Puzzle Me This

[ThomWV]

Here's an E-Mail I sent to and old friend a little bit ago. Just an opnion. I'll be interested to see what he has to say, and I'd be interested in seeing what you have to say as well:
---
Old boy picture something in your mind's eye for me. Put a map of south west Asia on the mental screen. Now draw a line letting it start in Pakistan, go through Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and every other god damned 'stan you can name and have it dump out into the Caspian Sea somewhere to the north of the territorial bounds of Iran. There, got it pictured? Now, put a fuggin' natural-gas/oil pipeline on it.

No surprise there, we've all known about that thing for years. I remember some saying it was the reason for the war against the Taliban, that they wouldn't permit it to be built. Anyway we came, they are gone, and the pipeline is comming - like I said, not much of a suprise. So now picture that line with US troops stationed about every 50 to 100 miles along its entire length. That shouldn't come as any sort of surprise to anyone either, I believe that lady Lt. Col (Karen Kapinski - spelled as best I could) spoke about the guarding of the pipeline. Agregious as it is its still not a hot news flash, all the pipeline bullshit has been bandied about for years. In the end International (meaning based in Texas) oil got its pipeline, they are starting to do the preliminary building, and its all being guarded at great expense by the military of the USofA. I don't like it and you don't like it but that's just how it is. However consider this: How did the route of that pipleline come to be located where it is? Its not a straight line you know.

The answer to the question is rational enough, it goes where it goes because in fact that is the most passable route in the region. We know this because its has been in continuous use for at least 5,000 years. Trade across that route has taken place from the first minutes of written history. I believe it is trade records, kept on dried mud tablets, which are the first known writing of man that came from a need to account for trade on that route. Well, when you think about it that makes sense. The caravans found the most efficient route and the oil companies are following it.

This is a rational world, things happen the way they do and are where they are for good reasons.

The thing is today's traders aren't carrying frankincense, balms, and fine silks from China. That's the route used by the region's opium smugglers nowadays. Its a god damned drug trade route fed by a tributary drug supply system that mirrors the Mississippi river drainage basin and with an every-increasing flow of its deadly cargo. I recall reading something in The Nation last fall about how much the white powder flow from Asian field to American city had grown since the end of Bush' war in Afghanistan. So puzzle me this old son, is that happening right under the nose of our military unnoticed or is it purposefully being ignored?

Maybe I can help your old gray head in its deliberations. Those troops, the best equiped on earth. They are in a hostile region and in possession of ultramodern sensors of every sort immaginable. You know good and god damned well nothing is slipping by them unnoticed, nothing noticed is going to go past uninspected either, you can bet your sweet ass on that. So I ask old son how do you figure all that fluff is making it by?

Production of the sticky goo is up by leaps and bounds and it ain't the poor Afghan farmers that are getting rich off of this. It would appear the trade is being guarded by our military and it sure as hell ain't the Democrats that are in charge of where it goes and what it does nowdays. For god's sakes, we occupy a country which I believe is the worlds largest producer of the fruit of the poppy and its fuggin' output is up. We have built military bases at close interval along the drug trade routes and yet they do not molest the trade. It is absolutly inconcievalbe that our intellignece services are not reporting the source, route, final destination, and quantities of opium/herion in the pipeline to the President, who in his role as Commander in Chief would seem to be the protector of same. What in the name of all that is sane has happened to this country?


Hugs and kisses ........ asshole."

[knowbody0]

1. this war is for FREEDOM

for the multinational corporations' OIL

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. I'm sorry.... what did you say?? eom.