Another Inconvenient Truth: Bin Laden is Dead

If Benazir Bhutto was correct then Bin Laden is dead. If Bin Laden is dead, he can't make tapes. If Bin Laden is dead, everything the US government has said about bin Laden is either wrong, mistaken, or, most probably, a bald-faced lie. If Bin Laden is dead, then everything Bush has been telling you about the war on terrorism over several years is either wrong or a lie or both. In any case, there was never any hard evidence linking Bin Laden to the events of 911!

If Binny can't make tapes, Bush cannot exploit them to wage a "war" about which he has never told the truth.

A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded without supporting evidence, that "Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation were prime suspects". CIA Director George Tenet stated that bin Laden has the capacity to plan ``multiple attacks with little or no warning.'' Secretary of State Colin Powell called the attacks "an act of war" and President Bush confirmed in an evening televised address to the Nation that he would "make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them". Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointed his finger at "state sponsorship," implying the complicity of one or more foreign governments. In the words of former National Security Adviser, Lawrence Eagleburger, "I think we will show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution."

Meanwhile, parroting official statements, the Western media mantra has approved the launching of "punitive actions" directed against civilian targets in the Middle East. In the words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times: "When we reasonably determine our attackers' bases and camps, we must pulverize them -- minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage" -- and act overtly or covertly to destabilize terror's national hosts".

-- Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, Who Is Osama Bin Laden?

The news that Bin Laden is dead is an inconvenient truth. The Bush administration had much more than money invested in Bin Laden. Bushco had built around Osama an "evil empire" worthy of a James Bond film --The World is Not Enough, the story of oil, intrigue and pipelines.

Sir Robert King, a British oil tycoon and close friend of M, is killed by a bomb attack inside MI6 Headquarters. The assassin was working under orders from Renard, an international terrorist who survived an assassination attempt by 009 and is continually gaining strength as the bullet eliminates his senses of pain and touch before inevitably killing him. James Bond uses an unfinished Q Boat created by his ally Q and chases the killer until she commits suicide.

M assigns to protect King's daughter, Elektra; Renard previously abducted and held Elektra for ransom, and it is believed that he has once again targeted her. Elektra assumes control of her father's business at a pivotal time, overseeing construction of an oil pipeline that would travel through the Caucasus, from the Caspian Sea to Turkey.

--The World Is Not Enough, 1999, Synopsis by Wikipedia

The non-fiction version was already afoot even as the motion picture moguls were writing the script for The World is Not Enough.

Despite complex geopolitics and considerable risks, major oil companies have been acquiring development rights and preparing for production since the early 1990s. Offshore drilling operations are underway in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, and are set to commence elsewhere.

The majors have also invested significantly in the future construction of oil and gas pipelines to distant ports and refineries. By 2010, they expect to invest at least $50 billion in production and transportation.

The first big move was a joint venture between Chevron and Kazakhstan, signed in 1993 to develop the huge Tenzig oil field on the Caspian coast. Three years later, ExxonMobil purchased a 25 percent share. Another consortium focused on Azerbaijan’s offshore fields, with estimated reserves of 32 billion barrels of oil and 35 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the third largest potential regional source.

In 1994, BP Amoco, Lukoil, Unocal, Penzoil, Statoil, and others joined with Azerbaijan’s state oil company to form the Azerbaijan International Operating Company. Bush family adviser James A. Baker III, who spearheaded George W. Bush’s victory in the Florida election dispute, headed the law firm representing this consortium and sat on the U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce advisory council, as did Vice Pres. Dick Cheney before him. But before their investments could produce profits, roadblocks would have to be removed. The biggest was how to get the fuel to markets.

Prior to 9/11, the U.S. government’s preferred future route, known as the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) project, went from Azerbaijan through Georgia and then south to the Turkish coast. The goal was to reduce reliance on Russia and bring the southern Caucasus into the U.S. fold. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is a former director of Chevron, a lynchpin of the BTC consortium with extensive operations in Azerbaijan. Until 2000, Cheney was chief executive at Halliburton Co., named a finalist in 2001 to bid on engineering work in the Turkish sector.

--Toward Freedom, Oily footprints on the path to 9/11

Early on, it was easy to conclude that the real beneficiaries of a US adventure in Afghanistan would be the big oil consortium that had planned the pipeline across Afghanistan. In 1995, UNOCAL had apparently concluded a deal with Turkmenistan. Members of the Taliban met in the Houston suburb of Sugarland.

A senior delegation from the Taleban movement in Afghanistan is in the United States for talks with an international energy company that wants to construct a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.

A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.

Unocal says it has agreements both with Turkmenistan to sell its gas and with Pakistan to buy it.

[ image: The Afghan economy has been devasted by 20 years of civil war] The Afghan economy has been devasted by 20 years of civil war

But, despite the civil war in Afghanistan, Unocal has been in competition with an Argentinian firm, Bridas, to actually construct the pipeline.

Last month, the Argentinian firm, Bridas, announced that it was close to signing a two-billion dollar deal to build the pipeline, which would carry gas 1,300 kilometres from Turkmenistan to Pakistan, across Afghanistan.

In May, Taleban-controlled radio in Kabul said a visiting delegation from an Argentinian company had announced that pipeline construction would start "soon".

--BBC, Thursday, December 4, 1997 Published at 19:27 GMT

All would not go smoothly; Pakistan and Ahmed Shah Massoud's government in Afghanistan, meanwhile, had already signed a pipeline deal with an Argentinean company.

BBC - American government told other governments about Afghan invasion IN JULY 2001.

The wider objective was to oust the Taleban

By the BBC's George Arney

A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.

Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin. Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taleban leader, Mullah Omar.

The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taleban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah. Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.

He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby. Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.

He said that he was in no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks. And he said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taleban.

--US 'planned attack on Taleban', BBC

By July, 2001, the US State Department was reported to have been threatening the Taliban with carpet bombs.

U.S. Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil

By Julio Godoy, Inter Press Service

PARIS, Nov 15 (IPS) - Under the influence of U.S. oil companies, the government of George W. Bush initially blocked U.S. secret service investigations on terrorism, while it bargained with the Taliban the delivery of Osama bin Laden in exchange for political recognition and economic aid, two French intelligence analysts claim.

In the book ''Bin Laden, la verité interdite'' (''Bin Laden, the forbidden truth''), that appeared in Paris on Wednesday, the authors, Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie, reveal that the Federal Bureau of Investigation's deputy director John O'Neill resigned in July in protest over the obstruction.

Brisard claim O'Neill told them that ''the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it''. [emphasis mine, EC]

The two claim the U.S. government's main objective in Afghanistan was to consolidate the position of the Taliban regime to obtain access to the oil and gas reserves in Central Asia.

They affirm that until August, the U.S. government saw the Taliban regime ''as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of an oil pipeline across Central Asia'', from the rich oilfields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean.

Until now, says the book, ''the oil and gas reserves of Central Asia have been controlled by Russia. The Bush government wanted to change all that''.

But, confronted with Taliban's refusal to accept U.S. conditions, ''this rationale of energy security changed into a military one'', the authors claim.

''At one moment during the negotiations, the U.S. representatives told the Taliban, 'either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs','' Brisard said in an interview in Paris.

According to the book, the government of Bush began to negotiate with the Taliban immediately after coming into power in February. U.S. and Taliban diplomatic representatives met several times in Washington, Berlin and Islamabad.

To polish their image in the United States, the Taliban even employed a U.S. expert on public relations, Laila Helms. The authors claim that Helms is also an expert in the works of U.S. secret services, for her uncle, Richard Helms, is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

--US Policy Towards Taliban Influenced by Oil

The negotiations with the Taliban broke down. In that summer of 2001, the American people were distracted by the American media noise machine. See: All Condit All The Time". The US Government was informing other governments that the US would be at war in Afghanistan no later than October. The US timetable for war was set before 911 would conveniently provide the pretext. Pure luck? I don't think so.

Thoughtful folk were demonized for daring to raise the issue: how fortuitous, how convenient for Bush that Bin Laden would organize one of the most outrageous, the most unbelievable conspiracies in world history! Bin Laden would recruit and arrange to train a rag tag bunch of "terrorists". They would all but flunk lessons in how to fly puddle jumpers but would hone their airliner skills in a coin-operated simulator.

Nevermind the question of how they got on board airliners without showing up on flight manifests! Let's give the liar in the White House the benefit of the doubt. Nevermind that wreckage from four planes completely disappeared --the first and only time in history that such an improbable and incredible thing had ever happened outside David Copperfield's magic show. Nevermind that the space shuttle, by contrast, entered the stratosphere at speeds up to 10,000 miles per hour yet failed to pop through a wormhole into another dimension. Unlike Flight 77 which left not a trace, the Space Shuttle Columbia left wreckage and identifiable human body parts strewn over three states.

The only time in history that four planes completely vanished was on 911. How convenient for Bush!

How convenient for Bush that just when he is planning to invade and/or carpet bomb another country, he is given a pretext on a plate! How convenient for Bush that a "terrorist" attack occurs that could be pinned on Bin Laden!

How inconvenient it is for Bush now that Bin Laden has been dead for several years! How inconvenient for Bush that he cannot credibly roll out another fake tape with which to scare the beejeebers out of gullible Americans!

An essential resource: Election 2004: The Urban Legend by Michael Collins

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