Is Barack Obama about to place a neocon, Zalmay Khalilzad, in Afghanistan as its new de facto leader?
Today, Helene Cooper reported in the Washington Post that, “Zalmay Khalilzad, who was President George W. Bush’s ambassador to Afghanistan, could assume a powerful, unelected position inside the Afghan government under a plan he is discussing with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, according to senior American and Afghan officials.”
“American and British officials expressed concern,” the Post reports, “that any belief that the West was behind the plan would harm its chances inside Afghanistan.”
Both Hamid Karzai, the current president of Afghanistan, and Zalmay Khalilzad, the US special envoy, were formerly employed as consultants to Unocal.
Khalilzad drew up Unocal's risk analysis on its proposed trans-Afghan gas pipeline according to the Irish Times. The Taliban, after initially negotiating with Unocal, had begun showing a preference for Bridas Corporation of Argentina.
Then came the tragic day of September 11, 2001, and on October 7, 2001 the U.S. launched Operation Infinite Justice, soon renamed Operation Enduring Freedom.
In 2003, Khalilzad became the ambassador to Afghanistan, a post he held until 2005, when he took over as ambassador to Iraq.
Later, as the US ambassador to Iraq, he “played a crucial role in getting rid of the last duly elected prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari.” (Independent, May 23, 2006)
Neocon Khalilzad, along with Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, L. Paul Bremer, Scooter Libby, Robert Zoellick, Paul Wolfowitz, and George Shultz, were key players in the long term quest to takeover of Iraq's economy according to Antonia Juhasz. (Huffington Post, May 23, 2006)
Khalilzad was a signatory of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), and he signed two subsequent PNAC letters.
A January 1998 PNAC letter to President Bill Clinton, cosigned by Wolfowitz, Perle, Rumsfeld, and Bolton, among others, warned: "We may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War."
The PNAC letter said that the policy of containing Iraq had failed and advocated "removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power." Warning that Iraq would almost certainly develop weapons of mass destruction, the PNAC associates concluded: "Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater."
In 2000, PNAC, in a report titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," wrote: "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
Now many claim that 9/11 was the New Pearl Harbor, and few will doubt that the West is behind the plan to place Khalilzad as the new, de facto leader of Afghanistan.
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