I admit, I’m addicted to the news alerts the NY Times and the Washington Post send out. (I know other papers do as well, but I can only be alerted to so much news.) And it’s fun when it’s a political story to see which paper gets into my Blackberry first. Remember when Time and Newsweek competed, on a weekly basis? Remember Newsweek?

But usually the news is worth little more than a glance, perhaps a follow up later on the paper’s website or even (hey!) its paper edition. Last night was different. The alert I got from the NYT at 9:22 EST slugged “US Discovers $1 Trillion in Afghan Military Deposits” was enough to send me to the Times’ site. (Or send my wife, actually; I was chewing my nails, expecting Boston to blow its 15-point lead.)

Maybe it was that one-trillion number; in the days of billion-dollar bail-outs, it takes a figure that size to get my attention. Or maybe it was just the realization, trumpeted right there in the lede, that this could “fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself.” The scenarios spun out in the article itself included a more corrupt Karzai government; renewed Chinese (as well as US) interest in the region; and a more-determined, high-stakes Taliban, fighting it out with whoever until the bitter end.

Consider the phrase “the Saudi Arabia of lithium”; I may never reach for my Blackberry again without thinking of Afghanistan, and who provided the minerals that make that little gadget go. It’s kind of like the Beverly Hillbillies, or the Bel-Airabs, that ancient SNL parody about some Arabs who found “Kuwait Koolaid” in accidental fashion like, Jed Clampett (“And then one day he was shootin’ at some Jews…”).

It’s amazing to me that this was not the number one story on every news site today. It doesn’t even get a mention on CNN, or Drudge (is it because the Times broke the story?) though Foreign Policy does add a note of caution, if not downright skepticism, about the revelation. (Though the skepticism is reserved more for the timing of the news and Afghanistan’s ability to handle the wealth, though that to me seems much of the the news value…) Still, it could be a game-changer – depending on which game you’re watching.