| Author | Message | | Guest | | Posted: Fri Jan 03, 2003 8:51 pm Post subject: looks like the U.S. is going to war |
| The following is from the "Flashpoints" radio program (http://www.flashpoints.net):
Dennis: looks like the U.S. is going to war, even though Bush says he wants peace.. is it about oil?.. now w James Paul, of Global Policy Forum, author of a series of papers about Iraq.. James we've been seeing this thing develop for a while now.. discussions have taken place already about what will happen with the oil after *we* win the war.. Dennis: the oil companies say, no way, they're not applying any pressure.. James: the government also denying.. and we don't have a smoking gun, or a whistleblower.. but we know how important Iraqi oil is.. and about the history of Iraqi oil.. obvious that this is a huge prize.. the PMs of Britain and France almost had a fist fight over it at the signing of the treaty of Versailles.. a lot of references recently to the *Iraqi opposition* meeting with western oil industry in London.. reporter David Ottoway.. talked to former CIA head, James Woolsey.. said China and Russia and France had better *get on board with the U.S.* or they wouldn't get any oil.. Dennis: the U.S. would never go to war just for oil, would they?.. James: looking at history.. (for the last hundred years) the oil industry has been very influencial in determining US foreign policy.. during the dark days of WWII, Churchill and Roosevelt got in a heated argument over who was going to get what share of Middle East oil after the war.. and the U.S. very keen on supporting Israel 110%.. and overall an emphasis on empire and development.. a number of different elements to this pictures.. but oil is probably 3/4 of the mix.. Dennis: North Korea says ok, we're throwing the inspectors out and building nukes.. Bush saying, ok we'll negotiate.. Iraq has a hundred inspectors and no hint of nukes, and Bush surrounds the place with troops.. and never mention the fact that Israel has 200-300 nuclear weapons and never an inspector.. James: about the many Bush administration people with close ties to the oil industry.. but all recent administration has had close connections to the oil industry.. (close to the surface) Iraqi oil can be produced for an incredibly low price, about $1 barrel.. oil now selling for $30 barrel.. the company that get to 'lift' the oil can make a easy $29 profit.. incredible profits.. Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron Texaco, Royal Dutch Shell.. hope to make a trillion dollars profit.. Dennis: about the UN.. the US government grabs the 12,000 page Iraqi report and voila! back comes a 4,000 page report.. James: the Colombia ambassador was Security Council president that month.. Colin Powell went to Bogata and doubled US assistance.. and voila again! the Colombian ambassador gave the report to the US.. ignoring the Security Council's own rules.. about other US shennigans at the UN.. Dennis: about the US and other corporations that helped arm Iraq.. about the commentary you were asked to record by NPR.. James: I think we can see censorship at play.. I got a call from All Things Considered.. to do an op-ed.. on oil.. I wrote up a piece and submitted it, they editted it, ok, then we recorded it, ok.. that was 25 days ago and it has never come on the air.. now they don't reply to my emails, return my phone calls anymore.. the NPR producer was Sarah Sarrason (sp?).. Dennis: you, our listeners, might want to call her at All Things Considered, 202-513-3165
-54:18 Marvelous Mary Bishop: wrapup
-54:54 End today's show. today's review by john lionheart | |  | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2003 9:46 am Post subject: Iraq: Linchpin of a new oil order |
| Middle East
Iraq: Linchpin of a new oil order
By Michael Renner
(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
Only in the most direct sense is the Bush administration’s Iraq policy directed against Saddam Hussein. In contrast to all the loud talk about terrorism, weapons of mass destruction and human rights violations, very little is being said about oil. The administration has been tight-lipped about its plans for a post-Saddam Iraq and has repeatedly disavowed any interest in the country’s oil resources. But press reports indicate that US officials are considering a prolonged occupation of Iraq after their war to topple Saddam Hussein. It is likely that a US-controlled Iraq will be the linchpin of a new order in the world oil industry. Indeed, a war against Iraq may well herald a major realignment of the Middle East power balance.
Oil forever
The Bush administration’s ties to the oil and gas industry are beyond extensive; they are pervasive. They flow, so to speak, from the top, with a chief executive who grew up steeped in the culture of Texas oil exploration and tried his hand at it himself; and a second-in-command who came to office with a multi-million dollar retirement package in hand from his post of CEO of Halliburton Oil. Once in office, the vice president developed an energy policy under the primary guidance of a cast of oil company executives whose identities he has gone to great lengths to withhold from public view. Since taking office, the president and vice president have assembled a government peopled heavily with representatives from the oil culture from which they came. These include Secretary of the Army Thomas White, a former vice president of Enron, and Secretary of Commerce Don Evans, former president of the oil exploration company Tom Brown Inc, whose major stake in the company was worth US$13 million by the time he took office.
The Bush administration’s energy policy is predicated on ever-growing consumption of oil, preferably cheap oil. US oil consumption is projected to increase by one-third over the next two decades. The White House is pushing hard for greater domestic drilling and wants to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to the oil industry. Even so, the administration’s National Energy Policy Development Group, led by Vice President Cheney, acknowledged in a May 2001 report that US oil production will fall 12 percent over the next 20 years. As a result, US dependence on imported oil - which has risen from one-third in 1985 to more than half today - is set to climb to two-thirds by 2020.[1]
Since the 1970s, the US has put considerable effort into diversifying its sources of supply, going largely outside of OPEC and outside the Middle East. The current administration is advocating greater efforts to expand production in such far-flung places as the Caspian area, Nigeria, Chad, Angola and deep offshore areas in the Atlantic basin and is looking to leading Western Hemispheric suppliers like Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.[2] West Africa is expected to account for as much as a quarter of US oil imports a decade from now.[3]
But there is no escaping the fact that the Middle East - and specifically the Persian Gulf region - remains the world’s prime oil province, for the US and for other importers. Indeed, the Cheney report confirms that "by any estimation, Middle East oil producers will remain central to world oil security". The Middle East currently accounts for about 30 percent of global oil production and more than 40 percent of oil exports. With about 65 percent of the planet’s known reserves, it is the only region able to satisfy the substantial rise in world oil demand predicted by the Bush administration.[4] The Cheney report projects that Persian Gulf producers alone will supply 54-67 percent of world oil exports in 2020.[5]
Saudi Arabia is a pivotal player. With 262 billion barrels, it has a quarter of the world’s total proven reserves and is the single largest producer.[6] More importantly, the Saudis have demonstrated repeatedly - after the Iranian revolution, and following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait - that they are prepared to compensate for losses from other suppliers, calming markets in times of turmoil. Today, Riyadh could raise its production of 8 million barrels per day (b/d) to 10.5 million b/d within three months, making up for any loss of Iraqi oil during a US military assault.[7]
Iraq: From pariah to prize
The pariah state of Iraq, however, is a key prize, with abundant, high-quality oil that can be produced at very low cost (and thus at great profit). At 112 billion barrels, its proven reserves are currently second only to Saudi Arabia’s. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the US Department of Energy estimates that additional "probable and possible" resources could amount to 220 billion barrels. And because political instability, war, and sanctions have prevented thorough exploration of substantial portions of Iraqi territory, there is a chance that another 100 billion barrels lie undiscovered in Iraq’s western desert. All in all, Iraq’s oil wealth may well rival that of Saudi Arabia.[8]
At present, of course, this is mere potential - the Iraqi oil industry has seriously deteriorated as a result of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, the 1991 Gulf War and inadequate postwar investment and maintenance. Since 1990, the sanctions regime has effectively frozen plans for putting additional fields into production. It has also caused a severe shortage of oil field equipment and spare parts (under the sanctions regime, the US has prevented equipment imports worth some $4 billion). Meanwhile, questionable methods used to raise output from existing fields may have damaged some of the reservoirs and could actually trigger a decline in output in the short run.[9]
But once the facilities are rehabilitated (a lucrative job for the oil service industry, including Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton) and new fields are brought into operation, the spigots could be opened wide. To pay for the massive task of rebuilding, a post-sanctions Iraq would naturally seek to maximize its oil production. Some analysts, such as Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraqi oil official, assert that Iraq could produce 8-10 million b/d within a decade and eventually perhaps as much as 12 million.[10]
The impact on world markets is hard to overstate. Saudi Arabia would no longer be the sole dominant producer, able to influence oil markets singlehandedly. Given that US-Saudi relations cooled substantially in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks - rifts that may widen further - a Saudi competitor would not be unwelcome in Washington. An unnamed US diplomat confided to Scotland’s Sunday Herald that "a rehabilitated Iraq is the only sound long-term strategic alternative to Saudi Arabia. It’s not just a case of swapping horses in mid-stream, the impending US regime change in Baghdad is a strategic necessity."[11]
Washington would gain enormous leverage over the world oil market. Opening the Iraqi spigot would flood world markets and drive prices down substantially. OPEC, already struggling with overcapacity and a tendency among its members to produce above allotted quotas (an estimated 3 million barrels per day above the agreed total of 24.7 million b/d), might unravel as individual exporters engage in destructive price wars against each other.[12]
A massive flow of Iraqi oil would also limit any influence that other suppliers, such as Russia, Mexico and Venezuela, have over the oil market. Lower prices could render Russian oil - more expensive to produce - uncompetitive, which would cloud the prospects for attracting foreign investment to tap Siberian oil deposits.[13] Russia’s weak economy is highly dependent on oil export revenues. Its federal budget is predicated on prices of $24-25 per barrel.[14] Aleksei Arbatov, deputy chairman of the Russian parliament’s defense committee, predicts that if a new Iraqi regime sells oil without limits, "our budget will collapse."[15]
Leading oil companies
Oil reserves
(billion barrels)
Oil production
(million b/d)
Refining capacity
(million
b/d)
Product sales
(million b/d)
Saudi Aramco 261.8 8.6 2.1 3.0
INOC (Iraq) 112.5 2.6 0.4 0.4
KPC (Kuwait) 96.5 1.7 1.0 0.9
NIOC (Iran) 89.7 3.8 1.5 1.3
PDV (Venezuela) 77.7 3.3 3.1 3.2
ADNOC (UAE) 53.8 1.4 0.2 0.2
Pemex (Mexico) 28.3 3.5 1.5 2.1
NOC (Libya) 23.6 1.3 0.3 0.3
Lukoil (Russia) 14.3 1.6 0.5 0.9
NNPC (Nigeria) 13.5 1.3 0.4 0.3
ExxonMobil (US) 12.2 2.6 6.2 8.0
PetroChina 11.0 2.1 1.9 1.1
Royal Dutch/Shell
(UK/Netherlands) 9.8 2.3 3.2 5.6
British Petroleum 7.6 1.9 3.2 5.5
TotalFinaElf (France) 7.0 1.4 2.6 3.1
ChevronTexaco (US) 8.5 2.0 2.1 4.0
Petrobras (Brazil) 8.4 1.3 1.9 2.2
Sinopec (China) 3.0 0.7 2.6 1.3
Nippon Mitsubishi (Japan) 0.05 0.05 1.3 1.4
World 1,046.2 74.5 81.6 -
Source: Adapted from Energy Intelligence Group
Oil company interests
To repair and expand its oil industry, Iraq will need substantial foreign investment. Thus, for eager oil companies, Iraq represents a huge bonanza - a "boom waiting to happen," according to an unnamed industry source.[16]
Prior to the OPEC revolution in the early 1970s, a small number of companies (referred to as the "majors" or "Seven Sisters") called the shots in the industry, controlling activities from exploration and production to refining and product sales. But they lost much of their reserve base as nationalization spread through the Middle East and OPEC nations. Today, state oil companies own the vast majority of the world’s oil resources. Even though private companies still do much of the exploring, drilling and pumping, in many countries they have access to the oil only under prices and conditions set by the host government. Although oil companies have managed to adjust to this situation, a directly owned concession would offer them far greater flexibility and profitability.
The dominant private companies (ExxonMobil and Chevron-Texaco of the US, Royal Dutch-Shell and BP of Britain and the Netherlands, TotalFinaElf of France), which are largely the result of recent megamergers, sell close to 29 million barrels per day in gasoline and other oil products. But production from fields owned by these "super-majors" came to 10.1 million barrels per day in 2001, or just 35 percent of their sales volume.[17] Although these corporations have poured many billions of dollars into discovering new fields outside the Middle East, their proven reserves stood at just 44 billion barrels in 2001, 4 percent of the world’s total and sufficient to keep producing oil for only another 12 years at current rates.[18] The situation is similar for other oil companies. Thus, the oil-rich Middle East, and particularly Iraq, remains key to the future of the oil industry.
If a new regime in Baghdad rolls out the red carpet for the oil multinationals to return, it is possible that a broader wave of denationalization could sweep through the oil industry, reversing the historic changes of the early 1970s. Squeezed by a decade of sanctions, the current regime has already signaled that it is prepared to provide more favorable terms to foreign companies.[19] Such an invitation by Baghdad would be in tune with larger changes that are afoot, as a growing number of oil producing countries are opening their industries to foreign direct investment.[20]
Rivalries and quid pro quos
Several European and Asian oil companies have in recent years signed deals with Iraq that, if consummated, would give them access to reserves of at least 50 billion barrels and a potential output of 4-5 million barrels per day (another estimate says that Russian companies alone have signed deals involving about 70 billion barrels). In addition, a number of contracts have been signed for exploration in the western desert.[21]
Russian, Chinese and French companies in particular have tried to position themselves to develop new oil fields and to rehabilitate existing ones once UN sanctions are lifted. Russia’s LUKoil, for instance, signed an agreement in 1997 to refurbish and develop the West Qurna field (with 15 billion barrels of oil reserves). China’s National Petroleum Corporation signed a deal for the North Rumailah reservoir. And France’s TotalFinaElf has set its eyes on the giant Majnoon deposits (holding 20-30 billion barrels).[22]
Iraq has sought to use the lure of oil concessions to build political support among three permanent Security Council nations - France, Russia and China - for a lifting of sanctions. Although the international consensus in favor of sanctions has badly eroded, this gamble has failed to pay off in the face of determined US and British opposition. (In December 2002, Iraq cancelled a contract with three Russian companies out of frustration that the firms - in deference to sanctions - had not commenced oil exploration work.) As long as Saddam Hussein stays in power, US and British companies will be kept out of Iraq, but ongoing sanctions will also thwart existing oil development plans.
"Regime change" in Baghdad would reshuffle the cards and give US (and British) companies a good shot at direct access to Iraqi oil for the first time in 30 years - a windfall worth hundreds of billions of dollars. US companies relish the prospect: Chevron’s chief executive, for example, said in 1998 that he’d "love Chevron to have access to" Iraq’s oil reserves.[23]
In preface to the passage of Security Council Resolution 1441 on November 8, there were thinly veiled threats that French, Russian and Chinese firms would be excluded from any future oil concessions in Iraq unless Paris, Moscow and Beijing supported the Bush policy of regime change. Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an exile opposition group favored by the Bush administration, said that the INC would not feel bound by any contracts signed by Saddam Hussein’s government and that "American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil" under a new regime. US and British oil company executives have been meeting with INC officials, maneuvering to secure a future stake in Iraq’s oil.[24] Meanwhile, the State Department has been coaxing Iraqi opposition members to create an oil and gas working group involving Iraqis and Americans.[25]
Nikolai Tokarev, general director of Russia’s Zarubezhneft, a state-owned oil company, reflected in late 2002: "Do Americans need us in Iraq? Of course not. Russian companies will lose the oil forever if the Americans come."[26] Fears of being excluded from Iraq’s oil riches and losing influence in the region have fed Russian, French and Chinese interest in constraining US belligerence. These countries nonetheless are eager to keep their options open in the event that a pro-US regime is installed in Baghdad, avoiding the "risk of ending up on the wrong side of Washington", as the New York Times put it.[27]
Rival oil interests were a crucial behind-the-scenes factor as the permanent members of the UN Security Council jockeyed over the wording of Resolution 1441, intended to set the conditions for any action against Iraq. It is likely that backroom understandings regarding the future of Iraqi oil were part of the political minuet that finally led to the resolution’s unanimous adoption. US promises that the other powers would get a slice of the pie, hinted at in broad terms, were apparently inducement enough to win their nod. It is thus unlikely that French, Russian and Chinese companies will be completely locked out of a post-Saddam Iraq, though they could find themselves in a junior position.
From surrogates to direct control
Throughout the history of oil, sorting out who gets access to this highly prized resource and on what terms has often gone hand in hand with violence. At first it was Britain, the imperial power in much of the Middle East, that called the shots. But for half a century, the US - seeking a preponderant share of the earth’s resources - has made steady progress in bringing the Persian Gulf region into its geopolitical orbit. In Washington’s calculus, securing oil supplies has consistently trumped the pursuit of human rights and democracy.
US policy toward the Middle East has long relied on building up proxy forces in the region and generously supplying them with arms. After the Shah of Iran, the West’s regional policeman, was toppled in 1979, Iraq became a surrogate of sorts when it invaded Iran. Washington aided Iraq in a variety of ways, including commodity credits and loan guarantees, indirect arms supplies, critical military intelligence in Baghdad’s long battle against Iran, a pro-Iraqi tilt in the "tanker war" and attacks on Iran’s navy.
Beginning in the 1970s, but particularly in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, the US supplied Saudi Arabia and allied Persian Gulf states with massive amounts of highly sophisticated armaments. After the Gulf War, US forces never left the region completely. By prepositioning military equipment and acquiring access to military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, Washington prepared the ground for future direct intervention as needed.
In the Persian Gulf and adjacent regions, access to oil is usually secured by a pervasive US military presence. From Pakistan to Central Asia to the Caucasus and from the eastern Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa, a dense network of US military facilities has emerged - with many bases established in the name of the "war on terror".
Although the US military presence is not solely about oil, oil is a key reason. In 1999, General Anthony C Zinni, then the head of the US Central Command, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Persian Gulf region is of "vital interest" to the US and that the country "must have free access to the region’s resources."[28]
Bush administration officials have, however, categorically denied that oil is one of the reasons they are pushing for regime change in Iraq. "Nonsense," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft in mid-December 2002. "It has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil."
But oil industry officials interviewed by 60 Minutes on December 15 painted a different picture. Asked if oil is part of the equation, Phillip Ellis, head of global oil and gas operations for Boston Consulting replied, "Of course it is. No doubt."
In fact, oil company executives have been quietly meeting with US-backed Iraqi opposition leaders. According to Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, "The future democratic government in Iraq will be grateful to the United States for helping the Iraqi people liberate themselves and getting rid of Saddam." And he added that "American companies, we expect, will play an important and leading role in the future oil situation in Iraq."
Notes
[1] National Energy Policy Development Group, Reliable, Affordable, and Environmentally Sound Energy for America’s Future (Washington: US Government Printing Office, May 2001), pp. x and 1-13.
[2] Ibid., pp. 8-3 and 8-7.
[3. James Dao, "In Quietly Courting Africa, White House Likes Dowry," New York Times, September 19, 2002.
[4] Production and reserves are from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2002; exports are from OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2001 (Vienna: 2002), Table 26.
[5] National Energy Policy Development Group, Reliable, Affordable, and Environmentally Sound Energy for America’s Future (Washington: US Government Printing Office, May 2001), p. 8-4.
[6] BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2002. Ultimately recoverable estimate is fromUS Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (EIA), Saudi Arabia Country Analysis Brief, October 2002, <>.
[7] Past Saudi production increases are from BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2002; potential for current increase is from Jeff Gerth, "U.S. Fails to Curb Its Saudi Oil Habit, Experts Say," New York Times, November 26, 2002.
[8] US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration Iraq’s Oil Industry: An Overview," Platts. (EIA), Iraq Country Analysis Brief, October 2002. Iraqi oil officials agree, estimating reserves at 270-300 billion barrels in "
[9] US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (EIA), Iraq Country Analysis Brief, October 2002.
[10] Fadhil J. Chalabi, "Iraq and the Future of World Oil," Middle East Policy, vol. vii, no. 4, October 2000, <>.
[11] Trevor Royle, "The World’s Petrol Station: Iraq’s Past Is Steeped in Oil … and Blood," Sunday Herald, October 6, 2002.
[12] OPEC overproduction data is from Neela Banerjee, "As Its Members Flout Oil Quotas, OPEC Considers New Approach," New York Times, December 12, 2002.
[13] Dan Morgan and David B Ottoway, "In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue," Washington Post, September 15, 2002.
[14] Stratfor, "War in Iraq: What’s at Stake for Russia?" November 22, 2002 (distributed electronically).
[15] Arbatov quoted in Sabrina Tavernise, "Oil Prize, Past and Present, Ties Russia to Iraq," New York Times, October 17, 2002.
[16] Quote from James A. Paul, "Iraq: The Struggle for Oil," August 2002, Global Policy Forum website.
[17] Calculated from OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2001 (Vienna: 2002), Table 77.
[18] Ibid.
[19] US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (EIA), Iraq Country Analysis Brief, October 2002.
[20] "The Iraq Oil Industry After Sanctions," Middle East Institute conference proceedings summary, February 29, 2000, as reposted on the Global Policy Forum website.
[21] Deutsche Bank estimates, reported in US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (EIA), Iraq Country Analysis Brief, October 2002. The higher estimate is from Zarubezhneft, a Russian state-owned company. See Sabrina Tavernise, "Oil Prize, Past and Present, Ties Russia to Iraq," New York Times, October 17, 2002.
[22] US Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration (EIA), Iraq Country Analysis Brief, October 2002.
[23] Speech by Kenneth T. Derr, .
[23] Chalabi quote is from Dan Morgan and David B. Ottoway, "In Iraqi War Scenario, Oil Is Key Issue," Washington Post, September 15, 2002.
[24] Peter Beaumont and Faisal Islam, "Carve-Up of Oil Riches Begins," The Observer (United Kingdom), November 3, 2002.
[25] Stratfor, "War in Iraq: What’s at Stake for Russia?" November 22, 2002 (distributed electronically).
[26] Sabrina Tavernise, "Oil Prize, Past and Present, Ties Russia to Iraq," New York Times, October 17, 2002.
[27] Serge Schmemann, "Controlling Iraq’s Oil Wouldn’t Be Simple," New York Times, November 3, 2002.
[28] Zinni quote is from James A. Paul, "Iraq: The Struggle for Oil," August 2002, Global Policy Forum website, . Testimony of April 13, 1999.
Michael Renner is a senior researcher at Worldwatch Institute and a policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2003 9:52 am Post subject: Foreign Policy in Focus |
| Foreign Policy in Focus:
http://www.fpif.org/ | | | | Guest | | Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2003 9:55 am Post subject: THE BUSH WARS |
| UNTANGLING THE OCTOPUS
by Steve Mizrach
October Surprise, Iran-Contra, Noriega, Iraqgate, and BCCI
Before he died in an ineptly performed 'suicide,' the young journalist Danny Casolaro was working on a book that he claimed tied together many of the 'gates' and 'miniscandals' surrounding the Bush presidency. The book identified the web which tied all the scandals together as the "Octopus," a mythical creature with tentacles stretching everywhere. Perhaps the birth of the Octopus lies in the 1980 Presidential election; and its growth occurred under the eight years of the Reagan presidency. Casolaro soon found that the Octopus may have consisted of a 'shadow government' apparatus that went back even further than Bush and Reagan. But what's left of his notes seem primarily to focus on events in the 80s and 90s. It is very possible that in 1980, Bill Casey and other members of the Reagan team may have conspired with the Iranians to delay the release of the American hostages: they were afraid of an "October Surprise" which might damage Reagan's chances of defeating Carter. Sure enough, the hostages were released right as Reagan was being inaugurated, and in 1981, the first shipment of arms to Iran began. Gunther Rossbacher, an ex-Navy pilot, and two other foreign sources, insist that on October 21st and 22nd, Bush met with Iranian delegates in Paris. The "October Surprise" may have been how Bush and other Reagan team members located the Iranian 'moderates' that played a role in the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1984, the Boland amendment forbade any more military assistance to the Contras. So, in 1985, the underground "Enterprise" - Operation Yellowfruit - began selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to furnish weapons to the Contras. George Bush claims Iran-Contra has nothing to do with him, but other administration figures' records show he was at the secret meetings - Poindexter, in particular. Amiram Nir, an Israeli terrorism expert, insists he discussed Iranian arms deals with Bush, but that can't be confirmed... he died in a mysterious plane crash in Mexico in 1988.It turns out the Iran-Contra scandal may have been part of a larger arms-for-hostages deal. The Iranians needed weapons in their war against Iraq, and the Reagan administration felt that the Iranians might have been able to convince the Shiite terrorists in Lebanon to release the American hostages held there. Reagan claimed no "quid pro quo," but then he also claimed he really didn't remember much, either. In any case, additional hostages were seized after the 'non-deal', and many may remain in captivity today, including the Lebanon CIA station head. One man who may have known a great deal about the Iran-Contra business was Manuel Noriega, whose name came up in the 1988 Dukakis-Bush debates. Noriega knew about the Contra drug pipeline, because he was a pusher, himself, while on the CIA payroll throughout the 1980s, and during his trial in Miami in 1989, some testimony emerged which suggested he knew something about the Central American end of the Iran-Contra affair and where some on the missing money may have 'disappeared' into.On the Middle Eastern end, another man who was a delighted beneficiary of American generosity throughout the 1980s was Saddam Hussein of Iraq. The Agriculture Department and other agencies gave Saddam agricultural credits worth millions of dollars which he used to purchase American attack helicopters, chemical weapons for using on the Kurds, and the components of a nuclear weapons program. It is suspected that the CIA and Justice Department overlooked, or aided, the Banco Nazionale Lavoro (BNL) of Italy while it funneled billions in military aid to Iraq. This recently burgeoning scandal, "Iraqgate," suggests we were playing both sides against the middle during the Iran-Iraq war. We were selling arms to both the Iranians and the Iraqis, and the CIA at various points double-crossed both sides. It is no wonder that America is so distrusted in that part of the world. In any case, there were two men that knew too much, and when Bush became president, he had to clean them up, and he would wage two "cleanup wars" to do it.One link between Bush, Saddam, and Iran-Contra was the corrupt Middle Eastern bank, the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI). BCCI, it turns out, laundered drug money, financed CIA and Mossad covert operations, and helped Bush, Saddam, and others split over $250 billion in extortion from the sale of Persian Gulf oil. (BCCI also might have had links to the corrupt drug-money-laundering-and-CIA scandals involving Australia's Nugan Hand Bank.) Attorney General Richard Thornburgh squashed an investigation into First American Bankshares, secretly controlled by BCCI, in October 1990; and William von Raab, former U.S. customs official, was fired by Treasury Secretary James Brady for delving too deeply into BCCI. This may have a lot to do with the links between Prescott Bush, First American director Stephens, Bahrain, and Iraq. Bush's family were oilmen, and if there is anything he stood for, it was Big Oil and its interests in the Middle East. (It might be pointed out, incidentally, that it was Norman Schwarzkopf's father who helped boot out Mossadegh in Iran when he threatened to nationalize holdings of British Petroleum.) The mess was in place, and President Bush had a lot of cleaning up to do.
The "Cleanup Wars"
The first "cleanup war" was so-called Operation Just Cause in Panama. We invaded with the ostensibly 'just' cause of arresting a drug dealer and bringing him to justice here in the U.S.. The fact that he was the leader of another country, and that this is a violation of international law, didn't raise a naysayer, although insiders knew that Noriega was working for us before Bush started to see him as a threat. He may have wanted to jail Noriega because of the Iran-Contra secrets he knew. The other ostensible reason was because of Bush family holdings in Panama. It seems that Prescott's friends in the Aoki Corporation of Japan have invested more than $350 million in Panama; their holdings include the luxury resort Caesar Park and the Mariott Hotel. Bush may have been afraid of Noriega nationalizing that property. While Bush claimed to be nailing a dealer, he replaced him with two other dope pushers. Panamanian president Guillermo Endara is a director of the bank used exclusively by the Medellin cartel, and vice president Guillermo Ford is part owner of Dadeland Bank of Florida, which stands accused of laundering South American drug money. This Bush cleanup cost 26 American and 2000 Panamanian (civilian) lives, and several million dollars. It's worth seeing the film The Panama Deception to see some of the chilling secrets of this operation, including hidden mass graves of murdered civilians. The second 'cleanup war' was Operation Desert Storm, with the purposes of ostensibly 'liberating' Kuwait from Saddam Hussein. It is clear that, in fact, administration official April Glaspie succeeded in goading Hussein into invading Kuwait by saying that the U.S. would not interfere. And that the CIA and NSC provided doctored sattelite photographs making it look like Iraq was preparing to invade Saudi Arabia, when in fact Iraqi troops were nowhere near the Saudi border; further, that the CIA deliberately payed no attention to Iraqi troop buildup prior to the invasion of Kuwait. And that the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, appearing under a pseudonym, told a false story about how Iraqi soldiers were ripping Kuwaiti babies out of incubators. Saddam Hussein had been set up, and now so were the American people, who Bush promised this was about "jobs" and dealing with America's "VietNam syndrome." The Desert Storm war never accomplished any of its supposed goals. Kuwait does not have 'democracy,' only a returned monarchy hell-bent on seeking blood vengeance on Palestinian citizens. Saddam Hussein was not toppled from power; and the Kurds who were incited to rise up against him received no U.S. help when Republican Guard American-made attack helicopters mowed them down. Saddam's chemical and nuclear arsenal were never eliminated. Instead, what was destroyed was the Iraqi infrastructure, causing thousands to suffer disease, hunger, and deprivation, in addition to the thousands who died in the 'smart' bombings which nonetheless hit plenty of civilian targets; and the environment of the Persian Gulf, when eco-terrorist Saddam Hussein dumped millions of gallons of oil out of his wells and set ablaze thousands of Kuwaiti oil wells. It was a pyrrhic victory, but not for American oil companies, who profited mightily from increased oil prices... and for George Bush, who used his "VietNam syndrome therapy" as an excuse to hold hundreds of parades celebrating his 'victory' nationwide with yellow ribbons and marching soldiers.
The Wackenhut Connection
The Wackenhut Security Corporation of Miami, Florida, has long been suspected of being a CIA front. The right-wing politics of George Wackenhut, who had ties to Belgian fascists and South American death squads, are well known. But few people realize that Wackenhut, a small company with "only a few" employees, gets some choice assignments, including guarding nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons facilities, the Alaskan Oil pipeline, and several American embassies; or that its board of directors contains several luminaries from the FBI, CIA, and Army Intelligence, including Bobby Ray Inman. Wackenhut has led a covert crusade against whistleblowers at many nuclear power plants, using wiretaps to eavesdrop on them and various 'subtle' techniques to convince them not to talk; it also spied on Chuck Hamel, a critic of the Aleyska Oil Consortium's drilling policies, by setting up a fake environmental-law firm which sought to "pump" him for his sources. Wackenhut may have even used some operatives to try and help topple President Perez of Venezuela through a (failed) military coup, largely for money (rather than politics) it was given by Blanca Ibanez, the mistress of Jaime Luinschi, the former president. Also, a Wackenhut employee named Ernesto Bermudez was using 1500 'employees' in El Salvador for things he admitted "you wouldn't want your mother to know about" to a reporter from Spy magazine. Candian PM Pierre Trudeau refused to allow Wackenhut to purchase a weapons-propellant plant in Quebec, and it was refused a permit to open a security facility in France because President Francois Mitterand said "we had just gotten rid of the CIA." Wackenhut maintained files on over 4 million suspected 'subversives' of all types, including civil rights activists and antiwar protesters, well into the 1960s, making it the largest private holder of such information. In 1975, after a Congressional investigation into domestic intelligence operations and connections to private firms, Wackenhut turned its files over to the Anti-Communist Church League of America based in Wheaton, Illinois, which is now defunct. Florida Governor Claude Kirk claims to have worked closely with Wackenhut to "fight organized crime," although insiders maintain they were doing anything but fighting the Mob. But there are direct links between Wackenhut and the 'Octopus'. It appears that Michael Riconsciuto, a convicted drug dealer, claims to have met with George Wackenhut, John Amarell (of Wackenhut's Executive Board), and Dr. John Philip Nichols (a CIA operative conducting shady activities on the Cabazon Indian Reservation in the California desert) in Las Vegas in the early 80s to discuss the theft of Inslaw's PROMIS software; he says Wackenhut asked him "how his software work was coming along." (Supposedly, Nichols was using the Cabazon reservation as his own private munitions proving ground, testing things ranging from super-lethal Fuel-Air Explosives and chemical-biological weapons to Electromagnetic Pulse [EMP] generators.) Ammarell confirms the meeting, but claims it was merely about the sale of a boat! Retired general Richard Secord arranged for the Wackenhut Corp. to work with Iraqi arms dealer Ihsan Barbouti; Wackenhut operative David Ramirez claims that he and Barbouti rode in a truck carrying chemical-weapons technology from Texas to Chicago, and then rode on a plane to Iraq. Ramirez indicates that he thinks Wackenhut may have been part of a "food stamp" scheme to get agricultural credits for Iraq which were in turn used to purchase nuclear-weapons technology, making Wackenhut part of the Iraqgate affair as well.Assisting with Barbouti's arms schemes were two partners, James Tully (who sent Bill Clinton's 'draft-dodge' letter to ABC) and Jack Brennan, who currently works as director of administrative operations in President Bush's office. Brennan and Tully had been involved in a $181 million deal to supply uniforms for the Iraqi army, arranging them to be manufactured in Ceausescu's Romania, of all places. Other partners in that deal were Watergate felon John Mitchell and Sarkis Soghnalian, a Lebanese citizen who was credited with introducing Saddam Hussein to Gerald Bull, the inventor of the so-called "supergun." Soghnalian is currently in prison for selling 103 military helicopters to Iraq; and David Ramirez says that Wackenhut considered the Turkish man to be a "valuable client." Two thousand gallons of ferrocyanide - an important chemical-warfare binary ingredient - vanished from a Boca Raton cherry flavoring factory in 1990. That plant was guarded by - guess who - Wackenhut. Barbouti owned shares in that company, and two others: TK-7, which makes a fuel additive that could extend the range of liquid-fueled missiles such as the SCUD, and Pipeline Recovery Systems, which coats pipes to make them useable in nuclear power plants. He admits having faked his own death several times, and having helped Moammar Khadafi build his infamous chemical-weapons plant at Rabta, Libya. Further, he owns about $100 million worth of real estate and oil-drilling equipment in Texas and Oklahoma. It is widely believed that the Middle Eastern architect is either currently dead (surprise), living in Jordan, or being kept in a CIA safe house in Florida. An engineering company owned by him in Frankfurt had a $552 million contract to build airfields in Iraq. And - no surprise here - Barbouti used the corrupt BCCI bank as his middleman in many deals.
The CenTrust Connection: the S & Ls, the Mob, and BCCI
The S & L failures of '89 were a massive blow to the banking system. Over 200 small savings and loan banks went under - just under half of those in existence - and had their assets seized by the federal 'dummy' company, the Resolution Trust Corp. Largely, this was a problem created by deregulation legislation passed by the congressional banking committees - the legislation allowed the S & Ls to make investments that were extremely risky and fiscally unsound. In fact, the failure can also be seen as the result of several years of deregulation of many industries under the Reagan administration - deregulation that was "bought" by the very industries which were supposed to be policed. But where were the regulators who were supposed to be the 'watchdogs' of the industry? Almost across the board they were 'bought off' by S & L moguls like Charles Keating, paid to look the other way while the S & Ls invested in fraudulent real estate schemes and sham projects which collapsed after a few years. But to maintain a veneer of solubility for their creditors, many S & Ls actually turned to "junk bond" king Michael Milliken, managing to "puff up" their investment profiles with airy money. There may have been even more crooked things going on, as some recent articles suggest that some of the S & L swindle may have gotten into the hands of the CIA and used to fund the Contras- most funds coming from the failed Palmer National Bank and Vision Savings Bank in Houston.Even more daring reports, such as a recent book by investigative reporter Peter Brewton, suggest the Mafia may have been involved with some of the bank fraud - as they most certainly were with the Vatican Bank scandal in Italy. Author Dan Moldea notes extensive connections between the Hollywood motion picture company MCA, the defense/nuclear contractor General Electric, the corrupt Teamsters' Union, and the Mob. Strangely, former Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan had connections to all of the above. The fact that there are close Republican ties to the Teamsters, despite the party's overt anti-labor stance, is very curious; but it must be examined in the light of the Teamsters' "patriotic" support of "guns and butter" and other right-wing stances, and their links to the Mafia. (It is widely suspected that Richard Nixon may have pardoned Jimmy Hoffa after making a deal with the Teamsters to give money to his 1972 presidential campaign - yet another unwritten chapter in the Watergate saga, along with the revelations that he may have tried to frame the Democrats for the assassination attempt on George Wallace.) Anthony Summers believes that J. Edgar Hoover was blackmailed by the Mob for his homosexuality, and that is why the former FBI director continued to deny the pervasiveness of "organized crime." One of Brewton's most amazing revelations is that Bush may have actively attempted to conceal the Texas oil - organized crime - S & L - CIA links during the 1988 campaign: but so did Lloyd Bentsen, who told Dukakis it would be "a losing issue for our ticket!"The cost for fixing the S & L mess - for returning the depositors in the banks all their savings - will be quite high. Another cost involved in the process will be the liquidation of nearly valueless assets owned by the S & Ls - such as acres and acres of undeveloped land out in the Southwest. The properties of the failed S & Ls are being sold by RTC for businessmen for a steal; and taxpayers are being asked to pick up a large part of the tab. Some estimate that the S & L cleanup may cost each and every taxpayer as much as $1000. Each and every taxpayer, of the 200 million who pay taxes! There are economists who feel the beginning wave of the S & L collapse may have contributed to the massive stock market crash of 1987, and that its impact led to other bank failures and a real estate 'bust' contributing to the 1990 recession. Crooked S & L operators received, on the average, 2.4 years in prison for ripping off America with their white-collar crimes. But a robber who steals $200 from a convenience store gets, on average, 7.8 years. One need not be a math wizard to see something glaringly wrong with that. Why have the federal prosecutors under the Bush administration been so slow to prosecute, and so lenient with their sentences? Could it be connected to the extensive amounts of money that Bush himself got from the S & Ls during his 1988 campaign? Was there also a link between the failed Savings & Loans and BCCI? It turns out, yes, and the (now defunct) Miami CenTrust bank chairman David Paul is the key. According to a NBC special on the S & L scandal, Dexter Lehtinen, the temporary appointee to the position of federal prosecutor for south Florida, claims he was obstructed by the government from serving subpoenas on many of the big figures connected to Paul. Lehtinen was never confirmed officially for the position after serving in it for several years - some say this was because of things in his background that might lead to a confirmation fight, but others feel it was because he was digging too deeply into CenTrust's failures. Lehtinen now claims that Paul may have bribed many local and federal officials to cover up for money laundering and secret Carribean accounts to sequester 'narcodollars.' Investigators found that Paul lived a lavish lifestyle, buying gold fixtures and priceless art treasures for his office in the CenTrust building. When CenTrust was starting to face insolvency, Paul found a cash influx from an unsuspected source - BCCI financier Farouk, who tried to use CenTrust to launder money from the Banco Nazionale Lavore (BNL) in Italy. The S & L scandal is, it seems, yet another arm within the Octopus.
Bush's Teapot Dome?: the INSLAW Affair
George Bush's predecessor, Ronald Reagan, had a terribly corrupt administration. There were huge numbers of indictments, resignations, scandals, and accusations of corruption and coverrup. Housing and Urban Development, under Sam "the Invisible Man" Pierce, turned a blind eye as shifty Republican financiers raked in profits off of shady deals involving public housing. Savings and Loan regulators allowed S & L's all over the country to make ridiculously unsound investments and disappear into bankruptcy. But the corruption in the Reagan administration may have been nowhere more shocking than in the Department of Justice, whose anti-pornography crusader, Edwin Meese III, was accused of improprieties regarding the transfer of a company called Wedtech.Bush's new Attorney General, Richard Thornburgh, may have done Meese one better, bringing the Department of Injustice one step further. For it now stands accused of being a software pirate - of having stole the Inslaw PROMIS database program from its creators without recompensating them. That PROMIS is a program that can be used to track political dissidents, among other things, has been noted by many commentators. Because William Sessions of the FBI was investigating Justice's possible role in the Inslaw/BNL affair, Attorney General William Barr suddenly launched an investigation of Session's misuse of his phone for making personal calls and allowing his wife to be at meetings - hardly the most major of offenses among government bureaucrats! Curious infighting as the ship went down, it seems.According to Riconsciouto, the INSLAW affair might have been, among other things, a political payoff for the role a former political operative and Justice Department official, Earl Brian, played in the October Surprise. INSLAW was originally a nonprofit organization basically of quasi-governmental nature, which went private in the 1980s in an effort to market its software commercially. PROMIS was marketed to law enforcement agencies as an efficient tool for tracking criminal cases. However, its versatility for use in such wide-ranging areas as political intelligence and monitoring caught the eye of the Justice Department - which would require modifying the program's original design. So Brian first tried to seize INSLAW Corp. in an illegally authorized "hostile takeover," and when that failed, basically stole the PROMIS software outright. Copies of the program were thought to be distributed or sold to, among others, Israel, South Africa, some Central American regimes, and perhaps Saddam Hussein - by the Bush administration - all without consent or compensation for the program's original authors. It is believed that some regimes even today still use chilling, modified versions of the program for tracking political dissidents.
Is the Octopus Still Alive?: Mena, Arkansas and a Clinton Compromise
Riconsciouto claims that Clinton, like Bush, has been "compromised" by the CIA. He says that he personally flew planes carrying illegal shipments of arms to and drugs from the Contra rebels which took off from a secret airstrip near Mena, Arkansas - one which apparently existed with the full knowledge and consent of then-governor Bill Clinton. He and others think that Clinton made a basic "deal" with Bush after he won -- Bush would not criticize Clinton or bring up too much about Whitewater or Mena airstrip, and in return Clinton would not pursue indictments against Bush Administration officials. Today, as the Clinton administration battles off a series of its own political scandals, writers for the alternative media still puzzle over the "mainstream" media's total refusal to look at whatever was going at Mena, in 1992 or now. Because then-governor Clinton may have been permitting the CIA to run a small scale "black operation" right in his own state. So it's obvious that Clinton has no interest in pursuing the Octopus, the question then becomes - even if his administration isn't involved, does it still thrive in its own shadowy centres? Danny Casolaro may have been killed because he got too close to the truth. The Christic Institute may have been SLAPPed out of existence because of it. Even if the Octopus isn't still operating, there are likely to be various "tentacles" of it who want to cover up the roles that they played in it. It may have branched into things that Casolaro hadn't gotten around to investigating yet. Certainly it tied together a series of sinister forces and operations. George Bush was undoubtedly a key figure, but he isn't going to be running for President again. What's more tragic is the way that he and other co-conspirators may have basically gotten off scot-free. And at this point, it's too early to tell what role Clinton and his administration may or may not be playing in keeping the creature going. Which to me is more important than any unwise land investments he and his wife may have made during the 1980s.
www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/octopus.html | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | | | Guest | | Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2003 10:17 am Post subject: |
| Subject: Serious Post : Read with an Open Mind.....
Date: 1/4/03 9:26 AM Pacific Standard Time
From: ImYourBlkMan
Message-id: <20030104122638.15804.00143084@mbs-m05.aol.com>
America has come to a crossroads. You must understand that power is linked, in world politics, to oil. And as the greatest industrial nation on the Earth, America has an insatiable appetite for oil. When coal was the number one energy in the world, Great Britain ruled the world. She had the greatest deposits of coal. But when the power to move engines moved from coal to oil, England and America began vying for control of the places on this Earth that produce oil.
Who are the rogue states that America says she does not like, and let’s see how oil is connected here. I want you to consider Libya in North Africa. This little desert country where most of the people live along the coast has the sweetest crude oil. There’s a song we sing: “From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli.” Where’s Tripoli? “We will fight our country’s battles on the land and on the sea.” What are you doing over here? Did these people bother you? No. They have oil. America had military bases here. For what? Oil! They had a king named Idriss and Muammar Gadhafi, as a young man in a bloodless coup, overthrew the king and then kicked the British out, the Americans out, and nationalized the oil. Now he could raise the standard of living of all the Libyans, and with money left over he could aid the liberation struggle of people all over the world. America got very upset with that. “You’re messing with us, Gadhafi. You’re a terrorist.”
Iraq has a lot of oil, and next door is Iran which has lots of oil. In Iran, there was a man by the name of Mohammad Mossadegh and he nationalized the oil. He wanted to use the oil to raise the standard of living of the Iranian people.
What’s wrong with that? There’s nothing wrong with that to our eyes, but something was wrong with that to the eyes of the rich and the powerful. So they organized a coup and overthrew him and placed a man on the throne called the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. As that was their man in Iran, they gave him weapons, modern planes, but he was a Muslim, but he was not deep in the religion. So under him, the religion suffered. So the people that wanted their religion to come back to purity started organizing. The leader of that was Imam Khomeini.
Look at a map of the Middle Eastern part of the world. In Saudi Arabia, there is a whole lot of oil. President (Franklin Delano) Roosevelt struck up a good < relationship with the king, and Aramco (Corporation) had access to all this oil. The kings lived well, they did well for their people, but there was no democracy. America doesn’t care anything about that, just keep pumping the oil.
Every one of us has somebody in our family that is a victim of drugs. There’s something about a drug addict—if it’s your son, if it’s your daughter—they become artful liars. They can make up the fanciest stories just to get money to get to the drug. If you don’t give them the money, when you turn your back, your fur coat is gone. When you turn your back this is gone, that is gone. They become thieves and soon, if they get real bad, they become murderers.
America is an oil junkie. She doesn’t care how she gets it, she must have it.
Did you know that they found the largest deposit of oil anywhere in the world? Guess where they found it? In the southern Sudan. And what America is trying to do is foster the revolution to break off the southern Sudan from the Islamic regime in Khartoum so that America can have access to the oil. But they say it’s them Moslems killing Christians, making slaves out of these people in the South. America sent arms to Eritrea and Ethiopia and Uganda. So all along the border of Sudan, war was started with the Sudan. But something happened. Eritrea started using her weapons against Ethiopia, and vice versa. So (Eritrea and Ethiopia) couldn’t give the Sudan the trouble that America wanted.
You don’t know these things because you don’t travel. You don’t know these things because you’re not interested. You don’t know these things because foreign policy is not for the common American. And that we have to change. I believe that if the American people knew, foreign policy (would reflect) that which is better for the American people.
Let’s go to Nigeria. There’s some sweet oil here. Do you know what America tried to do? They tried to separate the eastern region and call it Biafra, which started a civil war in Nigeria, causing thousands upon thousands of lives to be lost because of American foreign policy. Let’s go back to Afghanistan. Do you see this place called Baku? Oil has been coming out of this area for years and years. But the Soviet Union had control of the oil in Kazakhstan, in Uzbekistan and in Tajikistan. All this area the Soviet Union had.
Have you ever heard of Zbignew Brezinski? Zbignew got us in trouble. He was the national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter. Guess what? Show me Afghanistan. Did you know that in the city of Kabul, some 20 years ago, the Muslims, women were in government, they were in school, they were in medicine. But something was wrong with Afghanistan. Do you know what was wrong? The government in Kabul leaned more toward the Soviet Union. They were Muslims but they had a socialist leaning that America didn’t like. So Zbignew Brezinski and American policy sent money into Afghanistan to destabilize the government in Kabul. When they brought up and paid for opposition to the government in Kabul, Russia, the Soviet Union, sent their troops into Afghanistan and the war began.
When the war started, Osama bin Laden was in Arabia growing up. He loves Islam, he loves Muslims, he sees the Soviet Union taking over Afghanistan and there’s war in Afghanistan to get the Soviet Union out, and America says, “We’re going to back those Muslim mujahideen.” So American money and American weapons trained them and they drove the Soviet Union out after ten years of war, which left Afghanistan in ruins. Then they looked to America to help them, but America backed out and left them in that condition and a civil war broke out in Afghanistan. The country is already in ruins, now a civil war. Then you have the Taliban that comes to power. And they want a pure Islamic state.
I read a book written by two Frenchman called, “Osama bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth.” And they said that early on in the Bush administration he was negotiating with the Taliban and he said [the Taliban] were a source of stability. Why was he negotiating? Let me tell you. All of this, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, this is oil. And guess what? A company called Unical owns 75 percent of the oil up here. And what they wanted was a pipeline to come down through Afghanistan into Pakistan into the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, as an outlet for the oil of that area. The Taliban didn’t agree.
Back in July, an American representative met with the Taliban, sometimes in the UN, sometimes right in Peshawar, in Pakistan. The representative said either you accept a carpet of gold or we will bury you under a carpet of bombs. This was in July. Then came September 11, and now it’s Osama bin Laden. The government didn’t know anything about any terrorists the day before. But on September 11, 12, and 13, they have 19 faces in the paper saying these are the guys. When did you learn that? How did you learn that? Something is wrong with this picture. Muslims and Arabs got all the blame and they went immediately to the Congress beating the drums of war.
Do you want to know why people in the world hate America? You don’t understand the dirt that goes on in your name. And that’s why the American people have to be awakened. Am I upsetting? I’m not trying to upset you. But now that they’ve destroyed the Taliban, Mr. Hamid Karzai, whom America set up, he now will get the carpet of gold and let’s see if that pipeline won’t come through Afghanistan. It’s all about oil and power.
Therefore, the hatred for the American government and its policies––not for the American people––is not subsiding, but increasing. If the United States attacks Iraq, that hatred will only be worse and the cycle of violence that is now seen in acts that are called terrorist acts will only increase.
We should be asking President Bush and the Congress, appealing to the fairness of the American people, that before one American soldier should be put in harm’s way, or one bomb dropped on Iraq, that there should and there must be congressional hearings. That this proposed war be debated, and that those who desire war with Iraq, put before the American people the reasons that justify such action and allow the scholars and scientists who disagree with the Administration’s position to testify that the American people may hear both sides of this question, and then prevail upon our representatives in Congress to represent the will of the majority of the American people, and not the will of any lobby, no matter how strong that lobby may be.
It would be just and appropriate if the Congress of the United States would invite representatives of the Iraqi government to come before Congress of the United States and defend themselves and their position.
In closing, no nation, no matter how powerful it may be, can sustain its power if its evil outweighs its good and it exceeds the limits in the doing of injustice. There is a force in nature that God has placed in this universe that will move against an individual, a nation or a world when it exceeds the limit and becomes unjust in its behavior. Such was the case of Pharaoh. Such was the case of Rome and Babylon, Sodom and Gomorrah, Ancient Nineveh. We must not allow such to be the case for the greatest and only remaining superpower, the United States of America. | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2003 8:44 pm Post subject: US Invading Iraq for Radical JINSA Zionism and Oil |
| US Invading Iraq for Radical JINSA Zionism and Oil:
Radical JINSA (Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs) Zionism (of the Paul Wolfowitz/Richard Perle/Dick Cheney cabal) and oil are the two reasons the USA will be invading Iraq soon (Dick Cheney is the liaison between the two):
Too Many Smoking Guns To Ignore: Israel, US Jews, Iraq Attack:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/uk-and-europe/2003/01/28/too-many-smoking-guns-to-ignore-israel-us-jews-iraq.php
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,882512,00.html
US buys up Iraqi oil to stave off crisis
Seizing reserves will be an allied priority if forces go in
Faisal Islam and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow
Sunday January 26, 2003
The Observer
Facing its most chronic shortage in oil stocks for 27 years, the US has this month turned to an unlikely source of help - Iraq. Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela. After the loss of 1.5 million barrels per day of Venezuelan production in December the oil price rocketed, and the scarcity of reserves threatened to do permanent damage to the US oil refinery and transport infrastructure. To keep the pipelines flowing, President Bush stopped adding to the 700m barrel strategic reserve. But ultimately oil giants such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell saved the day by doubling imports from Iraq from 0.5m barrels in November to over 1m barrels per day to solve the problem. Essentially, US importers diverted 0.5m barrels of Iraqi oil per day heading for Europe and Asia to save the American oil infrastructure. The trade, though bizarre given current Pentagon plans to launch around 300 cruise missiles a day on Iraq, is legal under the terms of UN's oil for food programme. But for opponents of war, it shows the unspoken aim of military action in Iraq, which has the world's second largest proven reserves - some 112 billion barrels, and at least another 100bn of unproven reserves, according to the US Department of Energy. Iraqi oil is comparatively simple to extract - less than $1 per barrel, compared with $6 a barrel in Russia. Soon, US and British forces could be securing the source of that oil as a priority in the war strategy. The Iraqi fields south of Basra produce prized 'sweet crudes' that are simpler to refine. On Friday, Pentagon sources said US military planners 'have crafted strategies that will allow us to secure and protect those fields as rapidly as possible in order to then preserve those prior to destruction'. The US military says this is a security issue rather than a grab for oil, after a 'variety of intelligence sources' indicated that Saddam planned to damage or destroy his oil fields - which would inflict up to $30bn damage on the US economy and cause irreparable environmental damage. But the prospect of British and US commandos claiming key oil installations around Basra by force has pushed global oil diplomacy into overdrive. International oil companies have been jockeying position to secure concessions before 'regime change'. Last weekend a Russian delegation flew to Baghdad to patch up relations after Iraq's cancellation of its five-year-old contract to develop the huge West Qurna oil field - worth up to $600bn at today's oil price. Lukoil was punished by Baghdad for negotiating with the US and Iraqi exiles on keeping its concession in a post-Saddam Iraq. The delegation of Ministers and oil executives returned to Moscow with three signed contracts. Oil is the state budget's lifeblood, and Russia requires an oil price of at least $18. Russians fear a US grip on a large reserve of cheap oil could send prices tumbling. But Saddam has offered lucrative contracts to companies from France, China, India and Indonesia as well as Russia. It is only the oil majors based in Britain and America - now the leading military hawks - that don't have current access to Iraqi contracts. Richard Lugar, the hawkish chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggests reluctant Europeans risk losing out on oil contracts. 'The case he had made is that the Russians and the French, if they want to have a share in the oil operations or concessions or whatever afterward, they need to be involved in the effort to depose Saddam as well,' said Lugar's spokesman. A delegation of senior US Republicans was in Moscow last Tuesday trying to persuade Kremlin officials and oil companies that a war in Iraq would not compromise their concessions. A leaked oil analyst report from Deutsche Bank said ExxonMobil was in 'pole position in a changed-regime Iraq'. Washington is split along hawk-dove lines about the role of oil in a post-Saddam Iraq. Two sets of meetings sponsored by the State Department and Vice-President Dick Cheney's staff have been attended by representatives of ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhilips and Halliburton, the company that Cheney ran before his election. The dovish line, led by Colin Powell, places the emphasis on 'protection' of Iraq's oil for Iraq's people. His State Department has pointed to a precedent in the US interpretation of international law set in the 1970s. Then, when Israel occupied Egypt's Sinai desert, the US did not support attempts to transfer oil resources. While the State Department is mindful of cynical world opinion about US war aims, officials do not always stick to the script. Grant Aldonas, Under Secretary at the US Department of Commerce, said war 'would open up this spigot on Iraqi oil which certainly would have a profound effect in terms of the performance of the world economy for those countries that are manufacturers and oil consumers'. The US economy will announce zero growth this week, prolonging three years of sluggish performance. Cheap oil would boost an economy importing half of its daily consumption of 20m barrels. But a cheaper oil price could have been reached more easily by lifting sanctions and giving the US oil majors access to Iraq's untapped reserves. Instead, war stands to give control over the oil price to 'new Iraq' and its sponsors, with Saudi Arabia losing its capacity to control prices by altering productive capacity. Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Defence Secretary, and Richard Perle, a key Pentagon adviser, see military action as part of a grand plan to reshape the Middle East. To this end, control of Iraqi oil needs to bypass the twin tyrannies of UN control and regional fragmentation into Sunni, Shia and Kurdish supplies. The neo-conservatives plan a market structure based on bypassing the state-owned Iraqi National Oil Company and backing new free-market Iraqi companies. But, in the run-up to war, the US oil majors will this week report a big leap in profits. ChevronTexaco is to report a 300 per cent rise. Chevron used to employ the hawkish Condoleezza Rice, Bush's National Security Adviser, as a member of its board. Five years ago the then Chevron chief executive Kenneth Derr, a colleague of Rice, said: 'Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas - reserves I'd love Chevron to have access to.' If US and UK forces have victory in Iraq, the battle for its oil will have only begun. | | | | Guest | | Posted: Wed Jan 29, 2003 5:20 am Post subject: |
| | Quote: | Nikolai Tokarev, general director of Russia’s Zarubezhneft, a state-owned oil company, reflected in late 2002: "Do Americans need us in Iraq? Of course not. Russian companies will lose the oil forever if the Americans come."[26] Fears of being excluded from Iraq’s oil riches and losing influence in the region have fed Russian, French and Chinese interest in constraining US belligerence. These countries nonetheless are eager to keep their options open in the event that a pro-US regime is installed in Baghdad, avoiding the "risk of ending up on the wrong side of Washington", as the New York Times put it.[27]
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This actually demonstrates the reason for French, Russian and Chinese pacification of Saddam. They don't care how many people Saddam continues to kill. They don't care if Saddam is supporting terror. It is pacifism for profit. | | | | Guest-c651 | | Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2003 4:05 am Post subject: Re: PNAC Group....the List of players |
| Subj: Re: PNAC Group....the List of players
Date: 1/31/03 6:20:51 AM Pacific Standard Time
On October 1 of last year, I sent out the following e-mail. I don't have the time to sort out which of you were on my list at that time, so please bear with me if you've seen this already:
Iraq invasion plan written in September 2000 -- BEFORE Bush was "elected"
Bush's new 'global domination' policy is based almost verbatim on a policy written up by PNAC (Project for a New American Century) as found on http://www.newamericancentury.org
It's available for download (for now) and includes all the Bush administration's newly adopted military stances (preemptive strikes, military presence in the Gulf, antiterrorist philosophies, American global domination, etc.).
It should be required reading for all Americans, as well as anyone who believes that Bush is only acting in response to 9/11.
The actual report is at http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf. I've attached it to this e-mail.
One revealing quote is:
"The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American forces presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."
Looks like they got their wish. The group was formed in 1997 as a response to Clinton's second term, and the membership list reads like a who's who of the Right Wing:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
It includes security advisors going back to Nixon, characters from Iran-Contra, the so-called drug wars, Christian Values groups, Jewish and Israeli lobbyists (not to mention Christian and Jewish coalition groups), and 'Family Value' zealots who led the charge against Clinton during the Lewinsky debacle.
It features the heads of Lockheed, Boeing, and other military suppliers and contractors. Also included are senior editors of the major right-leaning publications, as well as current staffers of the Bush administration (including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and convicted Iran-Contra felon Elliott Abrams).
Amazingly, it also boasts the membership of Jeb Bush, NOT his simpleton 'fool me once' brother -- guess that explains the recent events in Florida (including the theft of the 2000 election in the first place). Also featured is Zalmay Khalilzad who was a paid spokesman for UNOCAL, was pivotal in setting up meetings with the Taliban, and who later gave testimony that Afghanistan needed to be 'converted' into a more US-friendly (read: oil) environment in hearings in March 2000. His supervisor at one point was Condoleeza Rice!
These are the people pulling Bush's strings. And BTW - the guys who were supposed responsible for the lax security on 9/11 (i.e., the 'acting' head of the CIA) are also prominently featured.
Want to really freak out? Run the lesser-known names on the members page through Google. You will NOT believe what you come up with. | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
