A bit of a follow-up on "The Perfect Alibi", in which I mentioned the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, Zalmay M. Khalilzad. The New York Times presents a fairly flattering profile of "Zal's" work there in the rebuilding effort.
A couple of notes on the article:
- "As a State Department and Pentagon official and at the Rand Corporation, he advocated pre-emptive action against so-called rogue states like Iraq." - This is somewhat of an understatement. Khalilzad was a member of the PNAC.
- Khalilzad "briefly defended the Taliban while working as a consultant for Unocal, the oil company that was then trying to build a pipeline through Afghanistan. He later became one of the Taliban's fiercest critics." - This is somewhat misleading on two points. First, Unocal wasn't trying to build a pipeline at this time. They were trying to negotiate a contract with the Taliban to build one, and Khalilzad was acting as a broker for Unocal in this effort. Obviously he defended the Taliban during these nogotiations and turned on them when the Unocal negotiation broke down.
Second, not mentioned here is that UNOCAL did sign a pipeline contract with the new Afghanistan government, and is currently in a pre-construction phase of that project.
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