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Taliban Pipe Dream

It’s time to point out another of Michael Moore’s whopping lies and distortions.  This one concerns the Taliban’s trip to Texas.  (In the quoted text below, NARRATOR is Michael Moore.)

NARRATOR: Or was the war in Afghanistan really about something else? Perhaps the answer was in Houston, Texas. In 1997 while George W. Bush was Governor of Texas, a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives to discuss the building of a pipeline through Afghanistan bringing natural gas from the Caspian Sea. And who got a Caspian Sea drilling contract the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal? A company headed by a man named Dick Cheney: Halliburton.

In 1997 George W. Bush was indeed Governor of Texas, and Bill Clinton (a Democrat) was President of the United States.  Note that Moore does not state that Bush had anything to do with the Taliban meeting, because Bush indeed had nothing to do with it.  He only states that Bush was governor at the time (a fact), thereby implying that he had something to do with the meeting (a lie).  The Taliban’s entry into the United States was requested by the Unocal corporation and cleared by Clinton’s State Department.

As far as Unocal and the pipeline deal goes, according to everything I can find Unocal pulled out of the deal.  This BBC article from May 30, 2002, states, “The US company Unocal led a consortium in the 1990s which undertook feasibility studies, but it pulled out of the project in 1998.” When the pipeline deal was signed in 2002, Unocal issued this press release denying their involvement.  “Unocal Chairman Charles R. Williamson told Unocal stockholders today that Unocal has no plans or interest in becoming involved in any projects in Afghanistan, including natural gas or crude oil pipelines. He made the statement in response to recent erroneous news reports about Unocal and the pipeline project in Afghanistan.”

It breaks down like this. In 1997 the Taliban comes to Texas with the okay of Bill Clinton.  This has nothing, nothing, to do with George W. Bush.  In December of 1998 Unocal pulls out of the project.  Then, in 2002, Afghanistan signs a a deal not with an oil company but with Turkmenistan and Pakistan to try and develop a pipeline.  As the BBC article states,

The presidents of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan have signed an agreement to tap Central Asia’s huge gas reserves.

The three leaders - Pakistani President Musharraf, interim Afghan leader Hamid Karzai and Turkmen President Niyazov - agreed on the construction of a $2bn pipeline to bring gas from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan.

So, in other words, the three leaders got together and agreed to get the ball rolling.  Note that neither Unocal nor Halliburton has anything to do with this.  Then, according to Moore, Halliburton got awarded work in the Caspian Sea the same say this “contract” was signed.  The only thing I can find is this Halliburton press release from June 17, 2002.

Halliburton’s Energy Services Group, a business segment of Halliburton (NYSE: HAL), has been awarded a two year contract extension with Agip KCO (formerly OKIOC) for providing integrated drilling services for the Kashagan reservoir located in the northeast sector of the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan. Agip KCO, the field operator, is expected to deliver first oil from the reservoir by 2005.

So much for some nefarious conspiracy between Halliburton, Unocal, Bush, and the Taliban.  Moore then continues:

NARRATOR: And who else stood to benefit from the pipeline? Bush’s number one campaign contributor, Kenneth Lay, and the good people of Enron. (shot of BBC News website, 3 December 1997) Only the British press covered this trip. Then in 2001, just 5 1/2 months before 9/11, the Bush Administration welcomed a special Taliban envoy to tour the United States to help improve the image of the Taliban government.

This is, like most of what Moore says, a nugget of truth wrapped in a blanket of spin.  The only documentation I could find about this trip was from some loony left-wing site, which is probably the same place Moore got it.

The Taliban visits to Washington continued up to a few months prior to the September 11 attacks. The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s South Asian Division maintained constant satellite telephone contact with the Taliban in Kandahar and Kabul. Washington permitted the Taliban to maintain a diplomatic office in Queens, New York headed by Taliban diplomat Abdul Hakim Mojahed. In addition, U.S. officials, including Assistant Secretary of State for South Asian Affairs Christina Rocca, who is also a former CIA officer, visited Taliban diplomatic officials in Islamabad. In the meantime, the Bush administration took a hostile attitude towards the Islamic State of Afghanistan, otherwise known as the Northern Alliance. Even though the United Nations recognized the alliance as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, the Bush administration, with oil at the forefront of its goals, decided to follow the lead of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and curry favor with the Taliban mullahs of Afghanistan. The visits of Islamist radicals did not end with the Taliban. In July 2001, the head of Pakistan’s pro-bin Laden Jamiaat-i-Islami Party, Qazi Hussein Ahmed, also reportedly was received at the George Bush Center for Intelligence (aka, CIA headquarters) in Langley, Virginia.

According to the Washington Post, the Special Envoy of Mullah Omar, Rahmatullah Hashami, even came to Washington bearing a gift carpet for President Bush from the one-eyed Taliban leader.  The Village Voice reported that Hashami, on behalf of the Taliban, offered the Bush administration to hold on to bin Laden long enough for the United States to capture or kill him but, inexplicably, the administration refused.

Okay, let’s accept this article as being true.  The State Department was in contact with the Taliban government, and they permitted the Taliban to have an office.  Am I missing something here?  Isn’t this exactly the type of thing the State Department is supposed to do?  This article is as nondescript and nonspecific as Moore.  It says that some Taliban came to America in 2001, and then it makes guesses as to the motive.  Did they meet with President Bush?  Were they requested to come by President Bush?  Or is this all simply slinging mud and hoping that some of it sticks?  Moore continues:

NARRATOR: Here is the Taliban official visiting our State Department to meet with US officials. Why on Earth did the Bush administration allow a Taliban leader to visit the United States knowing that the Taliban were harboring the man who bombed the USS Cole and our African embassies? Well, I guess 9/11 put a stop to that. When the invasion of Afghanistan was complete we installed its new president, Hamid Karzai. Who was Hamid Karzai? He was a former advisor to Unocal. Bush also appointed as his envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad who was also a former Unocal advisor. I guess you can probably see where this is leading. Faster than you can say Black Gold Texas Tea, Afghanistan signed an agreement with her neighboring countries to build a pipeline through Afghanistan carrying natural gas from the Caspian Sea. Oh, and the Taliban? Uh, they mostly got away. As did Osama bin Laden and most of al Qaeda.

So, when the Clinton State Department brings the Taliban to America in 1997 Moore uses it as an example of then-Governor Bush’s ties to the group.  But when the Bush State Department meets with the Taliban in 2001, it’s all part of Bush’s oil conspiracy.  Moore wants to have it both ways.

Also worthy of note is the mention of the bombing of the USS Cole and the embassies.  Odd, isn’t it, that Moore neglects to mention who was president at the time that these attacks happened:  Bill Clinton, the same guy whose administration met with the Taliban in 1997.  Now, the Cole attack happened on October 12, 2000.  The embassy bombings were on August 7, 1998.  In response to these incidents Bill Clinton did virtually nothing, launching cruise missile strikes against an abandoned training camp in Afghanistan and a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory. 

Imagine, for a moment if this were the case:

• President Bush meets with the Taliban in 1997.
• The US embassies are bombed in 1998.  Bush’s response?  A couple of fruitless missile strikes.
• The USS Cole is bombed in 2000.  Bush’s response?  Nothing.
• The US is attacked on September 11, 2001.

Can you possibly imagine Michael Moore not pointing his finger at this series of events and drawing a conspiratorial conclusion?  Of course he would.  The fact is that there is just as much “evidence” of collusion or a conspiracy between Clinton and the Taliban as there is between Bush and the Taliban.  But Moore, in his quest to do anything to make Bush look as bad as possible, only tells you a fraction of the story.

Update: There’s been an update to this story posted here.

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