John Key to extend NZ soldiers killing civilians for oil

Afghan tour could stretch on
The Defence Force's 140-strong reconstruction team in Afghanistan may be there a lot longer than first thought, Prime Minister John Key has indicated.

One of the first decisions for the Government this year will be to look at the provincial reconstruction team (PRT) as well as a proposed extension for some of the SAS's deployment to Kabul, due to end in April.

When the SAS aren't charging NZ's elite corporates $500 a day to play soldier and aren't handing prisoners over to well known torture units they are now murdering Afghan civilians, perhaps we should start asking why the NZ SAS are in Afghanistan?

There are two reasons, the first is that National have sold our independent foreign policy down the drain to side with anything America and Israel do, the second is for oil. The invasion of Afghanistan has nothing to do with freedom and democracy, it was always about oil.

In 1996, the Wall Street Journal declared the Taliban, "are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history"., this was because they had just defeated the American armed Northern Alliance who had just ended their 4 year 50 000 dead rampage thanks to America walking away without disarming their most fervent anti-soviet fighters (hilariously Osama Bin Laden had been given $4 billion in which to fight the USSR).

This praise of the Taliban proceeded a massive attempt to win over the Taliban so that America could build a vast oil pipe line that enables them to tap into the huge oil fields of the Caspian Sea. Taliban were flown to Washington and wined and dined by George W Bush Snr and entertained in Housten by senior executives of Unocal who offered the Taliban fifteen cents for every thousand cubic feet of gas pumped through Afghanistan.

In 1998, Unocal's Vice-President for International Relations, John J Maresca told a Congressional inquiry that "by 2010, Western countries could increase oil production to 4.5 million barrels a day, an increase of more than 500% in fifteen years". His appeal was for a regime that could guarantee that increase.

At first America did all they could to provide such a regime, Unocal signed a 'memorandum of understanding' to build the pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan, it did this on behalf of Enron, Amoco, BP, Chevron, Exxon and Mobil with the deal makers being none other than Dick Cheney and former Defence Secretary James Baker.

The deal went sour when two American Embassies were bombed in east Africa and Al Queda were blamed. The September 11 attacks provided the perfect pretense to invade Afghanistan under the flag blinded claim of 'freedom and democracy'.

This war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with freedom and democracy, it has to do with securing America's never ending belief that they and they alone have the god given right to take oil resources from any part of the world under whatever pretext they need.