Political Quotes

“I yield myself 3 minutes. One of the areas of concern that I have about our presence in Afghanistan that I haven't seen discussed that much deals with the role of oil and gas, particularly in Afghanistan. Paul Craig Roberts, who was an Assistant Secretary of Treasury under the Reagan administration, reported in November of last year on a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who was fired from his job when he spoke out about documents he saw ``proving that the motivation for U.S. and U.K. military aggression in Afghanistan had something to do with the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.'' He continues, and these are his words, ``The Americans wanted a pipeline that bypassed Russia and Iran and went through Afghanistan. To ensure this, an invasion was necessary.'' I did some additional research on that and I found an article by Craig Murray where he claims that Mr. Karzai ``was put in place because of his role with Unocal in developing the Trans-Afghanistan Gas Pipeline project. That remains a chief strategic goal. The Asian Development Bank has agreed finance to start construction in spring, 2011. It is, of course, a total coincidence that 30,000 extra U.S. troops will arrive 6 months before, and that the U.S. (as opposed to other NATO forces) deployment area corresponds with the pipeline route.'' I have a map of the pipeline.…”