:44:17
The United States began bombing Afghanistan
:44:19
just four weeks after 9/11.
:44:22
Mr. Bush said he was doing so
:44:23
because the Taliban government of Afghanistan
:44:26
had been harboring bin Laden.
:44:30
We will smoke 'em out of their holes.
:44:32
We're gonna smoke 'em out.
:44:33
Smoke 'em out.
:44:33
Smoke him out of his cave.
:44:35
Let's rush him and smoke him out.
:44:38
For all his tough talk,
:44:39
Bush really didn't do much.
:44:42
But what they did was slow and small.
:44:45
They put only 11,000 troops into Afghanistan --
:44:49
there are more police here in Manhattan,
:44:50
more police here in Manhattan
:44:52
than there are US troops in Afghanistan.
:44:54
Basically the President botched the response to 9/11.
:44:57
He should have gone right after bin Laden.
:44:59
The US Special Forces didn't get into the area
:45:01
where bin Laden was for two months.
:45:04
Two months?
:45:06
A mass murderer who attacked the United States
:45:08
was given a two month head start?
:45:12
Who in their right mind would do that?
:45:15
Anybody say "nice shot?"
:45:17
Nice shot.
:45:18
Hell of a shot.
:45:19
Or was the war in Afghanistan
:45:21
really about something else?
:45:23
Perhaps the answer was in Houston, Texas.
:45:29
In 1997 while George W. Bush
:45:31
was Governor of Texas,
:45:33
a delegation of Taliban leaders from Afghanistan
:45:36
flew to Houston to meet with Unocal executives
:45:39
to discuss the building of a pipeline
:45:41
through Afghanistan bringing natural gas
:45:44
from the Caspian Sea.
:45:46
And who got a Caspian Sea drilling contract
:45:49
the same day Unocal signed the pipeline deal?
:45:51
A company headed by a man named Dick Cheney:
:45:55
Halliburton.
:45:56
The point of view of the US government
:45:58
is this was kind of a magic pipeline, um,