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Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq's Oil

Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq's Oil
Spark Political Fight Between Neocons and Big Oil
BBC Television exposé plus an interview with reporter Greg Palast by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!
Monday, March 21, 2005

AMY GOODMAN: In an explosive new report for BBC Television Newsnight, investigative journalist Greg Palast charges that President Bush was planning to invade Iraq before the September 11th attacks and was considering two very different plans about what to do with Iraq's oil. The plans reportedly sparked a political fight between neoconservatives and big oil companies.

Greg Palast joins us in our firehouse studio and we air his exclusive report for BBC Newsnight, "Secret U.S. Plans For Iraq's Oil."

President Bush was planning to invade Iraq before the September 11th attacks and was considering two very different plans about what to do with Iraq's oil. The plans sparked a political fight between neoconservatives and big oil companies and may help explain the recent appointments of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank and John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. That's the explosive charge in an expose by investigative reporter Greg Palast. This exclusive report aired on the BBC last week. This is the first time it is being showed in the United States.

I HOPE I DIE BEFORE THE NEXT RE-FILL

Monday, July 4, 2005
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from Greg Palast's journal

I was in the drug store today out here in Podunk. Some old guy in front of me was picking up his little paper bag of prescription medicine. The lady behind the counter handed him a credit card slip and said, "I'm sorry."

She was sorry because the bill was over $1,200 for the drugs. The old man stared at the charge card receipt and stared at it some more. Hesitating, he signed, then said, "I hope I die before I have to pay for the next re-fill."

He wasn't joking. The lady behind the counter said, "Oh, don't ever say that." And she said it in such a way that it was clear she'd heard the same thought before, in different words, from too many of the old folk that come by.

And I was thinking, "I wonder if he voted for Bush?"

I mean, did he vote for the man who would stop boys from kissing boys, who would allow big stone icons of the Ten Commandments in government buildings,...

A Fossilized Energy Bill

Jeff Rickert and Brian Siu
June 29, 2005



Jeff Rickert is interim director and Brian Siu is an energy policy analyst at the Apollo Alliance.

The passage of the energy bill in the Senate represents a lost opportunity to take the nation in a new direction. With energy prices soaring and conflict in energy-producing regions escalating, Congress should be enacting a crash program to achieve energy independence. The public support is there. The Apollo Alliance and all the groups and individuals who fought to deliver a new vision of our energy future are testament to that will and that opportunity. Yesterday, America lost a chance to not only make the nation more secure, but to make an investment that would create millions of jobs, produce a healthier environment and build stronger communities.

Certainly, the Senate did better than the House, but the bar was not set all that high. The House of Representatives, in April, passed the same tired business-as-usual energy thinking that amounts to little more than a corporate giveaway for traditional energy producers. Out of $8 billion in tax incentives, the House bill allocates $500 million (only 6 percent) to efficiency and renewables. It includes an amendment that would repeal the Public Utilities Holding Company Act, a provision that is the last line of defense between stable electricity delivery and putting the entire nation in peril of an Enron-like crisis. Further, it gives the federal government the authority to override the will of states in determining sites for liquefied natural gas plants. These facilities raise serious health and safety concerns for the surrounding communities. And, most notoriously, the House bill includes the controversial MTBE provision that would shield oil and gas refiners from the billions of dollars of liability they face for groundwater contamination.

THE COLLAPSE OF COMPROMISE

[Col. Writ. 5/25/05] Copyright 2005 Mumia Abu-Jamal

It is sometimes utterly amazing what politicians will sell the American public.
The recent Senate squabble over the so-called 'nuclear option', which threatened to abolish the old rules governing Senate filibusters, or the ability of a minority of Senators to create roadblocks in the daily business of the Senate, came to an end, when a number of Senators, Democrats and Republicans, agreed to a compromise that takes the 'nuclear option' off the table (for now), while the Senate proceeds to conduct up or down votes on President Bush's right-wing judicial nominees.
Already, Texas Supreme Court jurist, Priscilla Owens, now wears the robe of a judge of the Court of Appeals -- for life.
By the time you read this, it's quite possible that

The Daily Show hits again

Thanks to a comment from a fellow blogger. Here is a link to his blog and view the transcript.
Cheers.

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THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

George W. Bush's first administration was notable for including a number of veterans of previous Republican administrations, including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. But if Bush's early cabinet members and advisors had considerable government experience, they, like others before them, could also boast of extensive corporate connections. Bush, the first president with an MBA degree, appears to be following a similar course in choosing the cabinet for his second term.

Bush himself is a former Texas oilman. His company, Arbusto, was on the verge of bankruptcy when it merged with Spectrum 7 in 1984. Harken Energy bought Spectrum in 1986, and Bush was given a seat on Harken's board. He went on to become managing general partner of the Texas Rangers baseball team before entering politics. Vice President Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton, the world's largest oil field services company, until he joined the Bush ticket in 2000. Halliburton's activities in the Middle East have drawn scrutiny. The company's European subsidiaries sold spare parts to Iraq's oil industry, despite U.N. sanctions. Halliburton and its subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root have reaped huge profits from the rebuilding of Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003. Critics charge that Halliburton has received preferential treatment in the awarding of government contracts in Iraq. The company also has faced trouble at home. It agreed to pay $4 billion to settle myriad asbestos and silica-related lawsuits, and is facing a class-action suit alleging accounting fraud.

Below is a list of corporations with connections to people in the Bush administration. In cases where no corporate connections exist, the chart's company field has been left blank. As in previous administrations, those without extensive corporate connections are the exception, not the rule:

The new U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Another Winning appointee

Our Newest Proconsul
Robert Dreyfuss
June 09, 2005

It's a foregone conclusion that the Senate will confirm Zalmay Khalilzad to be the new U.S. ambassador to Iraq, replacing John Negroponte. Still, it's worth stepping back to consider what Khalilzad's appointment says about the Bush administration's continuing refusal to comprehend the magnitude of the disaster in Iraq—and about the Democrats' inexplicable inability to step forward and challenge the president as Iraq continues to deteriorate. His confirmation hearing Tuesday slipped by almost unnoticed, thanks in part to a docile stable of Democrats who decided to give him a free pass, rather than seize the opportunity to lambaste the president's Iraq policy.

First, on the man himself: it's hard to imagine anyone worse than Khalilzad for the Baghdad job. Like one of Alexander the Great's proconsuls, Khalilzad neatly steps into one U.S.-occupied neocolony, Iraq, from another, Afghanistan. Khalilzad, born in Afghanistan, has been deeply involved in U.S.-Afghan policy for more than two decades. He is arguably as much to blame as anyone for the catastrophic mistakes that led first to that country's civil war, then to the rise of the Taliban, and finally to the Afghanistan of 2005: a warlord-dominated narco-state, in which heroin and opium provide fully half of the gross domestic product, and in which a thriving, Taliban-led Islamic fundamentalist insurgency is recently showing signs of emerging, once again, as a mortal threat to a tottering regime in Kabul. Zalmay Khalilzad, it seems, is getting out just in time.

The Pimping of the President

BY LOU DUBOSE


Four months after he took the oath of office in 2001, President George W. Bush was the attraction, and the White House the venue, for a fundraiser organized by the alleged perpetrator of the largest billing fraud in the history of corporate lobbying. In May 2001, Jack Abramoff’s lobbying client book was worth $4.1 million in annual billing for the Greenberg Traurig law firm. He was a friend of Bush advisor Karl Rove. He was a Bush “Pioneer,” delivering at least $100,000 in bundled contributions to the 2000 campaign. He had just concluded his work on the Bush Transition Team as an advisor to the Department of the Interior. He had sent his personal assistant Susan Ralston to the White House to work as Rove’s personal assistant. He was a close friend, advisor, and high-dollar fundraiser for the most powerful man in Congress, Tom DeLay. Abramoff was so closely tied to the Bush Administration that he could, and did, charge two of his clients $25,000 for a White House lunch date and a meeting with the President. From the same two clients he took to the White House in May 2001, Abramoff also obtained $2.5 million in contributions for a non-profit foundation he and his wife operated.

Click on the title for full article.

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Bush Administration Defends Former Oil Industry Advocate Who Changed Climate Reports

I know it's hard to believe, but the Bush administration has lied to us again.
enjoy.
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June 09, 2005 — By H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration said Wednesday that changes made in government reports on global warming by a former oil industry advocate were part of a normal interagency review and did not violate a pledge to base environmental policy on sound science.

"The facts point out that our reports are based on the best scientific knowledge and they're based on the inputs of scientists," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.

Documents provided to the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit group that helps whistle-blowers, showed that a White House official who once was the oil industry's chief lobbyist on climate change, edited major administration reports on the phenomenon in 2002 and 2003.

The official, Philip Cooney, is chief of staff of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Cooney, an attorney with no science background, formerly he headed the climate issues program of the American Petroleum Institute.

Click on link for full article.

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IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED."

Thursday, May 5, 2005
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By Greg Palast

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it.

The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."

For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, viewers inevitably ask me, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" -- vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor."

And if this ain't it, nothing is.


Click on title to read full article

King Georges' Madness #157

Published on Friday, June 3, 2005 by the Bangor Daily News (Maine)
Administration's Offenses Impeachable
by Robert Shetterly

Let's consider an item from the news of about two weeks ago:
A British citizen leaked a memo to London's Sunday Times. The memo was of the written account of a meeting that a man named Richard Dearlove had with the Bush administration in July 2002. Dearlove was the head of the England's MI-6, the equivalent of the CIA. On July 23, 2002, Dearlove briefed Tony Blair about the meeting. He said that Bush was determined to attack Iraq. He said that Bush knew that U.S. intelligence had no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no links to foreign terrorists, that there was no imminent danger to the U.S. from Iraq. But, since Bush was determined to go to war, "Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." "Fixed" means faked, manufactured, conjured, hyped - the product of whole cloth fabrication.

So we got aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds imported from Niger, biological weapons labs in weather trucks, fear and trembling, the phony ultimatums to Saddam Hussein to turn over the weapons he didn't have and thus couldn't. We got the call to arms, the stifling of dissent, the parade of retired generals strategizing on the "news" shows, with us or against us, flags in the lapel, a craven media afraid to look for a truth that might disturb their corporate owners who would profit from the war. Shock and Awe. Fallujah. Abu Ghraib.

It was all a lie. Many of us have said for a long time it was a lie. But here it is in black and white: Lies from a president who has taken a sacred trust to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made

A Study in Emasculation

Published on Saturday, June 4, 2005 by the Guardian/UK
A Study in Emasculation
In the US media, a mission to explain has been replaced by a mission to avoid
by Henry Porter

Our name for him was Wig. And for two years only a handful of people at Vanity Fair's office in New York knew what or who Wig was. It turned out to be another code name for Deep Throat, wittily, or perhaps tastelessly, given to Mark Felt by Bob Woodward during the Watergate investigations - undoubtedly the highest moment of journalistic inquiry ever on either side of the Atlantic.
Woodward was gracious when he learned that Vanity Fair had scooped him with his own story, as indeed was Carl Bernstein when editor Graydon Carter called his friend to make a slightly rueful apology on Wednesday morning. Actually it's a testament to Woodward and Bernstein's integrity that Vanity Fair was able to capture the unicorn and reveal the identity of this mythic creature. This was a serious secret that still has the power to stir considerable passions in America, as we saw in the reaction of Pat Buchanan, who instantly branded Felt

Deep Throat Cover Blown Washington Post still Sucks

By Greg Palast,
I've been gagging all morning on the Washington Post's self-congratulatory preening about its glory days of the Watergate investigation.

Think about it. It's been 33 years since cub reporters Woodward and Bernstein pulled down the pants of the Nixon operation and exposed its tie-in to the Watergate burglary. That marks a third of a century since the Washington Post has broken a major investigative story. I got a hint why there's been such a dry spell after I met Mark Hosenball, investigative reporter for the Washington Post's magazine, Newsweek.

It was in the summer of 2001. A few months earlier, for the Guardian papers of Britain, I'd discovered that Katherine Harris and Governor Jeb Bush of Florida had removed tens of thousands of African-Americans from voter registries before the 2000 election, thereby fixing the race for George Bush. Hosenball said the Post-Newsweek team "looked into it and couldn't find anything."

read more click on the title.
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Bravo to Washington Post and "Woodstein"

The best-kept secret in journalism has been “outed” this week as the source known as "Deep Throat" revealed himself. As for Woodward and Bernstein, BRAVO, BRAVITSE and a good hardy HOORAH for them. For three decades they kept their collective word and didn't give up their source. This goes for the Post editor, Ben Bradlee, as well.

Of course it's too bad the "the Post" hasn't had a decent peice of Investigative jounalism since.

Now, I saw on the news this week after Mr. Felt "outed" himself that there was some discourse on weather this man had done the right thing or not etc., etc.. Or, in news terms weather he was a "Good American or Not" and all this other rubbish.

Let's think about this.

Here is a man, a senior official in the FBI. Now, let us remember that it is the Federal Bureau of INVESTIGATIONS. The purpose of the FBI is to Investigate illegal activities and general misconduct of ALL groups, bodies and organizations operating in the United States. This is what this organization does.
So, here is a senior official in the FBI who has discovered illegal activities at the highest levels of government and does not feel comfortable releasing said findings through normal channels. What does it say about an organization who can’t report the results of their work through the channels provided too them?

Now G. Gordon Liddy, who spent time in jail as a result of the Watergate scandal, is almost expected to carry a grudge. Pat Buchanan, well, we don’t expect much from him. But there were some others who questioned this mans patriotism and loyalty to the country and related ideals so to them, I wonder what they are thinking. Here is a man who was doing his job and didn’t feel comfortable releasing the findings of his work through normal channels and found an alternative channel to make his findings known.
The way I look at it, this is EXACTLY the way the 1st Amendment is supposed to operated and exactly the way the Founding Fathers had envisioned the system of checks and balances to function. Free Speech and a Free Press being another form of Check and Balance.

How are this man’s actions any less than Patriotic? No man, body, or organization is supposed to be above the law. And Mr. Felt proved it. The biggest Bravo to him.


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