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Nice reconstruction of ancient Greek lyre music, a hymn to Apollo and a hymn to the muse.
Senior US journalist makes complete fool of himself in 38 seconds.
The UK Tories thought a Labour poster image of the Tory leader was such a great idea, they adapted it.
About The Hurt Locker being concerned with the experience of ( Read more... )
Nice reconstruction of ancient Greek lyre music, a hymn to Apollo and a hymn to the muse.
Senior US journalist makes complete fool of himself in 38 seconds.
The UK Tories thought a Labour poster image of the Tory leader was such a great idea, they adapted it.
About The Hurt Locker being concerned with the experience of ( Read more... )
The Congressional testimony is not a good indication of motive for major acts of public policy. A company explains why the pipeline cannot be built in a situation where there is no widely recognised government and sets out the circumstances in which it would be built (which helps explain why it is not going ahead at that time). 3 years later a massive terrorist attack is launched on the US. The government of Afghanistan refuses to hand over the perpetrators, in fact makes clear it will defend them. Everyone regards that as a casus belli (which is why it is a NATO operation). There are some side benefits of the war, such as the pipeline, but the 1998 testimony does not come close to establishing that the pipeline was the motive for responding to the terror attack.
As for manufacturing a casus belli, Operation Northwoods did not go ahead while the Gulf of Tonkin was taking advantage of a situation (remembering that there had actually been an exchange of fire between US and Vietnamese warships, while the second incident was likely a convenient screw-up) rather than creating one. A fairly simple thing to do as all it required was spinning actual events. The 9/11 sequence was so much more complicated as not to be remotely comparable.
Northwoods was like nothing that ever actually occurred in US history because, apart from moral qualms, it so obviously had so much potential for disastrously rebounding. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, on the other hand, was much like FDR's pushing of the envelope in the Atlantic against Nazi Germany.
Really, if one is going to imply that US officials deliberately connived, by omission or commission, in the largest terror attack ever against their own citizens (and the Pentagon too remember) one needs a lot more evidence than a company stated it wanted to build a pipeline. Lots of people want to build quite a few pipelines: India and Pakistan rather more than the US in that specific case.
The sheer complexity involved is a strong argument against it. Indeed, "raising the possibility" is pretty contemptible unless there is actual evidence.
As for substantive evidence "either way" surely there are large amounts of evidence, mountains of it, for al-Qaeda did it to rally support and undermine Western-supported regimes, the Taliban thought it was safe, the US was always going to respond militarily to such an attack if anyone tried to protect the perpetrators. Occam's Razor says one goes with the simplest explanation unless one has good reasons not to. A particular company wanted to build a particular pipeline is not a good reason not to. Especially after seriously, rather than superficially, considering previous patterns of history.
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