After reading Cussler's latest book, "Valhalla Rising" I thought about wars America fights for the control of crude oil. Remember Kuwait?

Well guess why all the innocent Afganistanis are dying? Would you hazard a guess that at the bottom of it might somehow be profit from new oil fields?

An article on November 2, 2001, by Ted Rall in the San Francisco Chronicle, tells a chilling story. And it is not about Women's rights or terrorism against the Jews.

It is about control and profit from the massive oil field found in the second largest republic of the former Soviet Union, Kazakstan. The country was devastated after losing subsidies when it gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Nursultan Nazarbayev is the president and former Communist Party boss, determined to get his oil out of the biggest untapped oil reserves in the world.

And when you have oil barrels to tap and need a bung-puller, you make deals with powerful governments aligned with an American oil company - this time UNOCAL. The most efficient plan was to build a pipeline across Afghanistan and link up with the Pakistani port of Karachi on the Arabian Sea. But those doggoned Afghanis just couldn't govern. They were at civil war. The thing to do of course is what our CIA has done in foreign countries for decades - that is to install a "stable" regime. The regime was to end the Afghanistan civil war and ensure the safety of the UNOCAL pipeline.

Impressed by the ruthlessness and willingness of the then-emerging Taliban to cut a pipeline deal, our state department and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war against the ethnically Tajik Northern Alliance.

As recently as 1999, our tax dollars paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official.

Wealth and power corrupts but I suspect that the Taliban had agreed to work with anyone who would further their own agenda - and that had a far different priority than moving oil. Their training was in terrorism, and their goal was destruction of the world economy. Whether Asama bin Ladin was a Taliban leader or whether he insinuated his hatred into the already ruthless group, he is a recognized influence on a worldwide terrorist organization. An he is not going to be killed by sophisticated US weapons.

"Make no mistake" our flag waving to support Bush's war is at the expense of the lives of our sons and grandsons but it will not stop terrorism. We can level the mountains of Afghanistan to make an easier route for the pipeline and add more fuel to fire the hatred of America.