War on Terror: Oil Conspiracy?

Except N. Korea, the axis of evil stands on an axis of oil. Has conspiracy theory become fact?

By Liam Bailey

Two things that affect this story were already in place before Bush Jr took office. The first: an already high level of anti-American feelings in the Islamic world, for the years of oil-biased foreign policy. Oil bias is easily perceived as anti-Islam because most of the world's oil is under Muslim countries. The second: plans were already in place for a massively profitable oil pipeline proposed to run through Afghanistan. An uncooperative Taliban had put the brakes on the plan. These two things and how they tie into Bush's War on Terror have become a conspiracy theorists wet-dream.

Anti-Americanism had been bubbling away since the 60's, mostly at American support for Israel's annexation of Muslim land. American foreign policy from the early 80's onwards accelerated the growth of anti-Americanism by an enormous factor. Arming and heavily funding the extremist of extreme Mujahideen groups as they fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, before cutting all contact and funds when the Soviets withdrew, allowing the country to fall deeper into civil war.

During this era Osama Bin Laden first came to light as a Mujahideen fighter in Afghanistan. His status as a member of a rich Saudi family made him an ideal candidate to secure funds from wealthy Arabs for the Jihad. It is alleged the U.S. pressured Saudi intelligence to hire bin Laden in such a role.

At the same time as giving these "freedom fighters", as Reagan called them, the best weaponry and getting the S.A.S to give them training in building improvised explosives, the U.S, along with many European states was also heavily funding and arming another extremist: Saddam Hussein, in his war with Iran. This led to Saddam becoming, or at least feeling he had become a considerable military power and gave him the wherewithal to invade Kuwait. This led to the U.S. stationing troops in Saudi Arabia, which stirred the hornet's nest of anti-Americanism in the Islamic world.

By this time the war with the Soviet's was over and Osama Bin Laden, now leader of Al Qaeda had left Afghanistan and was moving from country to country. Spreading the word and filling the pockets of Jihad. In 1996 Osama Bin Laden issued his first and least menacing religious ruling (fatwa). Calling for attacks on American forces occupying the land of the two holy places, referring to Saudi Arabia and the two Muslim shrines at Mecca and Medina.

Osama returned to Afghanistan in 1998, given refuge by the sympathetic Taliban, who had grown up alongside his Mujahideen brothers in Pakistan's seminaries. His second Fatwa was released the same year, along with Ayman Al Zawahiri (recruited by Bin Laden for the Afghan struggle in the 80’s) leader of the Jihad group in Egypt, and the leaders of three other Islamic extremist groups: The Islamic Group, Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan, and the Jihad movement in Bangladesh. The ruling, in short called on all Muslims to murder Americans (troops and civilians) whenever and wherever in the world they could.

Also in 1998 came Osama bin Laden's first major attacks against America. The U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya were hit with simultaneous car bombs. Those attacks brought Osama bin Laden to America's attention and onto the FBI's ten most wanted list.

President Clinton responded in a controlled manner; even after the attack in 2000 on U.S.S. Cole stationed in Yemen. Clinton mounted precision strikes based on only sound intelligence, alongside economic sanctions imposed on the Taliban and Afghanistan, intended to pressure them into handing Bin Laden (a hero of theirs) over. Unfortunately, difficulties in obtaining good intelligence impeded the possibility of precision strikes, sanctions had even less effect throughout Clinton’s presidency and terrorism continued to rise. Clinton’s lack of decisive action to combat the growing problem, combined with the Monica Lewinski scandal was his downfall. The current President George W Bush (Jr) replaced him in January 2001.

Four collisions happened on September 11 that year. Two planes collided with the twin towers, one with the Pentagon, and the building anti-Americanism, collided for the first time with America. The extreme anger caused by the massive attacks on American soil made Bush's job of convincing the American public of the need to invade Afghanistan a walk in the park.

This is where the conspiracies start flying. It is fairly common knowledge that a plan to install a massively profitable Unocal pipeline through Afghanistan was practically impossible (authoritative source) with the Taliban in power. The U.S. needed a reason to invade, and 9/11 provided that reason. After the invasion removed the Taliban, Hamid Karzai, previously on Unocal's payroll, was installed as prime minister. Neocon Zalmay Khalizad, also on Unocal's payroll, was installed as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. All further proof that the U.S profited because of 9/11.

Conspiracy theories range from the Neocons in the administration actually planning and funding 9/11, to them having prior knowledge and ordering the air force to stand down. Both aided by the fact that no fighters were scrambled despite the time span between the attacks.

There is also a large group who believe Zionist operatives were involved in the attacks, or that Israel had prior knowledge. This is the theory that I recently had reason to believe in, when I read that, just before 9/11 Saudi Arabia had convinced the U.S. to force Israel into creating an independent Palestinian state and finding a just solution to the other conflict issues. Then 9/11 was carried out by Saudi terrorists and it was all cancelled.

The theory that the buildings were brought down in controlled explosions has been adequately discredited as far as I am concerned.

Whether there was a conspiracy on 9/11 or not, it is pretty clear that the U.S' main motive for invading Afghanistan was oil profits. That said, in allowing Bush to unleash the military to embark on another possible conspiracy: the open-ended War on Terror, 9/11 was perhaps the best thing that ever happened in their eyes.

After the Afghanistan invasion went so well, Bush began talking about an axis of evil involving, Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Note that two of those countries, Iraq and Iran have the world's next largest oil reserves after U.S. ally Saudi Arabia. Bush then invaded Iraq, that time false justification was created. Among the lies were Saddam's connection to Osama bin Laden and his hand in 9/11. The Neocons' Unocal operative Khalizad was moved from Afghanistan to Iraq in his U.S. ambassador role to smooth their taking control of Iraq's oil profits. Iraq was seen to be the militarily weaker of the two and gave the Neocons, troops, armor and fighter jets on both sides of the militarily stronger axis member, Iran.

In this strategic positioning, knowingly or not, Bush drew Iran into announcing that they had successfully enriched uranium. This led to the intense stand-off between Iran and the west, which is currently reverberating in the Iraq theatre and in the U.N. Security Council. In other words Bush drew Iran into the actions that will probably become the justification for an invasion.

In conclusion: either 9/11 was a conspiracy that allowed the U.S to embark on the War on Terror, which, in actual fact could well be a conspiracy to take control the world's oil-reserves. Or the U.S. administration has capitalized on the tragic events of 9/11 to embark on the same war, possibly for nothing more than the future of U.S oil security, to fuel their world hegemony. The irony is that they may have started a spiralling end to their hegemony in doing so.