Afghanistan Mineral Riches Story Is War Propaganda

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Tuesday, Jun 15th, 2010

News that the U.S. has suddenly discovered $1 trillion-worth of mineral deposits in Afghanistan, and descriptions of the bounty as a “game changer” by the corporate media, represent nothing more than crude war propaganda designed to reinvigorate public support for a failing and ever more pointless occupation.

The “liberal” New York Times, which previously brought us fantastical stories of WMD in Iraq and yellowcake from Niger, is at it once again, describing huge deposits of minerals in Afghanistan as “previously unknown”.

In a story the Times ran on Sunday, the newspaper pointed to an “internal Pentagon memo” as its source, noting that U.S. officials now believe Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium”.

The article claims that “a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists” has also recently discovered huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt and gold, that could transform Afghanistan into one of the most important mining centers in the world.

The idea that this information is new, however, is manifestly ludicrous.

In an interview with Politico, a retired senior U.S. official notes that anyone with a memory span longer than a goldfish will realise the supposedly “new discovery” is anything but that:

“When I was living in Kabul in the early 1970’s the [U.S. government], the Russians, the World Bank, the UN and others were all highly focused on the wide range of Afghan mineral deposits. Cheap ways of moving the ore to ocean ports has always been the limiting factor,” the official said.

Furthermore, in the mid 1980s, the chief engineer of the Afghan Geological Survey Department published a report pointing to vast reserves of mineral riches. The Afghan government was readying to work with the Soviets on extraction, before Russia pulled out of the country altogether as it’s empire began to crumble in 1989.
www.infowars.com
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This is how stupid you are suppose to be:
"Wow, $1 trillion-worth of mineral deposits in Afghanistan!" "Now there's no way we should stop borrowing money from China in order to finance our occupation of Afghanistan!" "We should keep our military there from now on."