September 8, 2006 'Taliban taking over'.

"LONDON - The Taliban have regained control over the southern half of Afghanistan and their front line is advancing daily, a group closely monitoring the Afghan situation said in a report this week.

"The US-led nation-building efforts have failed because of "ineffective and inflammatory military and counter-narcotics policies", the report says. "At the same time, there has been a dramatic underfunding of aid and development programs."

Reposted, a report from PakNews.com states that Unocal gets it‘s pipeline! "Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan on Friday signed here a framework agreement for a US $3.2 billion gas pipeline project passing through the three countries."This was what it was all about. As has been widely reported, the Bush administration was negotiating with the Taliban early in 2001 to work out the deal for the pipeline for Unocal. The administration told the Taliban it could choose between "a carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs." We all know what it was in the end.

Tuesday 25 May 2004

"Two years ago, following the removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Tony Blair promised that the international community would not ignore the plight of the Afghan people, that "this time we will not walk away". We may not have quite walked away yet, but we have undoubtedly turned away - to Iraq. And now our Prime Minister is spraying around pledges with equal conviction that we will "stay the course" there. But life in Afghanistan today is just as cheap as it was under the Taliban and, for all Mr. Blair's promises, it remains a lawless, impoverished state. The Commons Foreign Affairs Committee will warn in July that our failure to rebuild post-war Afghanistan could be repeated in Iraq.

" It is salutary to recognize just how badly the world community has failed Afghanistan. For many years, that country's two main exports have been terrorism and drugs. The US-led invasion may have staunched the flow of the first, but it has done nothing to prevent the dissemination of the second. Afghanistan is once again the world's leading exporter of heroin, according to the UN's office on Drugs and Crime. This is hardly the right way to bring it into the web of civilized nations. "

State of the, uh, the speech, uh you know, 2003: "And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies -- and freedom."

December 6, 2001 "The US is not taking the aid effort in Afghanistan seriously enough, according to the UK's International Development Secretary, Clare Short.
She says that breakdowns in communication with the US military are creating problems for aid workers on the ground in Afghanistan."

Arf