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Secret
Kuwaiti Pipeline Found
From the Editorial Board
The Internet has turned out to be one of the most influential
and powerful communication and information tools of our generation.
We did not need to tell anyone this however, as you are all
busy checking away messages and e-mails instead of laboring
away at your school work. Besides the latent procrastination
value however, the Internet has turned up a few more useful
and interesting things. For instance: a secret oil pipeline
from Kuwait to the Iraqi border.
Certainly, neither Kuwait nor Iraq is exactly a secretive
location for oil transportation infrastructure, but this pipeline
is different. Last May, an old man named Hank Brandli claimed
that by observing and comparing weather satellite images of
Kuwait, he discovered a pipeline in construction from central
Kuwait to Iraq's rich southeastern oil fields. Now, everyone
has an internet hobby or preferred distraction, be it news,
sports, or even the Homestar Runner. However when a retired
Air Force satellite information officer who is also MIT alumnus
makes a claim like this, it should not fall on deaf ears.
Surprisingly this claim, including the accompanying photos,
did. Amidst the deteriorating situation in Iraq, rising daily
death tolls, overturning of constitutional amendments about
abortion and the like, a pipeline was small news Stateside.
Brandli's discovery will hopefully be receiving more attention
soon, as the story was published (albeit in a very short article)
recently in <i>Popular Mechanics</i> magazine,
a publication that is typically pretty gung-ho about patriotism
and military technology.
According to the Allied Command in both Kuwait and Iraq,
this pipeline does not exist. Considering the trouble that
the military has had maintaining order, let alone a safe passage
from north Iraq across potentially volatile Turkey for oil
export, it would seem more than plausible that our government
and our liberated allies in Kuwait would be siphoning off
oil through the well established and safe infrastructure in
Kuwait. This is especially handy since the 87 billion dollars
spent on killing Iraqi people and destroying Iraq, then subsequently
feeding the Iraqi people and rebuilding Iraq is not going
to be enough.
What is the moral of this story? Stay abreast of news developments,
from both large corporate and small independent sources. Not
everyone is monitoring the daily paper in a small Florida
town, but as other independent news digesters caught on, the
information is disseminating through the Internet to savvy
news watchers around the world. The fine folks here at <i>The
Student Life</i> encourage no one to trust either large
or small sources completely, but to survey both sides for
news and information about any and everything. Good luck,
procrastinators.
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