyes a little more open, draw our own conclusions (not FOX's conclusions) and then tell our leaders what we think.
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As for the Taliban and bin Laden, here is some information I ran across that I hadn't heard about:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/19/tal...nts/index.html
Interesting link about US-Taliban negotiations at the end of 1998.
According to the documents, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan, Alan Eastham Jr., met with Wakil Ahmed, a close aide to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, in November and December 1998. During a meeting between Ahmed and Eastham on November 28, 1998, just days after the Taliban's supreme court cleared bin Laden of terrorist activities, Ahmed said one possibility "would be for the U.S. to kill him or arrange for bin Laden to be assassinated."
Ahmed "said that the U.S., if it chose to do so, could arrange to have bin Laden killed by cruise missiles or other means, and there would be little the Taliban could do to prevent it," according to the documents. Ahmed also noted that expelling bin Laden likely would result in the Taliban regime being overthrown, according to the documents. Ahmed said that the Afghan people "would not understand why the Taliban had expelled a man who was regarded as a 'great mujahid,' or Islamic fighter, during the war against the Soviets. They would reject the Taliban if the Taliban took this action."
And while Ahmed suggested a possible assassination of bin Laden, he also "urged the U.S. not to bomb Afghanistan again" as Washington did in the weeks following the embassy bombings.
http://www.infowars.com/saved%20page...et_taliban.htm
More about meetings with the Taliban:
Taliban representatives repeatedly suggested they would hand over bin Laden if their conditions were met, sources close to the discussions said. The exchanges lie at the heart of a long and largely untold history of diplomatic efforts between the State Department and Afghanistan's ruling regime. In interviews, U.S. participants and sources close to the Taliban discussed the exchanges in detail and debated whether the State Department should have been more flexible in its hard-line stance.
Some Afghan experts argue that throughout the negotiations, the United States never recognized the Taliban need for aabroh, the Pashtu word for "face-saving formula." Officials never found a way to ease the Taliban's fear of embarrassment if it turned over a fellow Muslim to an "infidel" Western power. "We were not serious about the whole thing, not only this administration but the previous one," said Richard Hrair Dekmejian, an expert in Islamic fundamentalism and author at the University of Southern California. "We did not engage these people creatively. There were missed opportunities." U.S. officials struggled to communicate with Muslim clerics unfamiliar with modern diplomacy and distrustful of the Western world, and they failed to take advantage of fractures in the Taliban leadership. "We never heard what they were trying to say," said Milton Bearden, a former CIA station chief who oversaw U.S. covert operations in Afghanistan in the 1980s. "We had no common language. Ours was, 'Give up bin Laden.' They were saying, 'Do something to help us give him up.'"
On Feb. 3, 1999, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Karl E. Inderfurth, the Clinton administration's point man for talks with the Taliban, and Michael Sheehan, State Department counterterrorism chief, went to Islamabad to deliver a stern message to the Taliban's deputy foreign minister, Abdul Jalil: The United States henceforth would hold the Taliban responsible for any terrorist act by bin Laden.
By that time, bin Laden had been indicted for his alleged role in the embassy bombings. The officials reviewed the indictment in detail with the Taliban and offered to provide more evidence if the Taliban sent a delegation to New York. The Taliban did not do so. Immediately after the U.S. warning, Taliban security forces took bin Laden from his Kandahar compound and spirited him away to a remote site, according to media reports at the time. They also seized his satellite communications and barred him from contact with the media. Publicly, the Taliban said they no longer knew where he was.
Inderfurth now says the United States interpreted such statements "as an effort to evade their responsibility to turn him over." Others, however, say the cryptic statements should have been interpreted differently. Bearden, for example, believes the Taliban more than once set up bin Laden for capture by the United States and communicated its intent by saying he was lost. "Every time the Afghans said, 'He's lost again,' they are saying something. They are saying, 'He's no longer under our protection,' " Bearden said. "They thought they were signaling us subtly, and we don't do signals."
Interesting facts and ideas noted above. To be fair, the article says the State Department reached a point where they deemed the Taliban evasive, and simply didn’t believe the Taliban were serious about their offers, but still, you have to wonder. And of course, we all know that the Taliban offered to hand over bin Laden in Oct. 2001 if given proof he was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
It's the proclaimed "security" angle of this war I challenge. I fail to see how propping up Karzai's terrible regime as a US client state does much to weaken al Qaeda overall, which has morphed into a much more global network that does not rely on a central physical base. I questioned the Afghanistan invasion eight years ago only mildly, in a fog of the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, as we all were, but I question the escalation more strongly now. "Security"-wise, I think resources could be better spent elsewhere, and with less loss of life.
If you want to argue from the human rights angle, then it's hard for me to dispute that, except to note Afghanistan is far from the only human rights offender in the region, and probably not the worst, even under Taliban rule. If the US wants to start a militarized human rights campaign, then one might argue such a policy is justifiable under certain circumstances. But I'd want it above board and with the people's consent (this is supposed to be a representative democracy, right?), and I'd want a more coherent and consistent strategy mapped out.
good question!, (and I´m not thinking only in yours at this precise moment!)
