As the BBC reported on September 18, 2001: “Niaz Niak, a former Pakistani foreign minister, was told by senior American officials in mid-July 2001 (pre 9-11) that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. It was Naik’s view that Washington would not drop its war against Afghanistan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taliban.” As journalist John Pilger puts it “One of the reasons the Americans attacked Afghanistan was not to liberate women but to liberate the pipeline deal.”
Pilger continues, “This is the hidden agenda of the “war on terrorism” - a term that is no more than a euphemism for the Bush administration’s exploitation of the September 11 attacks and America’s accelerating imperial ambitions. In the past 14 months, on the pretext of “fighting terror”, US military bases have been established at the gateways to the greatest oil and gas fields on earth, especially in Central Asia, which is also coveted as a ‘great prize.’”

Meanwhile Donald Kagan, who served as co-chairman of the 2000 New American Century Project, embraces the idea that the United States should establish permanent military bases in a post-war Iraq. “We will probably need a major concentration of forces in the Middle East over a long period of time. That will come at a price, but think of the price of not having it. When we have economic problems, it’s been caused by disruptions in our oil supply. If we have a force in Iraq, there will be no disruption in oil supplies.”