The Gaming Den

Zinegata wrote:Every pipeline built recently for Caspian Sea oil has been made to benefit Western companies as opposed to Russian ones. That's true with the Turkey pipeline and the proposed Afghan Pipeline/Pipelines. I don't see how a 7.6 billion project can be anything more than a scam, when you already showed an Afghan pipeline can be built for 1/3 the cost.

Zinegata wrote:That's a whole other issue entirely that we haven't discussed at all. Care to share the links? Because that would be an allegation seperate from mine, and possibly a plausible one.

Yeah, we know Bush has friends in the oil world. Yes, war jacks up the oil prices. But I would say that applies much more to the Iraqi war than the Afghan one.

FrankTrollman wrote:It's exactly this kind of argument that is getting many people to throw up their hands in disgust.

You seriously don't see how a pipeline that costs seven and a half billion dollars could be seriously considered when there is a two and a half billion dollar project on the table? Seriously?

Yes. Driving up the price of oil was much more an Iraq War thing. The key is to look at the US Oil Imports from 2002 and 2004. We got more oil from Iraq before the war, but we got a bigger percentage of the oil they sent out, and the price of oil had gone up. It's really that simple.

Zinegata wrote:Again, I'm not claiming that wars are not fought for oil. But to say that all wars are fought for oil is false.

FrankTrollman wrote:Thank you for that pointless truism. But the problem is that we've actually shown that the statement "The Afghan war was fought for oil" is true.

Zinegata - anyone is free game if the US wants your oil

Kobajagrande wrote:You may have mistaken me for someone who wants to argue about politics on a Sunday morning. I want to put your opinions into context of your age. If you are ashamed of your age, think it would somehow count against you, or think that's going too much into your privacy somehow, then say so, and stop trying to wriggle out like you do, because, frankly, it makes you look petty and retarded.

Zinegata wrote:So ladies and gentlemen who have reasonable minds, to quickly recap the thread so far:

Zinegata wrote:1) Crissa claimed that the US only attacked countries because they had oil. This has proven to be false, and not just by me. The US attacks other countries to serve its own national interests, and oil does not always factor to this.

Zinegata wrote:2) Phone Lobster came to the defense of the above argument by claiming that Cheney planned to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan that gave people access to Caspian Sea Oil.

Zinegata wrote:3) I noted that it's silly to build a pipeline through Afghanistan... when a cheaper pipeline was already built through Turkey that supplies the world with Caspian Sea Oil.

Zinegata wrote:4) I also noted that Cheney's modus operandi so far was to award big no-bid contracts to Halliburton to build silly things. Because Halliburton is actually a construction company.

Zinegata wrote:5) PL insists that Cheney went to war for the sake of the pipeline despite of #2 and #3. He also ignored the more likely theory that Cheney simply took advantage of the war to award more no-bid contracts to Halliburton to line his own pockets. Because Halliburton earns a lot of money building military bases (billions, in fact) even if they're in the oil-less Balkans, and these contracts are already being investigated as fraudulent by the GAO.

Zinegata wrote:In short, Cheney is a war profiteer, not the Shadow Government Controlling the US.

Zinegata wrote:1) I have claimed that the main reason for the US attack on Afghanistan was to whack Bin Laden. This was incomplete and I apologize to everyone except Crissa and PL if this caused any confusion. They attacked Afghanistan to both capture Bin Laden and shut down the terrorist training camps.

Zinegata wrote:2) PL and Crissa both initially claimed that the Taliban had offered to give up BIn Laden. However, the US apparently refused this offer because GWB and Cheney are war-mongering monster.

Zinegata wrote:-> a) It was the US Government who initiated a diplomatic solution - which was to demand the Taliban hand over Bin Laden, his cronies, and to shut down the terrorist camps. This would not have involved the loss of a single life

Zinegata wrote:-> b) The Taliban changed the offer three times ("flip-flopped"), and the final offer did not even involve turning Bin Laden over to the US. It also never discussed closing the terrorist camps.

Zinegata wrote:-> c) PL, Crissa, and Martuk all claim that the Taliban had the right not to hand over Bin Laden because "there was no evidence". Ignoring the fact that the US government had already presented evidence since 1998 (before the Bush Administration) demanding that Bin Laden be handed over. The Taliban basically said "fuck you" in 1998, and there was no reason to believe they would do the same now.

Zinegata wrote:3) Since I have presented the facts in #7, PL and Crissa have ceased citing "The Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden", and instead claim that the Taliban didn't have the capability to hand him over. This means:

-> a) The Taliban was negotiating in bad faith, because all of their offers require that Osama be under their custody one way or the other.

-> b) They were royally stupid and should have said "We don't have him in custody, but if you really want to catch him we can help you".

Zinegata wrote:However, no evidence has been shown directly proving the Taliban didn't have the capability to turn over Bin Laden. So we can hold off on saying the Taliban are royally stupid and acting in bad faith for now.

Zinegata wrote:1) Some people are claiming they should have just kidnapped Bin Laden. Which I am ignoring for the sake of having a civilized discussion. Because:
-> a) That's not the only reason the US went to war (More complicated than "It's an oil war", I know. But it's much more constructive)

Zinegata wrote:-> b) If it were that easy they should have just kidnapped Hitler or Tojo.

Zinegata wrote:Thank you for your time. Please use this post as a reference before making snide comments. Thank you!

Murtak wrote:...

Rejakor wrote: We know the Taliban are assholes. America is supposed to know better, and be more responsible.

Parthenon wrote:The thing is Zinegata, in 2001 all the secretaries of Defense, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, most of the secretaries of State, the US trade representative and the fucking Vice President were all part of an organisation that has been planning the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan since 1997 to get control of oil. The presidents own family was involved in organising the invasion of Afghanistan four years before 9/11. Link, about a quarter of the way down.

You don't need a Shadow Government, you just need a third of your administration and the family of the president heavily involved in organising the invasion of Afghanistan for oil and half of the cabinet secretaries closely tied to oil companies.

You are also pulling some of the same bullshit as PhoneLobster and Crissa. You have repeatedly stated that the Taliban ignored evidence about the 1998 bombings to show that they are likely to throw out any evidence about the 2001 attack. But you haven't shown that at all.

Please show us that they gave the Taliban useful evidence a decent enough time before the trials took place in 1998 and then that they ignored it.

The only "facts" in that piece is that the Bush Administration is in bed with NeoCons and Oil people... which we already know and nobody denies.

Rick Rowley, Big Noise Films wrote:But yeah. I mean, the thing that was most chilling to me about this, as an independent journalist who works unembedded often, is that when the reports came out—the military investigations came out a few days later, you can read them all on the internet now—and they basically—I mean, essentially they blamed the reporters for causing this. They say they did three things wrong. First, they failed to identify themselves to a helicopter gunship flying, I don’t know, hundreds of feet above their heads. Second, their proximity to armed insurgents was reason for them to be killed. And third, their furtive attempt to take a photograph of American troops.

I mean, so, first of all, there is no reason at all to believe or to conclude that any of the people in that picture are armed insurgents. I mean, you can see two men with Kalashnikovs, but this is 2007 in Baghdad. This is the height of the civil war, when dozens of bodies a day were being picked up from the street, when sectarian militias filled the Iraqi security forces, the police and the army. Every neighborhood in Baghdad organized its own protection force. And it was legal at the time for every household to own a Kalashnikov in Iraq, and every household I ever went to did. So the presence of two men, dangling at their sides Kalashnikovs, in a crowd of civilians who have no weapons at all, I mean, is absolutely no—I mean, it’s—the whole thing is ridiculous.

Wikileaks Co-Founder Julian Assange wrote: Yeah, something important to remember is that the video we obtained and released is of substantially lower quality than what the pilots saw. This is because it was converted through many stages to digital. But even so, we can just see that there are in fact two children sitting in the front seat of that van. And subsequent witness reports also confirm that.

...you can hear it from the tones of the voices of the pilots that this is in fact another day at the office. These pilots have evidently and gunners have evidently become so corrupted, morally corrupted, by the war that they are looking for excuses to kill. That is why you hear this segment, “Come on, buddy! Just pick up a weapon,” when Saeed, one of the Reuters employees, is crawling on the curb. They don’t want him for intelligence value to understand the situation. The man is clearly of no threat whatsoever. He’s prostate on the ground. Everyone else has been killed. They just want an excuse to kill. And it’s some kind of—appears to me to be some kind of video game mentality where they just want to get a high score, get their kill count up. And later on you’ll hear them proudly proclaiming how they killed twelve to fifteen people.

...something that has been missed in some of the press reportage about this is that there is a third attack, just twenty minutes later, by the same crew, involving three Hellfire missiles fired onto an apartment complex where the roof was still under construction. We have fresh evidence from Baghdad that there were three families living in that apartment complex, many of whom were killed, including women. And we sent a team down there to collect that evidence. So that is in the full video we released, not in the shortened one, because we didn’t yet have that additional evidence. Innocent bystanders walking down the street are also killed in that attack.

So quite a few people have simply focused on the initial attack on Namir, the Reuters photographer, and Saeed, the other one, this initial crowd scene, and gone, “Well, you know, camera, RPG, it can look a bit similar. And there do appear to be two other—two people in that crowd having weapons. A heat-of-the-moment situation. Even if the descriptions were false previously, maybe there’s some excuse for this. I mean, it’s bad, but maybe there’s some excuse.” This is clearly a straw man. We can see, over these three events—the initial attack on the crowd; the attack on the people rescuing a completely unarmed man, themselves completely unarmed; to the Hellfire missile attack on an apartment complex, which killed families—all in the course of one hour, that something is wrong.[/i]

Rejakor wrote:Also, no-one, ever, has ever claimed that the taliban were 'pursuing justice' or anything other than being a disorganized bunch of religious fanatics.

The Taliban agreeing to hand over an accused criminal IF you can legally demonstrate they are a criminal IS them agreeing to hand over Osama. That in itself is NOT an unusual or unjustifiable position. When you want to extradite someone you have to expect SOME sort of legal proceedings.

You have several times explicitly denied that Bush or any member of his administration acted in any way to support their neocon or oil interests.

Ganbare Gincun wrote:Wikileaks Co-Founder Julian Assange wrote:

So quite a few people have simply focused on the initial attack on Namir, the Reuters photographer, and Saeed, the other one, this initial crowd scene, and gone, “Well, you know, camera, RPG, it can look a bit similar. And there do appear to be two other—two people in that crowd having weapons. A heat-of-the-moment situation. This is clearly a straw man. We can see, over these three events—the initial attack on the crowd; the attack on the people rescuing a completely unarmed man, themselves completely unarmed; to the Hellfire missile attack on an apartment complex, which killed families—all in the course of one hour, that something is wrong.

Zinegata wrote:(Note, I'm not saying it clears the pilots. I'm saying this is looking to be a much bigger problem than one set of three incidents by one air crew would suggest)

Crissa wrote:

Zinegata wrote:(Note, I'm not saying it clears the pilots. I'm saying this is looking to be a much bigger problem than one set of three incidents by one air crew would suggest)

Strange, isn't that what I said?

-Crissa

Parthenon wrote:I thought that article said that a large portion of the administration pushed for war rather than other options by taking advantage of 9/11 rather than it being caused by Bush. But maybe I'm filtering out conspiracy theories automatically.

But I gave that link because it contains a summary of who was linked to oil and who had been planning an invasion since 1997. Some of the facts the more sane conspiracy theorists use are correct and to say that 2 and 3 are wrong because they think 2+3=7 is silly.

And if half the cabinet and the president make a decision at a time when it is seen as an obligation to support the presidency then it is easy to see how those people who have a strong control over popular opinion can subvert the process to cause them to go to war over taking another two weeks to a month in diplomacy and finding evidence.

To be honest, I no longer know why we're arguing about this point.

We really ought to change the subject since noone is getting anywhere. Or better, drop it completely.

Why don't we argue about this instead. It has a lot of the same arguments: possible US soldiers rounding up and murdering innocent schoolkids, NATO admitting that it happened and it was a huge fuckup, likely a lot of argument that US soldiers were nowhere near and were only slightly involved.

Could be fun.

Zinegata wrote:3) I require that you retract "hiring a group of adventurers" as a way to catch a guy who committed a very bad crime and all of America wants him dead. Because that has no place in a reasonable adult discussion of the topic.

Zinegata wrote:

Crissa wrote:And for Lich Loved, brown people have no rights to life /or/ oil. And it doesn't matter which brown person you shoot back.

Racist.

PL wrote:The Taliban agreeing to hand over an accused criminal IF you can legally demonstrate they are a criminal IS them agreeing to hand over Osama. That in itself is NOT an unusual or unjustifiable position. When you want to extradite someone you have to expect SOME sort of legal proceedings.

Rejakor wrote: the taliban were 'pursuing justice'

RejakordoingPL wrote:"When you extradite someone you normally walk them past a judge first. The judge says 'extradite this person'. That is how it happens everywhere IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING WORLD."

Zinegata wrote:Okay, quote me. I dare you to find something where I denied this.

Zinegata wrote:I would think that "haven for terrorism" (a national interest issue) is a much bigger reason as to why the Americans whacked the Afghans as opposed to a proposed pipeline that doesn't yet exist.

This contrary attitude is frankly laughably absurd.

Zinegata wrote:Also, again, Afghanistan has no fucking oil and this is literally grasping straws to paint the Afghan war as an oil war as opposed to "Whack anarchists who blew Americans up"

Zinegata wrote:But this is not the same as arguing that taking out the Taliban and Bin Laden was not the primary reason for bombing Afghanistan.
[...]
I'm not discussing whether fighting the war is dumb or not. I'm saying the reason isn't oil. People go to war for dumb reasons all the time.

Zinegata wrote:Exactly, albeit in Afghanstan I'd say the oil issue is extremely minor compared to all the other reasons, especially when Obama came into power.

Zinegata wrote:Just because you admit oil is a dumb reason doesn't mean it's a primary reason. You're not establishing causality here. Just taking random potshots at the war in general and the Bush administration as a whole.

Zinegata wrote:You're still not making a case that overturns the main reason for going to war - which was whacking the Taliban for harboring Osama (stupid reason or not).

You have several times explicitly stated that the only reason the Bush Administration went to war to capture Osama, and that profiteering was just something that happened on the side and had nothing to do with the greater war concerns (capturing one man).

Zinegata wrote:The American government has never stated they want a new regime in Afghanistan MAINLY to build this pipeline - which is th important bit because we're talking about the MAIN reason for the Afghan war. You wouldn't even acknowldge what while Osama Bin Laden is a Saudi, his powerbase was in Afghanistan because of the support of the Taliban.

Crissa wrote:Strangely, the US has not managed any better to capture and destroy training centers before they destroyed the civilian government (note they didn't destroy the Taliban) in Afghanistan than after.

Kaelik is basically asking leading questions. Have you stopped beating your wife yet, Kaelik?

-Crissa

mean_liar wrote:RoEs are kept classified for multiple reasons. The two largest are:

1. They identify to third parties what elements are NOT being considered in the RoE and provide a general overview of the decision-making process that goes into the mass murder endemic to war.

2. Enemies can game the RoE for their benefit.