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Originally Posted by Kamui4356
Ok first off, and I've pointed this out to you before, Afghanistan does not have that much oil, nor do they have much of an oil industry. It's estimated there are 3.6 billion barrels of oil in Afghanistan. Now sure that sounds like a lot until you realize that the US alone consumes about 19.5 million barrels a day and the world as a whole consumes just over 85 million barrels of oil every day. In other words, Afghanistan only has enough oil to supply the US alone for 184 days or the world as a whole for 42 days. For comparison ANWR in the US is believed to have between 5.7 and 16.0 billion barrels of oil. The main argument against drilling for oil there is that it isn't worth the effort or disruption to the wildlife there. Yet, you're claiming the US killed 3000 of it's own people spent hundreds of billions of dollars on a war, which killed thousands more American soldiers and at a very minimum tens of thousands of Afghanis, all to get less oil then they could have gotten by simply drilling in Alaska and killing a few caribou, for a lot less money. Even if the US government cared more about not killing caribou then they did about not killing people, the US could still have simply bought more oil then Afghanistan is even thought to have for less then they spent on the war. In what way does Afghanistan being about oil make any sense at all? |
It does when you consider the Soviets were after it during the Cold War. Like Cyrus said, there are pipelines there with some of the world's largest oil and gas reserves. If the US has that, it can control the oil market in that area quite easily. Right now, it's only producing that much because the market there is underdeveloped, but it also has one of the greatest potentials along with cheap labor. Bush knew that, and he wanted to exploit that opportunity, go into Afghanistan and at the same time get rid of a potential threat there. That threat was Bin Laden. I'm sure you know that the US fought alongside Bin Laden against the Soviets. Osama wasn't going to give up Afghanistan without a fight, and Bush had to put pressure on him.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kamui4356
Second off, I have in the past linked you a point by point refutation of 9-11 conspiracy claims n this very thread. I'm not going to do that again, since obviously it didn't convince you. What I am going to do is ask you to think about what a conspiracy like that would involve. Think abut the number of low level people that would have to be involved to successfully pull off such a thing. Now, do you honestly believe that out of the hundreds of people who would need to be involved, not one of them has had second thoughts about it and blew the whistle?
What hatred? Prior to 9-11 Bush's approval ratings weren't great, but they weren't horrible either. Also, you're probably right that Bush should have done more before 9-11 to stop a terrorist attack. However, what you're actually arguing is that, assuming 9-11 wasn't done by the US, Bush knew it was going to happen and let it. However, your premise does not in any way support your conclusion. Knowing that there's a general threat of a terrorist attack does not mean you know of specifics that would allow you to successfully stop a specific attack against a specific target. Even if Bush had taken the threats more seriously and taken more action, 9-11 probably still would have happened. Maybe someone would get lucky, pick up one of the hijackers, and he'd tell them all that he knew. While that likely would have stopped one of the hijackings, it may not have stopped all of the hijackings and it'd only take one to cause some damage. If none of the hijackers were caught though, 9-11 goes off as it did despite a security crackdown.
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That may be correct, Bush couldn't have known where Bin Laden would attack from, but putting down more control over who comes in or out of the US by commercial transport or otherwise would've been a good start and likely would've avoided everything very easily. More security around the Pentagon, which was also subject to an "attack" and other places. Either way, it would've looked like he tried to do something to stop the "incident" from happening. The fact is he didn't do anything, which is probably why most people, like me, and especially outside the US, think Bush was behind it as well as anyone. Also, I don't buy that article you showed me about the planes being delicate. Tons of Titanium don't just vaporize into thin air.
Also, in America, the ratings were not that bad, I know that. We're referring to Europe and possibly other places more than anything. Bush wanted to obtain more support and decided to provide the people with a common enemy.