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June 15th, 2010
02:00 PM ET
Report: Trillion dollars of untapped minerals in Afghanistan
(CNN) – A trillion dollars worth of useful minerals is sitting under Afghanistan waiting to be tapped. But there are a lot of questions about how hard it would be to get it out of there and even some questions about the timing of the announcement. The military didn't recently discover it, the report was apparently done years ago. To help us break it all down, we were joined on Tuesday's American Morning by Joe Klein, columnist at Time magazine, and Jack Medlin, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
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We have to beat China & Russia, they aren't spending trillions of dollars on a war there. We deserve 1st dibbs! Perhpas employ the people of Afghanistan & educate them so they don' join the Taliban or other terrorist organizations. Plenty of money to go around.
WRONG, WRONG & WRONG: Afganistan, Pakistan, ALL these countries do not want us there. They are happy to take all of our money they can. Karzai is just a U.S. backed leader who does nothing! YES, it is those tribal leaders that have to be consulted and get their permission to do things! That is the way they have done things forever. If anything it will be those tribal leaders who give the OK for companies to come in and dig, depending on what THEY get out of it. And then again, because of their culture they just might tell everyone to go to heck! My bet would be that even if they allowed the digging/mining that the U.S. would not be part of it!
I am sure this administration will find a way to tax all that wealth. Oh yes he does that already, especially if it is someone else's wealth.
Most of Afghanistan lives in a state of primitive tribalism. If we don't go for it, those minerals will just be sitting there under the ground as if they didn't exist. Unless the Chinese or Russians go for them before we do, of course...
Think of what we could do with a TRILLION dollars worth of minerals. We could set ourselves on a solid track towards paying off our national debt, we could probably pay for almost the entire war effort for Afghanistan and Iraq, the possibilities are endless.
The Afghans certainly won't be making any effort to dig it up themselves. And were already in the country, might as well milk it for all its worth.