The editorial cartoonist Ted Rall, again, in an op-ed posted on Yahoo News, October 22, 2001:

Finally the Bushies have the perfect excuse to do what the U.S. has wanted all along—invade and/or install an old-school puppet regime in Kabul. Realpolitik no more cares about the 6,000 dead than it concerns itself with oppressed women in Afghanistan; this ersatz war by a phony president is solely about getting the Unocal deal [for a pipeline from oil-rich Kazakhstan] done without interference from annoying local middlemen.

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