For the record War69.com believes that General David Petraeus should run for President, he has an impeccable record and would probably defeat Obama in 2012 with ease, sadly though he should stay out of the Army infomercial propaganda business because these days the pseudo news stories are becoming so easy to spot.

To begin, weren’t you truth meter alarm bells going off when you first read and heard about this very positive story on Afghanistan. First we had Cheney and Wolfowitz telling us the oil money would fund the Iraq war, now we wake up on Monday morning and discover that Afghanistan will become the mining jewel of the world, highly valued minerals will flow out of the country at the same rate oil flows out of Saudi Arabia, well it certainly got the attention of the New York Times readers, as of Tuesday morning it still ranks #1 as the most emailed article.

War69.com was laughing too much at this article, yes the many options that we now have at our disposal renders stories like this less effective, much to the chagrin of the Obama administration, yet the mainstream media still has power as this story was trumpeted all over the news wires, the elite newspapers, the radio news breaks, PBS, NPR, you name it and they were heralding this story.

War69.com wondered, could it really be true that this is a new story, that nobody knew a very mountainous country had a vast mineral supply. Are we to believe that geologists just got around to Afghanistan in 2010? I think not, a two second Google search produced this conference from 2007:

Thursday, November 08, 2007
WASHINGTON, D.C. - You are invited to attend an event co-hosted by The Embassy of Afghanistan and the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce where the U.S. Geological Survey will unveil a 2007 preliminary assessment of non-fuel mineral resources of Afghanistan. The assessment will provide policymakers and potential private investors with valuable new information on the identity, location and quantity of undiscovered non-fuel mineral resources, such as copper, iron ore, colored stones and gemstones.

The USGS was commissioned by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to develop a preliminary assessment of Afghanistan’s non-fuel mineral resources. USGS scientists worked cooperatively with the Afghanistan Geological Survey of the Afghanistan Ministry of Mines, between 2004 and 2007, to compile existing information about known mineral deposits and evaluate the possible occurrence of undiscovered deposits of non-fuel mineral resources.

Even the Russians got in on the new news that really is old news story in 2002:

Russia Ready To Share Data On Afghanistan’s Mineral Wealth

Here is more information from 2007:

Afghanistan has significant amounts of undiscovered non-fuel mineral resources according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s 2007 assessment, unveiled today at the 3rd annual U.S.-Afghan Business Matchmaking Conference organized by the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.

fghanistan’s natural resources have a quality comparable to the highest-class minerals of the entire region,” said Afghanistan’s Ambassador to the United States Said T. Jawad. “We are grateful to the efforts of the USGS and our Ministry of Mines in allowing global investors an opportunity to receive the latest information on their assessment for more informed business decisions.”

The majority of information on Afghanistan’s mineral resources was produced between the early 1950s and about 1985. However, during the intermittent conflict over the next two decades, much of that data was hidden and protected by Afghan scientists. After 2001, this valuable data was returned to the Afghan government, and the USGS gathered new data and identified additional information in locations outside of Afghanistan.

Now let’s forget the fact that this is old news and the Army/Obama administration is desperate to counter all of the negative news coming out of Afghanistan. The key questions are how are you going to get the minerals out of the ground, you can’t even kill off Al-Qaeda, you can’t defeat the Taliban, yet a mining company is going to have enough security to get these precious minerals? The other question is that none of this wealth will fund our war effort, it will go to the dirty/corrupt Karzai government or fund more terrorist/Taliban/Al Qaeda operations.

But the kicker to the NY Times article has to be David Petraeus, a man that never uses strong over the top language, he is always measured even when he was speaking of positive results during the time that the surge was working in Iraq, but listen to the salesman on this mineral story:

“There is stunning potential here,” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the United States Central Command, said in an interview on Saturday. “There are a lot of ifs, of course, but I think potentially it is hugely significant.”

“stunning potential” is Petraeus selling sham wows, or is it shamwows, or Dutch tulip bulbs, or mortgages with no money down. The budget must be getting low in the Army psy-ops department because that is one bad sell job.

UPDATE: How old is this story, try the 1950’s via this 1980 Sarasota Herald Tribune article:

In the late 1950’s, high quality, large-scale aerial photographs and topographic maps were produced for geologic exploration of the southern three-fourths of the country by an American group and the northern quarter by the Russians.

Oil and gas drilling by the Russian was successful in the north in the late 1950’s.

Millions of rubles then were poured into geological exploration and good deposits of coal, sulphur, iron ore, chrome, gold, silver, beryllium, copper, lead-zinc, and barite were discovered.

The chrome, copper and iron ore already discovered in Afghanistan recently have been listed as “world class”‘ deposits by a Canadian consulting firm.