Mon 14 Jun, 2010
This is what we're fighting for.
We’re never leaving Afghanistan:
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
[...]
“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”
This is just fucking great. The longest war in American history is not being fought to capture Bin Laden or to drive out Al-Qaeda or to defeat the Taliban or to protect Afghan women, but to control the minerals needed to produce laptops, Blackberrys, and iPhones.
But hey, at least our government knows what to do with all of those unemployed orphans now.
Tags: Afghanistan, Can We Stop Calling This War a War On Terror Now, Rich Men Getting Richer
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