Very quick snap-shot of LH's Post,

"There's oil out there that's not under American jurisdiction yet. There's a lot of it in Iran and South America."

The usual story about 'evil America', I have asked a number of times how they are supposed to achieve this. None of America's detractors have ever explained how the US does it. Oil/Natural Gas is a natural resource, a commodity, the price of which is controlled by an international market.

"There's more oil in the Caspian, and plans to move it by pipeline through Afghanistan to the Indian Ocean."

Oh yes, Don F's much favoured TAP Project which even to the Arab Development Bank is a dead duck. Maybe Little Hawk doesn't know it but there are two very large pipelines exporting oil from Azerbaijan (through Russia, Georgia to the Black Sea and another through Turkey to the Mediterranean) there are five, I believe taking oil and gas from the eastern side of the Caspian north and west into Russia. The TAP was originally proposed to satisfy India's growing fuel needs, the project is now no longer favoured because India will be getting it's supplies from Iran via another route. That is a project that is up and running that pipeline is being built the TAP is not.

"Afghanistan is now growing its poppy fields again, full scale."

Well actually no it is not, in fact less fields under cultivation no than before. Only problem is that they have been enjoying bumber harvests so the yield per acre is greater, and programmes are underway to convince the farmers to grow other crops.

"The international drug trade resumes..."

Is Little Hawk trying to tell us that it ever stopped while the Taleban were in power, or any other time? Oh yes I see he did:

"Those crazy frikkin' Taliban had shut it all down...blasted religious fanatics! You can't depend on people like that to be sane and rational about business."

Absolute rubbish, of course they didn't shut it all down, they relied on it for their revenue, and still do to a certain extent. The Taleban may have decreed that all production must stop, as has the present Afghan Government, but that is as far as it went. Even at the height of their power the Taleban never were in a position to govern Afghanistan or impose their will on the warlords and the tribes. Oh, LH, the largest poppy growing area in Afghanistan - Helmand right in the middle of the Pashtun Taleban heartland.