If you care to read even one other thing I've written here, you'd see a) I'm quite old, and b) I know a thing or two about the wars and why they happened. The Turkemenistan Afghanistan Pakistan India pipeline is a godsend for the region, and the people making the most money from it will be locals to those countries - they get the tariffs from the commodity. All of the infrastructure involved is locally owned at least in part - and the main other beneficiaries - who invested their own money into it - are not US based. The Unocal pipeline was indeed on the table until 1998, when the Clinton admin bombed Afghanistan and Sudan. If the Taliban, who were not directly fighting us at all then, had been able to pull the deal off the GDP of the country was set to quadruple from the tariffs alone. It would have been a very good thing for the country. Securing a pipeline from attack is also a good thing, for everyone involved, including the Taliban. If they can be negotiated with, which has not always been the case, more the better - yet you refuse to see it othe than 'people getting rich from an illegal and unjustified war'. Look opportunists in all shapes and sizes have made bank on the war - mainly because the US goverment, as many do, insist on outsourcing so much of their operations - but that's not why we're there, or why we went in. 9/11 is why. Islamic theocratic terrorists are why. Many of the points you make here to defend your position are the very things people just like the Taliban use to recruit their fighters, you know...