That Wiki sentence that you quoted hardly consigns the trans-Afghanistan pipeline to the realm of myth and legend.

And here's the sentence before it in the Wiki entry:

...The new deal on the pipeline was signed on 27 December 2002 by the leaders of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan.[1] In 2005, the Asian Development Bank submitted the final version of a feasibility study designed by British company Penspen...

fwiw, I'm aware that Wikipedia doesn't rise to the standard of an accepted reference for a term paper. But I'm not writing one here. And as a reference site, it's a good place to start. Anyone who has facility with search terms can find considerably more data on the topic by utilizing them.

While pursuing Osama bin Laden by gearing up a full-scale military invasion of Afghanistan in the months following Sept. 11, 2001 doesn't quite rise to the level of a Fool's Checkmate in chess, I personally didn't think it was the savviest move available. It was a bit too obvious- I mean, talk about telegraphing a punch. (And the only way bin Laden wouldn't have expected that response in advance is if he had been so far removed from the intimate details of the planning and execution of the 9/11 attack that he wasn't aware of the exact date- which in fact does appear to be the case, and which incidentally does make sense as far as the theory and practice of terror cell operation.)

But at least a rationale existed, as far as the U.S. military going in there in the first place.

Now, eight years later...it's about the pipeline.

And this:

The country has extensive deposits of barite, chromite, coal, copper, gold, iron ore, lead, natural gas, petroleum, precious and semiprecious stones, salt, sulfur, talc, and zinc. Precious and semiprecious stones include high-quality emerald, lapis lazuli, and ruby.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mining_in_Afghanistan

(I can easily find support from other sources on that; I don't have the time.)

It seems to me at this point that the US is being expected to pacify Afghanistan, on behalf of our creditors. The US military is doing the heavy lifting in the "NATO" effort, and the American taxpayers are footing the bill. Any profit returns to America at this point are going to the American military industrial complex, via camp followers like Kellogg, Brown, and Root.

Obviously, the international globalist investment elite contains some American faces (with no shortage of WASP ones, at that.)

And cost is no object to them, as long as it's your money.

The US is building a chain of outposts to shadow the pipeline:

...in fiscal year 2009, for example, the civilian US Agency for International Development awarded US$20 million in contracts for work in Afghanistan, while the US Army alone awarded $2.2 billion - $834 million of it for construction projects. According to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, the Pentagon has spent "roughly $2.7 billion on construction over the past three fiscal years" in that country and, "if its request is approved as part of the fiscal 2010 defense appropriations bill, it would spend another $1.3 billion on more than 100 projects at 40 sites across the country, according to a Senate report on the legislation"...

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KK11Df05.html

Can anyone seriously tell me that's all about "catching Al Qaeda"?

Maybe Woody Harrelson is smarter than you think. (Turn off that damn TV set, and dig.)

Keep shouting me down assholes

I couldn't be happier

— Zorkna

...which is actually pretty pathetic, if you think about it.

...the rhetoric and the propaganda spewing from our mainstream media is anti-Muslim to it’s core. And this anti-Muslim and anti-Arab meme is fuelling American’s acceptance of these wars of aggression and exploitation, and the war crimes therein.

I think you're exaggerating. I don't think you're acknowledging what real "anti-Muslim to the core" bigotry would actually look like.

Just for openers, serious "anti-Muslim, anti-Arab bigotry" would pretty much foreclose the opportunity for any Muslim or Arab to serve in the U.S. armed forces, for one thing.

And the American public has never been made up entirely of innocent little lambs without a hateful thought in their heads, until the Big Bad Zionist Media put them there.

I'm currently reading a book on California history. It's rife with incidents of frankly genocidal bigotry- ethnic clearances of native tribes, Mexicans, and Chinese. Not a bit of which can be laid at the feet of the Jews, or the Zionists, incidentally.

...[Afghanistan is] a perfect training ground. Just like Central and South America was in the 80’s. This is where soldiers and grunts earn their stripes. Sad to say, but many an infantry officer and noncom relishes the chance to get some experience on the ground. It’s their job, it’s what they do.

Actually, in my view it isn't a "perfect training ground." A good gladiator school, considered coldbloodedly on it's merits, allows one's own team sufficent advantages to have the edge in prevailing in combat skirmishes. But the shooting galleries of Afghanistan are almost completely set up from the point of view of the defending team.

We're the Redcoats, over there. That's unlikely to change.

...If these elites do turn that part of the world into a modern economic center, I fear that [Central Asia] will lose what it always has been. It will lose all of it’s original cultural splendour. I fear it will become Vegas on steroids – prostitution, gambling, violence. McDonald’s and Chili’s. Vulgarity at it’s most intense. Nothing but the crass exhibition of people sticking things up their butts and pre-pubescent girls dancing on stage. It’s the Zionist way.

Tastelessness, vulgarity, pornography, gambling, prostitution, crime- a Zionist monopoly? You must be kidding.

It's enough to make me wonder who you're trying to exonerate, by putting it all on the "Zionists."