...The Role of NATO
For most Americans and Europeans, Afghanistan appeared on their radar screens shortly after the 9/11 assaults on the World Trade Towers and the Pentagon. But according to Escobar, three months before the 2001 attack U.S., Iranian, German, and Italian officials met in Geneva to discuss toppling the Taliban because it was "the proverbial fly in the ointment" in a scheme to run a $2 billion, 800-mile natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via southern Afghanistan.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO moved aggressively to fill the vacuum left by the demise of the Warsaw Pact, quickly recruiting former Soviet allies and provinces.
According to Escobar, one of NATO's first forays in the energy war was the Balkans, which NATO represented as a fight to liberate the Albanians in Kosovo. Moscow and Beijing, however, viewed it as an opportunity for the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation (AMBO) to build a $1.1 billion pipeline to bring Caspian Basin oil to the West, thus bypassing Iran and Russia. The AMBO pipeline — due to open in 2011 — will transport Caspian Basin oil via Georgia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania.
"How could Russia, China, and Iran not interpret the war in Kosovo, then the invasion of Afghanistan (where Washington had previously tried to pair with the Taliban and encourage the building of another of those avoid-Iran, avoid-Russia pipelines), and finally Georgia (that critical energy transportation junction) as straightforward wars for Pipelineistan?" Escobar asks.
For every action, however, there is an opposite and equal reaction...
Michael Ruppert's explanation of the reasons for WHY 911 took place appears to be so much more credible now than it was when he was first writing about the links between Peak Oil and 911 at his site, FromTheWilderness.com in 2001 and, later, in his book Crossing The Rubicon.
Quite aside from all the scientific evidence (like high-tech explosive residue in the dust), it's always seemed obvious to me that the events of 911 kicked off the escalated developments in Central Asia and Iraq over oil and gas pipelines and over other resources, including military presence and territorial ambition/protection.
Articles like this one gloss over 911 by simply noting how utterly convenient it was for military and pipeline planners. It is always left up to the reader to decide whether or not 911 was a false flag operation. But the implication is always there, if not explicit.