Melissa Melton
Infowars.com
October 20, 2012
The war in Afghanistan, also known by the upbeat, patriotic moniker Operation Enduring Freedom, has officially been going on for over a decade now.
Obama gave a speech back in 2009 declaring that our troops would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan before his presidential term was up, one more promise on the never ending list of them he has failed to keep. In 2010, the Afghan war overtook the Vietnam war to officially become the longest war in U.S. history. The government and its propaganda machine otherwise known as the mainstream media spent countless hours the following year apprising us of the fact that Osama bin Laden, the supposed architect of the 9/11 fable that was blamed for landing our troops in Afghanistan to begin with, was taken out (with zero proof). This is regardless of the fact that the CIA gave bin Laden a $3 billion investment which funded him and created his Al Qaeda terrorist network, and plans have surfaced confirming the war in Afghanistan was planned long before 9/11 even happened.
Earlier this year, the Obama camp quietly announced the War on Terror — something that has been used to murder our republic, take apart our constitution and repeatedly suck away our rights like a vacuum ever since George W. Bush declared it — is now officially over. The announcement was delivered with all the fervent emotion of someone half-asleep describing paint dry. Even as NATO claims they plan to begin planning to withdraw from Afghanistan, the Army recently announced they are deploying nearly 10,000 more troops to the country starting this fall and continuing through next spring.
The U.S. military death toll in Afghanistan officially reached 2,000 just last month. If the War on Terror has truly ended and Osama bin Laden is no more, the obvious question remains: Why are we still in Afghanistan?
The Real Reasons
“To Protect the Afghan People”
A letter from an Army Colonel addressed to the Secretary of the Army surfaced revealing the fact that when soldiers arrive in Afghanistan, they are told they are “fighting for the Afghan people.”
Most young men and women join our nation’s military with a heartfelt ambition to protect America and serve their fellow citizens. After all, the department which oversees our armed forces is named the “Department of Defense,” not the Department of Offense. However, let’s review the Army’s official mission:
“The Army’s mission is to fight and win our Nation’s wars by providing prompt, sustained land dominance across the full range of military operations and spectrum of conflict in support of combatant commanders.”
Notice it says the purpose is straight up “to fight and win our nation’s wars” regardless of constitutionality or cause, followed by the word “dominance” without any mention of defensive measures.
American troops are dying in Afghanistan every day. The number of dead and wounded is only increasing. Our media completely ignores the fact that more American soldiers have now died under Nobel Peace Prize President Obama in his four years in office than in all eight years of Bush Jr.’s presidency. In fact, soldier deaths are up over 400 percent, wounded numbers are up 1200 percent, and soldier suicide rates are unprecedented under Obama in this somehow-suddenly-over-yet-never-ending War on Terror.
As an American, nothing about this makes me feel any safer from terrorists.
Opium and the Drug Trade
Our soldiers aren’t only told to protect the Afghan people when they arrive, they are also told they have to protect Afghanistan’s opium trade. The Taliban, whom we are supposedly fighting in Afghanistan, actually put a ban on the Afghani opium trade, collapsing 90 percent of it; America swooped in to protect and restore it through support of the Northern Alliance.
In a shocking 2010 spin piece, Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera attempted to justify why our soldiers just “have” to protect Afghanistan’s poppy fields.
“We are tolerating the cultivation of the opium because we know that if we were to destroy it now, the population would turn against the marines and it would be a real security risk,” Geraldo says before turning to a Lieutenant Colonel who then admits America provides Afghanistani people security and resources to continue growing opium.
Well at least Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai was gracious enough to thank Obama for all our money to help do so:
“I’m bringing to you and to the people of the United States the gratitude of the Afghan people for the support that your taxpayers’ money has provided Afghanistan over the past decade and for the difference that it has made to the well-being of the Afghan people,” Karzai told the president at this year’s NATO Summit in Chicago.
The Afghan Minister of Counter Narcotics has also stated publicly that NATO is taxing opium production in Afghani regions it controls. The drugs these poppy fields produce are being protected and paid for with our taxpayer money and our soldiers’ lives every day, but if an American attempts to secure said drugs for recreational use and is caught with them here, he or she will get arrested and thrown in prison.
It is a widely held contention that Pat Tillman, the famous football star turned soldier, was murdered because he threatened to go public with this lucrative poppy protection operation and expose Operation Enduring Freedom for what it really is.
Lithium and Rare Earth Minerals
Our mainstream media has dubbed Afghanistan as “the Saudi Arabia of lithium” in reference to a coveted element in rising demand ever since World War II. Lithium is used in everything from batteries and electronic components, to nuclear fusion processes, to alloys and military applications. The mainstream media cranked up the spin cycle on the U.S.’s pointless occupation of Afghanistan another notch in 2010 when a story in the New York Times claimed we had suddenly discovered $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits there. This timely announcement came just as Congress was debating another $33 billion supplemental war bill. Pointing to a Pentagon memo, the story also asserted the country was just found to be filled with huge veins of untouched copper, iron, cobalt, and gold.
It wasn’t long, though, before retired U.S. officials were coming forward to remind everyone of the fact that these “newly discovered” deposits had been well known to not only the U.S. but the UN, Russia and the World Bank as far back as the 1970s, maybe longer. The truth is inconsequential when propaganda sells the day.
Pipelineistan
As mentioned earlier, a war in Afghanistan was planned well before 9/11 ever happened. The U.S. had important plans for the country, plans that involved isolating Iran and bypassing Russia to run an oil pipeline right through Afghanistan that our government could control to bring out Central Asian oil more easily and cheaply down through the Pakistan coast. To this end, U.S. officials delivered the Taliban an ultimatum: they could either “accept the offer of a carpet of gold or be buried under a carpet of bombs,” depending on whether or not they stepped and fetched.
The threat of terrorism? What does that matter when there’s such a financial and political treasure to loot.
So what’s next?
Syria is the newest kid on the chopping block, largely due to it being an integral part of the Pipelineistan project. Syria’s regime change, like Libya and others, was planned decades ago as well.
The rest of what the mainstream media sells us is just more bread and circuses off the usual menu. A U.S. Security Adviser has gone on record that our government plans to continue using our soldiers to “defend” Afghanistan until 2024. Nothing will change if Mitt Romney wins the election either, considering just weeks ago during a foreign policy speech Romney vowed to continue spending taxpayer money to arm Al-Qaeda in Syria as well.
The globe has truly been reduced to one giant game of Risk.
One last question: would anyone still enlist in the U.S. military today if they were told they were fighting for the United States of Empire that was once the United States of America?
- US troops may stay in Afghanistan until 2024
- France suspends all Afghanistan training operations over troop killings
- Ten US soldiers killed in Afghanistan
- Taliban vow to resist US surge in Afghanistan
- ‘Mini-surge’ of U.S. Special Forces to hit Afghanistan
- Probe claims soldiers smuggling heroin from Afghanistan
- Occupiers involved in drug trade: Afghan minister
- Obama Says No “Precipitous Drawdown” of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan
- Crash of Black Hawk chopper kills 7 U.S. troops in Afghanistan
- Another 45,000 US troops needed in Afghanistan, military adviser says
- Helicopter Crash Kills 2 NATO Soldiers in Afghanistan
- Catch-and-release of Taliban fighters in Afghanistan angers troops
CIA and Turkey Work Behind the Scenes for Wider War on Syria
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
October 20, 2012
The CIA is working closely with the government of Turkey behind the scenes to exacerbate the situation in Syria and create conditions for a regional war while U.S. officials and NATO publicly call for restraint.
“I can certainly assure you that our militaries, our military officers, are in contact,” Francis J. Ricciardone Jr. , the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, said on Tuesday. “This week I know there is a special focus of our military experts talking about Syria. And what militaries do well is plan for every contingency and every eventuality.”
Ricciardone said “no political decision has been made” on a no-fly zone over Syria, although the United States, Turkey and NATO are working on it.
U.S. intelligence agencies, the Washington Post reported on Friday, were behind the grounding of a Syrian plane last week en route from Moscow to Damascus. Turkey claimed the plane carried a nefarious cargo of weapons. The establishment media in the United States published accusations that the Russians were covertly arming the dictator Bashar al-Assad.
Following a concerted propaganda campaign to demonize Russia and Syria, it was learned that the cargo consisted of parts for Syria’s aging radar system. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov said the shipment of “electric equipment for radars” was a legitimate cargo in compliance with international law. Lavrov added that the equipment was of “dual purpose,” in other words it had civilian and military applications.
Turkey has continued shelling Syrian territory following an October 3 incident on the border when Syrian artillery killed civilians. The CIA and MI6-supported Free Syria Army has operated with Turkey’s blessing in the area shelled by Syria.
Turkey shelled Syria again on Friday and warned Damascus that the risk of all-out war is increasing. The border situation has “changed the strategic calculus and led U.S. military and intelligence officials in particular to collaborate more closely with Turkey,” according to the Post.
Officials in Turkey are setting the stage for a wider war against Syria. Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz and Gen. Necdet Ozel met with NATO but have not yet made a formal request for military assistance.
“For now, Turkey primarily wants statements of public support from NATO and reassurances that the alliance would come to its aid if necessary, said Ross Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Turkey who now serves as director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council in Washington,” the Post reports.
NATO is an important element in the war on al-Assad and Syria due to paralysis in the United Nations. “NATO is the new U.N. for Ankara when it comes to Syria,” explained Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an organization joined at the hip to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
WINEP is closely aligned with the neocons and has long pushed for aggressive policies by the United States against Syria and Iran.
- UN’s Syria Envoy in Turkey for Talks
- Armenia-to-Syria flight lands in Turkey for ‘security check’
- Turkey will consult NATO over shooting down of plane by Syria
- Armenian plane en route to Syria searched in Turkey
- CIA spies in Turkey secretly help armed gangs in Syria
- Troops Are Piling Up On Both Sides Of The Syria-Turkey Border As Tensions Escalate
- Breaking: Turkey Fires Into Syria After It Says Mortar Hit Farm
- Tarpley: US favors Syria-Turkey conflict
- Report: Turkey Demands US Impose No Fly Zone Over Syria
- Turkey Strikes Syria
- Turkey Seeks to Deploy Troops Inside Syria
- Turkey Allows al-Qaeda to Move Over Border into Syria
