1.I don't understand. How would conquering Astan give the Soviets access to a warm water port? Wouldn't they still need to troop through another nation, say Pakistan or Iran to gain a seaport.?

2. I don't portray US involvement as anything. Some however, thought it was a useful adventure.
Wiki:
The Afghan government, having secured a treaty in December 1978 that allowed them to call on Soviet forces, repeatedly requested the introduction of troops in Afghanistan in the spring and summer of 1979. They requested Soviet troops to provide security and to assist in the fight against the mujahideen rebels. On April 14, 1979, the Afghan government requested that the USSR send 15 to 20 helicopters with their crews to Afghanistan, and on June 16, the Soviet government responded and sent a detachment of tanks, BMPs, and crews to guard the government in Kabul and to secure the Bagram and Shindand airfields. In response to this request, an airborne battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel A. Lomakin, arrived at the Bagram Air Base on July 7. They arrived without their combat gear, disguised as technical specialists. They were the personal bodyguards for President Taraki. The paratroopers were directly subordinate to the senior Soviet military advisor and did not interfere in Afghan politics.

After a month, the Afghan requests were no longer for individual crews and subunits, but for regiments and larger units. In July, the Afghan government requested that two motorized rifle divisions be sent to Afghanistan. The following day, they requested an airborne division in addition to the earlier requests. They repeated these requests and variants to these requests over the following months right up to December 1979. However, the Soviet government was in no hurry to grant them.

The anti-communist rebels garnered support from the United States. As stated by the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and current US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in his memoirs From the Shadows, the US intelligence services began to aid the rebel factions in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet deployment. On July 3, 1979, US President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order authorizing the CIA to conduct covert propaganda operations against the communist regime.

Carter advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski stated: "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, December 24, 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise." Brzezinski himself played a fundamental role in crafting US policy, which, unbeknownst even to the mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy "to induce a Soviet military intervention." In a 1998 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Brzezinski recalled: "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would...That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Soviets into the Afghan trap ... The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the Soviet Union its Vietnam War."[20]
Additionally, on July 3, 1979, Carter signed a presidential finding authorizing funding for anticommunist guerrillas in Afghanistan.[21] As a part of the Central Intelligence Agency program Operation Cyclone, the massive arming of Afghanistan's mujahideen was started.[22].........

3. Astan is roughly 300 miles at its closest point by my calc from the Caspian Sea. I don't know anything else to comment on the feasability of an oil pipeline from the CS oil fields to or thru Astan. I agree. Who knows?

4. Laying waste to nations (Germany) and cities (Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo) solved urgent problems in the last century.....and the outcomes (freedom and democratic institutions) to those peoples, viewed with the hindsight of 60 years, were indeed positive. My opinion, that's all.


As far as OBL is concerned, put his head on a pike. Gates' comments? Maybe honest and open remarks . Maaybe, just maaybe, dezinformation. He is, after all, a CIA guy. I don't buy the martyrdom theory. There is no upside in keeping him alive if captured. As if giving him a lifetime sentence will have any effect at all on terrorism? Dealing with that goes on unchanged in any way shape or form whether OBL lives or dies. Sadly.