"The Vulcan's Path to The Caspian Sea Basin"

So it really was all about pipelines (and oil) and who controls the petrol in the 21st century, which must have signified a nifty bridge back to the 20th c., built over the bones of those who had to die for its construction (but that's just unimportant collateral damage (courtesy of our treasure of a VP (DC))). The Vulcans, gods of fire and metalworking, are the savvy players of whom you need to know but little background (according to the MSM). The following essay only reminds me of what I've undoubtedly purposely (due to its soul-disturbing nature) forgotten from the days immediately after 9/11. One of my students at Elon University approached me and asked if he could make a presentation on the proposed pipeline in Afghanistan that had been vetoed by the Taliban, who were being portrayed as enablers of the newly infamous and dreaded al Qaeda (actually having names of members supplied to the media by the Bush Administration within hours of the 9/11 attack). I told him that I, personally, would like nothing better, but I was worried that my faculty advisers would take issue with why we were covering this topic in a sales, marketing and management course for sports managers. (My rationale for covering the international business news of the time had been that managers are affected by international events that cause economic chaos, and thus, an influx of immigration, knowledge of which would only make one a better manager.) If I'd only known. I could have been thrown out of there for a really good reason. But, back to the future. More than 10 days before the Democratic Convention's opening night of hopes and dreams for an enlightened American future, Scott Creighton had already published an essay in OpEd News that will quickly dispel any good thoughts for that future which you might presently be entertaining. At the end of his most intriguing/heart-convulsing narrative, he gives a timeline of events that puts to rest any idea one may have of a history of odd coincidences concerning the exploitation of the energy reserves of various countries in Asia and the Middle East. It's almost too pat a story to be believable. But after reading it, I dare you to tell me that at least 50% of this thriller isn't dead on. Oh, and I can't help thinking back to the guy who said something along the lines of (and I'm paraphrasing here) "You people keep talking about history and we'll be making real changes that affect history in such a massive way that it changes the paradigm." At this juncture it seems almost impossible to be able to catch up with this nuclear-armed paradigm change. (Emphasis marks were added and some editing was done to ensure legibility.) ____________________________________

OpEd News August 14, 2008 at 23:16:51 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Iran, and Pakistan; The Vulcan's Path to The Caspian Sea Basin Scott Creighton One of the first things this administration did was meet with Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force in early 2001. Those meetings were kept secret and they have refused to disclose who was actually there, and what was discussed. We all know that. (An aside from the editor - In the Wiki reference we find this bit of news: "On July 18, 2007, the Washington Post reported the names of those involved in the Task Force, including at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. Among those in the meetings were James J. Rouse, then vice president of Exxon Mobil and a major donor to the Bush inauguration; Kenneth L. Lay, then head of Enron Corp.; Jack N. Gerard, then with the National Mining Association; Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute; and Eli Bebout, an old friend of Cheney's from Wyoming who serves in the state Senate and owns an oil and drilling company.") “The Washington Post reported on November 15, 2005 that it had obtained documents detailing how executives from major oil corporations, including Exxon-Mobil Corp., Conoco, Royal Dutch Shell Oil Corp., and the American subsidiary of British Petroleum met with Energy Task Force participants while they were developing national energy policy." Wiki One thing MOST don’t know, is that Ted Olsen defended the Vice President’s office in keeping these meetings secret before the Supreme Court. Olsen ALSO represented this administration in their bid to stop the recount in Florida, thus putting this administration in the White House. AND, his wife was on one of the planes during 9/11, and is the only one on record (according to Ted Olsen, since it was really HIS testimony ABOUT the phone calls (that the FBI in the case against the “20th hijacker” said didn’t happen) from Barbara) that established the whole “box-cutters” theme. (Ed's aside - Olsen defended President Reagan during the Iran-Contra affair, was asked by someone to act as attorney for convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard while he was in private practice, was nominated to the Office of Solicitor General by President Bush on February 14, 2001, was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 24, 2001 and took office on June 11, 2001.) Curious isn’t it? How ONE man is so intertwined in the whole story line. What don’t we know? One of the next things they did was meet with the Taliban, also in early 2001. You see, the oil companies that Bush, Rice, Perle, Cheney and MANY others in this administration, really work for, wanted a pipeline to span (Ed.'s note - "The Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (TAP or TAPI) is a proposed natural gas pipeline being developed by the Asian Development Bank. The pipeline will transport Caspian Sea natural gas from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan into Pakistan and then to India. Proponents of the project see it as a modern continuation of the Silk Road. The Afghan government is expected to receive 8% of the project's revenue.") from the new Mecca of oil reserves (Capsian Sea Basin) to the developing markets in South East Asia. They had been talking about it for years till the talks fell apart. Well, it seems the Taliban didn’t want what BushCo was selling in Jan. of 2001.

(Ed.'s aside - "Bush-Cheney/Big Oil and Afghanistan's Taliban negotiated for MONTHS over running a Caspian Sea oil pipeline through Afghanistan. Talks began in February and continued right on until only one MONTH before New York City's World Trade Center towers were demolished. DURING the course of these negotiations, the two parties were unable to agree upon a deal, MAINLY because Bush/Big Oil agents constantly upped the ante on the rather naive Taliban representatives: playing intimidation, bait & switch, and "shell" games relentlessly. The Taliban negotiators, understandably, became distrustful of the entire process, and less and less confident they were being dealt with in good faith. In the beginning of August, the Bush administration and its Big Oil cohorts delivered what amounted to an ultimatum to the Taliban. The Taliban representatives were reportedly told by Bush/Big Oil: Accept our offer of "a carpet of gold or you'll get a carpet of bombs." That's a DIRECT quote, according to French authors Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, who've just written a thoroughly-researched and heavily-documented book about the entire extraordinary business titled "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth" ALSO revealed in the book is the fact that BUSH HIMSELF directly ordered the FBI and other U.S. law enforcement groups to BACK OFF on TERRORIST-RELATED INVESTIGATIONS while the oil pipeline negotiations were underway! In FACT, the FBI's Deputy Director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over this outrageous and intolerable obstruction. And by the way: the whereabouts of one OSAMA BIN LADEN, then already firmly entrenched at the very top of the US's 'most-wanted terrorist' list during the entire course of these pipeline negotiations, was NEVER an issue with the Bush cartel. Never ONCE were the Taliban urged to hand bin Laden over for all those OTHER horrendous crimes Feds maintain bin Laden has been charged with committing over the years. And SO: barely a MONTH after the Bush administration sabotaged the negotiations with the Taliban regarding running the Caspian Sea oil pipeline through Afghanistan, the World Trade Center towers are bombed into oblivion, bringing about the currently ongoing UNDECLARED (and therefore illegal) 'war on terrorism'...that just HAPPENS to be directed at the Taliban in Afghanistan. The WTC was bombed -- according to Feds -- by the VERY SAME Osama bin Laden whom the very same Bush administration was so UNCONCERNED ABOUT during those JUST-WRECKED talks with the Taliban. NO ONE but the bush administration and their Big Oil allies/accomplices -- not the Taliban, not the Palestinians, not ANY other nation whether Islamic or otherwise -- not any other group, agency, force or faction on Earth stood to "GAIN" from the destruction of the World Trade Center which occurred only ONE MONTH after talks between the Bush administration and the Taliban fell apart due to outrageous threats and intimidation by Bush/Big Oil 'negotiators.')

So here we are folks. Think about the statement that Treasury Secretary (Paul) O’Neil made when he said that at the very first NSA meeting, the President was telling everyone that he wanted a reason to go into Iraq. Right off the bat. Now we know they forged papers, and threats with the help of Cheney’s Office of Special Plans. We know they lied 935 times to us in the press. We know they lied at the State of the Union Address. We know they handed off no-bid cost-plus contracts and divided up Iraq’s oil between those 4 companies… All that we know. But what the “progressive” media talking heads DON'T seem to know is that there was a reason that at that first NSA meeting, O’Neil didn’t hear talk about finding a way to get into Afghanistan… you see, they already had a plan for that. Rice’s “foreign policy” team had been working on that since ‘98 in George P. Shultz’s (life-long subordinate to D(avid) Rockefeller of Exxon Mobile and JP Morgan Chase fame) living room with the likes of Cheney and Wolfowitz, Perle (In July 2008, The Wall Street Journal reported that Perle had made plans to invest in oil interests in Iraq, in collaboration with Iraqi Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq) and Stephen Hadley. Was that it? Not quite. There was also Dov S. Zakheim; a man, who at the time, headed System Planning Corporation, a company that made . . . remote control systems for airliners to be used by the US Department of Defense for targeting practice of planes. That’s right; one member of the neo-con group The Vulcans, actually had access to systems that could fly 757’s by remote control. (Ed.'s note - Zakheim "served in various Department of Defense posts during the Reagan administration, including Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Planning and Resources from 1985 to 1987. As an Orthodox Jew, he gained notoriety for his involvement in ending the Israeli fighter program, the IAI Lavi. He argued that Israeli and U.S. interests would be best served by having Israel purchase F-16 fighters, rather than investing in an entirely new aircraft. . . . He was an Adjunct Scholar of the Heritage Foundation . . . (and) a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.") Then, as fate would have it, in 2001, Dov took a job with Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, where he became THE GUY responsible for finding out what happened to the $2 trillion dollars that Rumsfeld announced was missing, on Sept. 10th, 2001. Small world, huh? (As it just so happens, it was that specific office that was hit on Sept. 11th. One day later.) So you see? The bountiful prize of the Caspian Sea Basin, a place where the oil companies are already heavily invested, lies dead-center at the heart of what is happening in America right now. But they aren’t going there to prop-up our security as a nation. Just look at what has happened to the price of crude since 9/11. No, they aren’t interested in securing reserves to protect the “American Way of Life”. They are only interested in producing vast sums of wealth and power that will last for generations to come. What follows is a brief history of the War for Oil situation in the Middle East. It comes from here. I want you to pay careful attention to the entry about the offshoot Georgia Republic and its pipeline that runs thru it. That pipeline , called Western Early, is of key importance to Exxon and Chevron, who, by the way, are already setting up shop in the Caspian Sea. That Pipeline is important to move oil and gas reserves from the Caspian to the Black Sea. So, once again, we are involved in yet another war for oil. Most people just don’t know it yet. Think Iran is about nukes? Guess again. How could this criminal regime go thru all of this, just to allow Iran to finish construction of their pipeline that will do the same thing as the proposed Trans Afghan Pipeline, only faster and more directly? They couldn’t, because then there will be competition to move the Caspian Sea reserves to the ships waiting in the Gulf, so… guess what? When the bombs start flying you can bet your bottom dollar these areas will be strategical(ly) taken out, damaging the pipeline, and crippling a vast source of revenue for the Iranians. So, as we sit back waiting for Obama to save us; as we pat ourselves on the back telling each other just how incompetent this administration really is, I want you to know, at some point, just how much we have misunderstood the real foreign policy set so long ago by a group of heavily invested oil-barrons. (Click here for the table containing A Timeline of Oil and Violence.)

Still enjoying the Convention? Suzan ___________________________