[Reily]

There is enormous untapped mineral wealth there.
That’s not nothing, whether we should be involved is another question.

[Zhang Fei]

[There is enormous untapped mineral wealth there.]

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That’s what Afghans keep saying. The assayers are full of crap. They spend only enough time in-country to avoid getting zapped by the Taliban. If I had a penny for every mineral prospector who claimed to have found the mother lode but really hadn’t, I’d have a huge stack of pennies. The Chinese looked at it, and arranged to have the Taliban protect whatever investment they made. So far, they’ve invested nothing in Afghanistan apart from sending looky-loos.

[GOPJ]

There is enormous untapped mineral wealth there.

It might make some sense if we were there for the 'untapped mineral wealth' but we're not. Never have been... How long have we been there? Twenty years? Billions of dollars down the rat hold... For that money and the lives of our young - we could have BOUGHT 'mineral wealth' and handed it out like candy to all our American companies.