Whoopee! Yippee Skippy!
More plunder for the Empire Builders. Now we can smile because all those dead people will not have died in vain. The Mega Rich will not only profit from the rape and plunder of innocent people, but they have hit the big lotto winner, too. God sure looks out for His people, doesn't He?
Curious Carl
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Afghanistan is rich – maybe the new Saudi Arabia.
In a stunning discovery sure to drastically shift Afghanistan's fortunes and fundamentally transform the U.S.-backed war against the Taliban, the United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in dirt-poor Afghanistan, the New York Times reported Sunday night. Citing U.S. officials and internal Pentagon documents, the Times reported that the newly discovered mineral deposits include massive amounts of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium, a critical element in everything from laptop batteries to aircraft parts and pharmaceuticals. Unearthed by a small team of Pentagon officials and civilian geologists working in strict secrecy, the discoveries are certain to dwarf Afghanistan's current chief moneymaker, opium.
"There is stunning potential here," Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, told the Times in an interview on Saturday. "There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant."
The discovery of untold mineral wealth in a country struggling with chronic poverty, a 12th-century standard of living, a weak government and rampant corruption, is sure to be explosive. Afghan President Hamid Karzai is widely seen by senior U.S. military and diplomatic officials as weak, corrupt and unpredictable, making it difficult to judge how he would handle a sudden influx of immense wealth. It is also likely the Taliban and its al-Qaeda backers will fight harder to overthrow the Karzai government, sensing perhaps that an undreamed of opportunity -- the establishment of a wealthy and radical Islamist state -- lies almost within its grasp.
With billions of dollars at stake, the mineral discoveries are also likely to spark an international scramble for mining rights. China already is a major player, currently developing the world's largest copper mine south of Kabul. In a deal reached with the Karzai government last year, China is also building railroads and a power plant to serve the Aynak copper field. Critics of the nine-year U.S. involvement in Afghanistan -- and they are rampant from Pakistan to Peoria -- are certain to seize on the news as proof of dark ulterior American motives for investing blood and treasure in the backward state. In neighboring Pakistan, in particular, public opinion polls have long demonstrated a deep public suspicion about why the United States is so deeply involved in Afghanistan.
This will be an "aha'' moment for those convinced that the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 in order to get its oil. With virtually no viable government ministries or civilian expertise to handle exploitation of the huge new mineral fields, a Pentagon task force is assisting the Afghan government by bringing in international consulting firms to assemble technical data with the expectation that Kabul could start taking bids for mineral rights by next fall, the Times said it was told by U.S. officials. Promising hints of big mineral deposits were turned up during the 1980s by Afghan geologists, but the war with the Soviet army and the ensuring civil war among Afghan insurgent groups meant these findings were not pursued.
But in 2004, a team of technical experts from the U.S. Geological Survey began re-examining the earlier findings and working with old Russian maps to locate promising mineral fields. In 2006, with promising results, the team was joined by Pentagon officials, working with airborne magnetometers and other sensors that gave them access to potential mineral fields in Afghanistan's rugged mountains that had never before been mapped in detail. Last year, the Times said, a Pentagon business development team that had worked in Iraq to help restart that country's oil and other industries was transferred to Afghanistan -- and came across the promising data from the mineral surveys.
Both President Karzai and Defense Secretary Robert Gates have been briefed on the discoveries, the Times said. "On the ground, it's very, very, promising," Jack Medlin, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey's international affairs division, told the Times. "Actually, it's pretty amazing,'' he said.
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