WASHINGTON: Acting on US tips, foreign intelligence services currently capture, interrogate and detain for the United States most terrorism suspects found outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, The New York Times reported on its website late Saturday.

Citing unnamed current and former US government officials, the newspaper said only the highest-level suspects represent an exception. In the past 10 months, about a half-dozen mid-level financiers and logistics experts working with the Al-Qaeda terror network have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Mid

Meanwhile with American foreign policy being to send overseas funding to other nations like Pakistan, H. Clinton is claiming that the funding we send them will not go towards expanding Pakistan's arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Is Pakistan bankrolling its nuclear expansion with American cash? Official Washington says no - but in a way that’s not particularly reassuring.

Last week, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made an alarming disclosure: Pakistan, he said, was building up its nuclear arsenal, even as the nation slides toward internal war.

That little snippet of intelligence could far-reaching implications. Since 9/11, the United States has provided around $10 billion in assistance to Pakistan; that figure includes around $80 million to $120 million per month in “coalition support funds,” which are supposed pay for keeping Pakistani troops on the frontier with Afghanistan

posted on 23-5-2009 @ 19:19

I just heard this on the radio.

This is not very good news as things often happen like this before a engagement.

Remember the assination in Viet Nam that took JFK by surprise according to McNamara.

Reminds me of this. The Korean front if opened would drain the US of its resources and the draft would open.

Remember we are still at war with Korea...North

Do not forget that weakening of USD is not caused by the genuine initiative of Russia, China and other countries - it is a reaction to weaknesses which America has developed due to its own misguided and feeble minded actions and loss of confidentiality.

The Enron-Cheney-Taliban Connection?
Ron Callari, Albion Monitor
February 28, 2002

Viewed on March 4, 2002

Enron is a scandal so enormous that it's hard to wrap your mind around it. Not just a single financial disaster, it's actually a jigsaw of interlocking scandals, each outrageous in its own right.

There's Enron the Wall St. con game, where company bookkeepers used slight of hand to turn four years of steady losses into stunning profits. There's Enron the reverse Robin Hood, which stole from its own employees even as its executives were hauling millions of dollars out the backdoor. There's Enron's Ken Lay the Kingmaker, who used the corporation's fraudulent wealth to broker elections and skew public policy to his liking. And then there are the Enron coverups, as documents are shredded and the White House seeks to conceal details about meetings between Enron and Vice President Cheney.

Could the Big Secret be that the highest levels of the Bush Administration knew during the summer of 2001 that the largest bankruptcy in history was imminent? Or was it that Enron and the White House were working closely with the Taliban -- including Osama bin Laden -- up to weeks before the Sept. 11 attack? Was a deal in Afghanistan part of a desperate last-ditch "end run" to bail out Enron? Here's a tip for Congressional investigators and federal prosecutors: Start by looking at the India deal. Closely.

Enter the Afghanistan connection.

Where the "Great Game" in Afghanistan was once about czars and commissars seeking access to the warm water ports of the Persian Gulf, today it is about laying oil and gas pipelines via the untapped petroleum reserves of Central Asia, a region previously dominated by the former Soviet Union, with strong influence from Iran and Pakistan. Studies have placed the total worth of oil and gas reserves in the Central Asian republics at between $3 and $6 trillion.

Who has access to that vast sea of oil? Right now the only existing export routes from the Caspian Basin lead through Russia. U.S. oil companies have longed dreamed of their own pipeline routes that will give them control of the oil and gas resources of the Caspian Sea. Likewise, the U.S. government also wants to dominate Central Asian oil in order to reduce dependency on resources from the Persian/Arabian Gulf, which it cannot control. Thus the U.S. is poised to challenge Russian hegemony in a new version of the "Great Game."

Construction of oil and natural gas export pipelines through Afghanistan was under serious consideration during the Clinton years. In 1996, Unocal -- one of the world's leading energy resource and project development companies -- won a contract to build a 1,005-mile oil pipeline in order to exploit the vast Turkmenistan natural gas fields in Duletabad. The pipeline would extend through Afghanistan and Pakistan, terminating in Multan, near the India border.

Enter the Taliban.

From 1997 to as late as August 2001, the U.S. government continued to negotiate with the Taliban, trying to find a stabilizing factor that would allow American oil ventures to proceed with this project without interference. To this end, in December 1997, Unocal invited the Taliban contingency to Texas to negotiate protection while the pipeline was under construction. At the end of their stay, the Afghan visitors were invited to Washington to meet with the government officials of the Clinton Administration.

But in August, 1998, terrorists linked to Osama bin Laden bombed two U.S. embassies in East Africa. After a few cruise missiles were fired into Afghanistan and the Pentagon boasted that we had disabled bin Laden's "terrorist network," Unocal said they were abandoning plans for a route through the country. But was such a potentially lucrative deal really dead?

Not hardly. Although Unocal had the largest share, the "Central Asian Gas Pipeline" (CentGas) consortium had six other partners, including companies in Saudi Arabia's Delta Oil Company -- the next largest shareholder with 15 percent -- and groups in Japan, Korea, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan. They vowed to continue the project, and had strong national interests in seeing the Afghanistan pipeline built.

Originally posted by Ben Niceknowinya
I mean, one thing that keeps bothering me is the simple fact that no other countries (besides) UK are involved here. I think (on our Administration's end) we could've made effort and request to get some help from other nations, afterall crude oil will benefit Eurpoean countires, as well.
Where's the UN nations?

NATO allies offer limp response to U.S. Afghan call

By David Brunnstrom and David Morgan

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he would not seek a specific number of additional NATO troops from a meeting of NATO defense ministers in the Polish city of Krakow.

But he said Washington would like to see a short-term deployment of troops to Afghanistan from the alliance's rapid response force, the NRF, which has never been utilized.

Originally posted by GAOTU789

Somewhere beneath the valley’s floor lies one of the world’s biggest untapped copper deposits, estimated to be worth up to $88_billion (£44 billion) – more than double Afghanistan’s entire gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007. In November, a 30-year lease was sold to the China Metallurgical Group for $3 billion, making it the biggest foreign investment and private business venture in Afghanistan’s history. Last week the Afghan Government approved the contract, clearing the way for the revival of an industry that dates back to Alexander the Great.

Let's not forget that China has interests within the area itself.

That is a lot of money.

Then there is the possibility that the Taliban may be getting some of there funding and weapons from Russia and China, along with rich Arabs sympathetic to there cause.

United States
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Egypt
People's Republic of China

A 'Copper Standard' for the world's currency system?
China Dumping Dollars For Copper
China's State Reserves Bureau (SRB) has instead been buying copper and other industrial metals over recent months on a scale that appears to go beyond the usual rebuilding of stocks for commercial reasons.

Here is an interesting video. They talk about the message that Obama sent to the Iranians and the discussion on the Iranian response it covers several issues that are going on presently. Everything from just how much influence does Israel have on the US government.

I say although Obamas message doesn't really have any teeth it does put a foot forward that may open negotiations for furthering of an open relation with Iran.
The Iranians seem to be taking a lets wait and see approach. Well worth a few minutes to view.

More at therealnews.com... Obama's unprecedented greeting to Iran is met with an unprecedented response by Grand Ayatollah Khamenei

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
Now here we sit the U.S. if for all intents and purposes bankrupt. We are heavily in debt to China. China is a nation that has rapidly developed because of American Business rapidly developing it. It is the most populated nation on earth; it will have the hungriest appetite for oil on earth. It is a nation devoid of religious ideologies and philosophies where the people see the State as the highest Legal, Moral and Spiritual Authority, where people have been taught to obey the absolute rule of law without question, that is neither Communist, nor Capitalist, but a finely developed and tuned hybrid of both.

Bangalore's rise to a world-recognized high tech center is no accident.

In 1947, after India won independence from Great Britain, the nation's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, designated Bangalore as the "city of the future" and the country's intellectual capital. The government made Bangalore the headquarters for its aerospace company and defense research labs. Engineering companies followed.

In 1984, Texas Instruments Inc. opened a development center in Bangalore, becoming the first multinational firm to enter India.

The turning point for the software industry came in 1992, when the government established a satellite earth station for high-speed communications. Suddenly, engineers in Bangalore could communicate instantaneously with U.S. colleagues and transmit huge computer files within seconds.

By 1998, at least 250 U.S. companies had set up operations in Bangalore. The count now is more than 1,000, including high-tech companies, financial institutions and pharmaceutical companies.

Only a sliver of Bangaloreans are getting in on the action, though.

Just off M G Road, the main business thoroughfare, slums of cardboard shacks line the streets. In the business district, a jewelry store is crowded with customers, but outside, naked children play near trash heaps and beg for coins. The city has 40,000 residents with doctorates, but more than a third of its population is illiterate. Even those riding the tech wave are experiencing the down side of boomtown Bangalore. City services are unable to keep up with demand. Water shortages and power outages are regular occurrences.