Friday, June 20, 2008

How Bush Helped Establish a Corporate 'New World Order'

'Terrorism' is merely the pretext cited by George W. Bush to begin a series of oil wars that John McCain says may last '10,000 years'. Bush has helped his corporate 'base' create a 'New World Order' in which robber barons of big oil, assisted by 'big media', rule the world and plunder its resources. Bush is their tool!

The super corporations were carving up territory around the Caspian Sea back in 1997, perhaps even earlier. Pakistan had been promised a war with Afghanistan to begin around October 15th of that year. Who made those promises and what did they know that we didn't?

It is no coincidence that since failed 'oil man' George W. Bush took office, war has either raged or is threatened in a region that is known to be rich in oil. The collapse of the Soviet Union added three new countries to the map of the Middle East - Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, areas once shared between the Soviet Union and Iran. The Russian-Kazakh agreement cleared the way for more exploration and development. For American oil companies and Dick Cheney, specifically, it was a question of how to get it!

Countries have gone to war for less. The cast of characters are big multinational oil, gas, and pipeline companies: Unocal , Halliburton , and Chevron . The Moscow agreement divided the northern half down the middle of the Caspian. It defined who "owned" what! It defined which countries had exploration and development rights. It is no surprise that the multi-national corporations would urge the US to go to war on their behalf. It was and remains a rich resource.

In 1997, several Taliban representatives visited Sugarland, TX to meet with representatives of Unocal --an international energy company based in Sugarland. Sugarland is an affluent Houston suburb, a Republican enclave, represented at the time by Tom Delay. [The Taliban, Unocal and a Pipeline].

Unocal had proposed the construction of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan across Afghanistan to Pakistan, delivering oil to waiting tankers in the Arabian Sea. From there, the oil would have been delivered, presumably to the US and other oil addicted nations around the world. Unocal claimed to have had agreements with Turkmenistan to sell and with Pakistan who would buy.

Unocal's own website stated that the pipeline was put on hold when the US struck against terrorist in the Sudan. While Unocal said that they would 'wait for peace', we must assume that they are still waiting. Still other reports hint at reasons oil barons might insist upon a war: the Taliban, say the reports, opposed the pipeline. At about this time, the US State Department threatened the Tabliban with a 'carpet of gold or a carpet of bombs'. In any case, the construction deal was 'off the table'. The Taliban left the land of Tom DeLay without an agreement.[See: Wayne Madsen: The Sellouts in the Fourth Estate]

I want to know what Tom DeLay knew at the time. It was, I believe, soon after the talks broke down that DeLay sponsored legislation 'exempting' US sodiers from war crimes prosecution at the International Criminal Court at the Hague! What did DeLay know? And when did he know it? Why was the administration already trying to shield itself and the military from war crimes prosecutions unless they were planning to commit some?

The following story was probably overlooked in the wake of a spectacular attack that 'traumatized' the nation and much of the world.
A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban even before last week's attacks.

Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.

Mr Naik said US officials told him of the plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.

Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.

The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taliban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah. Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.

He was told that Uzbekistan would also participate in the operation and that 17,000 Russian troops were on standby. Mr Naik was told that if the military action went ahead it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.

He said that he was in no doubt that after the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be implemented within two or three weeks.

And he said it was doubtful that Washington would drop its plan even if Bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taliban.

--US 'planned attack on Taliban' [Before 911]

Certainly --a war with Afghanistan was already on the table before 911. Bush needed a pretext and got it on 911! Bush has since treated it as a 'blank check', citing it to justify dictatorial powers never given the office of 'President' by the US Constitution. Because of 911, Bush asserted powers not even claimed by Charles I who was, by the way, beheaded for his efforts.
Of course, U.S. firms aren't generally supposed to do business with Saddam Hussein. But thanks to legal loopholes large enough to steer an oil tanker through, Halliburton profited big-time from deals with the Iraqi dictatorship. Conducted discreetly through several Halliburton subsidiaries in Europe, these greasy transactions helped Saddam Hussein retain his grip on power while lining the pockets of Cheney and company.

According to the Financial Times of London, between September 1998 and last winter, Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, oversaw $23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of oil-industry equipment and services to Iraq through two of its subsidiaries, Dresser Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, which helped rebuild Iraq's war-damaged petroleum-production infrastructure. The combined value of these contracts exceeded those of any other U.S. company doing business with Baghdad.

Halliburton was among more than a dozen American firms that supplied Iraq's petroleum industry with spare parts and retooled its oil rigs when UN sanctions were eased in 1998. Cheney's company utilized subsidiaries in France, Italy, Germany, and Austria so as not to draw undue attention to controversial business arrangements that might embarrass Washington and jeopardize lucrative ties to Iraq, which will pump $24 billion of petrol under the UN-administered oil-for-food program this year. Assisted by Halliburton, Hussein's government will earn another $1 billion by illegally exporting oil through black-market channels.

With Cheney at the helm since 1995, Halliburton quickly grew into America's number-one oil-services company, the fifth-largest military contractor, and the biggest nonunion employer in the nation. Although Cheney claimed that the U.S. government "had absolutely nothing to do" with his firm's meteoric financial success, State Department documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that U.S. officials helped Halliburton secure major contracts in Asia and Africa. Halliburton now does business in 130 countries and employs more than 100,000 workers worldwide.

Its 1999 income was a cool $15 billion.

--Dick Cheney Made Millions with Saddam Hussein
Not only did Bush exploit the 911 pretext for a series of never-ending wars throughout the oil rich Middle East, Saddam had been lured into attacking Kuwait during the regime of George Bush Sr. The senior Bush's real issue with Saddam was not that Saddam had taken over Kuwait but that Saddam had been manipulating the price of oil at the spigot! Bush had wanted to keep the price of oil high. Bush Sr set a trap for Saddam in the hopes that he would 'annex' Kuwait. Saddam fell into the trap and the first Persian Gulf War resulted. Here is just a portion of the transcript between US Ambassador April Glaspie, Saddam Hussein, and Tariq Azis before Saddam "annexed" Kuwait:

    TARIQ AZIZ: Our policy in OPEC opposes sudden jumps in oil prices.

    HUSSEIN: Twenty-five dollars a barrel is not a high price.

    GLASPIE: We have many Americans who would like to see the price go above $25 because they come from oil-producing states.

    HUSSEIN: The price at one stage had dropped to $12 a barrel and a reduction in the modest Iraqi budget of $6 billion to $7 billion is a disaster.

    GLASPIE: I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.

    Source: New York Times, Sunday, September 23, 1990
After Bush Srs war crime against the people of Iraq, Francis Boyle, PhD presided over a 'War Crimes Trial' at University. The following is from his 'indictment'.
Bush’s "New World Order" 41. Today, the government in the United States of America constitutes an international criminal conspiracy under the Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles, that is legally
identical to the Nazi government in World War II Germany. The Defendants’ wanton extermination of approximately 250,000 People in Iraq provides definite proof of the validity of this Nuremberg Proposition for the entire world to see. Indeed, Defendant Bush’s so-called New World Order sounds and looks strikingly similar to the New Order proclaimed by Adolph Hitler over fifty years ago. You do not build a real New World Order with stealth bombers, Abrams tanks, and tomahawk cruise missiles. For their own good and the good of all humanity, the American People must condemn and repudiate Defendant Bush and his grotesque vision of a New World Order that is constructed upon warfare, bloodshed, violence and criminality.

--Francis Boyle, Symposium at Albany Law School -- International War Crimes: The Search for Justice


16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Best use I've seen on the internet of a picture by Blake!!

Unknown said...

Thanks, workshop!

Anonymous said...

Len, You have a great blog and have dynamite links. While I am not a "New World Order"-type conspiracy theorist, I appreciate the nuggets of truth that are at the heart of your posts.

The Conservative Deflator

Big Dan said...

Great GREAT stuff! You're spelling out what's going on, to the people. We need people like you doing this. Thanks! And "big media" is in on ALL of this! That's why I get my news from non-corporate owned media. Those fuckers are FULLY in on all of this shit! In fact, THEY are at the top of the pyramid. Everything is allowed to go on without us knowing it, because corporate media is the umbrella under which all of it can happen.

Big Dan said...

Do we see on ANBCBSNNX, that Bush/Cheney/Rice/etc...gave direct orders for torture and should be in jail? This is unreal, like some dream, that nothing's happening or being reported on war crimes by the Bush administration.

Unknown said...

Big Dan said...

"big media" is in on ALL of this! That's why I get my news from non-corporate owned media.

As bad as the outright lies they tell is that fact that they just simply miss the whole frickin' point --by design or by incompetence. The MSM would be a complete waste of time if one could not find --from time to time --a BURIED LEAD, something they hope you won't think as important as it really is.

Bush/Cheney/Rice/etc...gave direct orders for torture and should be in jail?

I have never doubted their guilt. An investigation of this gang of war criminals is long overdue.

Anonymous said...

Hi Len,

YOU GOTTA SEE THIS !

Super Private Big-Time investment house Weeden in Ct., published this to their site on December 14, 2001.

It is an internal interview wherein Kate Welling of Weeden interviews her Weeden colleague Charley Maxwell, the renowned oil analyst. In it, Maxwell, who is super connected, predicts the invasion of Iraq. He also goes on to predict the spike in oil prices.

I'm not sure Weeden even realizes this thing is on the open web, and I think Waxman's committee might be interested in which of Maxwell's "Washington friends" were assuring him in December of 2001 that the US would invade Iraq late in 2002.

Jay Diamond


http://www.weedenco.com/welling/archive/li/v03i23lilogo2.asp

(v. 3, i. 23 12/14/01)

“Just You Wait”

Weeden’s Charley Maxwell: We’ll Pay Later For Too Cheap Oil
Lower oil prices are an unalloyed blessing to everyone but energy producers (and investors in same), you think? A huge effective tax cut? Think again, says Weeden’s senior oil analyst, the redoubtable Charles T. Maxwell. Too low and too volatile product prices guarantee just one thing, Charley warns: far to little is being invested to expand productive capacity of finite energy resources to keep up with global demand and to keep reserves from plummeting. We’re digging ourselves into shortage, once more.

KMW

There’s only one thing can be said about the price of oil without fear of contradiction—it’s volatile.

The sad part is that we really need to have an oil price that varies between $25 and $20 a barrel. When we get oil as high as 37, that gives us a situation where the counterpart is probably 13. These are horrifically wasteful swings, in terms of the world economy. But there’s no superagency that can change this. The perception of what the “right” price should be keeps changing with events in the Middle East, the War on Terrorism, the depth of the world recession, the warmth of winter, and so on.

And you see those continuing just as volatile as oil?

My friends in Washington think the odds are now 2 out of 3 that we will take a swipe at Saddam later in 2002. The theory is that we won’t be in as strong a position again for a lot of years and we’ve got to get him while we’re on this military footing. If we don’t, he’ll create huge problems for us in the end and we’ll just wish that we’d taken care of them earlier, when we could have.

Historically, that’s been the case. But without a smoking gun, a move against Saddam is likely to generate all sorts of opposition—and not just among Arabs.
I’m hearing that what counts are three things: The winners write the history of what happened; We’ll have more than enough exposés of torture, and confirmation of his development of nuclear, missile, bacteriological, and chemical weapons to entirely justify our incursion, and the world loves a winner.

Your friends are clearly hard-liners. And oil investors.

Strangely enough, I wouldn’t call an invasion of Iraq an unalloyed blessing for the oil business. In fact, I could give you a pretty negative case. As long as Saddam is in power, the oil industry can’t expand there because of the sanctions. But a new government would be in desperate need of revenue, and would just open up like crazy. Which, frankly, is what we need—not in the narrow sense of what would be bullish over the near term for oil issues—but in the wider universal sense. Humankind needs to keep the price of oil low for as long as we can. And switching back to the narrower perspective of an oil analyst, the theme that I’m going to be hitting hard for the next six months is “Just you wait, Henry Higgins.”

Meaning?

The concept is that we are setting ourselves up for trouble in the energy-using world. I’m not really blaming anybody. The truth is, it’s just human nature. Who’s going to invest a lot of capital if the price of oil is $18 a barrel? Yet you do need to spend it, because three years from now, when that capital expenditure matures in terms of producing incremental volumes, you’re going to need that additional stream. But we just can’t expect people to project that.

Not when managements are focused squarely on quarterly earnings management.

And not as long as the market punishes them for the slightest deviations. If you go ahead and spend major amounts of money and perhaps temporarily strain your balance sheet, the market just pummels you. You’re out of business pretty soon.

Or out of a job.

Or you’re forced out, for lack of stock performance. Managers are often not allowed to stay in place long enough to recover the company’s investment down the road.

What you’re saying is that oil prices that are too low are just as insidious as prices that are too high? Or is it the volatility that’s a problem, not just levels of prices.

There are really three elements to my argument. No.1 is that we need about 15% per year increases in capital expenditures (drill-bit capital expenditures, not including acquisitions) to make up for the 6% per year depletion and the 2% growth in demand for world oil that we’re experiencing. In other words, every year the oil industry has to find about 8% more oil reserves, just to make up for those two demands. And to do that, we have to spend about 15% more, every year, at this stage.

Or get very lucky.

But the industry’s capital spending numbers are no-where near that level. In 1998, capital spending grew 0%. In ’99, the number was negative 22%. For 2000, positive 10%; and then in 2001, 22%. But now, for ’02, we’re estimating negative 5%.

So the trend has been nowhere near 15% a year, even smoothed.

Right, In classic terms, the volume increases that you need to get out of your capital spending occur 3-4 years after you’ve spent the money. So what we’re doing is creating very definite (in my opinion), shortages out there. The second point I want to make is really the Hubbert Curve story, which hits us because of accelerated depletion. And my third point is that the reliability of our existing energy supplies in the Middle East, which we are now counting on—

Is questionable in the extreme.
So if something were to happen to some portion of it, where would the make-up come from? It could only be in rationing, by price, certainly over the short-term. Those three factors taken together suggest higher prices after 2002. In other words, we’re looking for 2002—next year—to mark the bottom of the oil pricing cycle.

In time? And in price, the bottom could be $15 or below?

It could easily go to 15 on a spike down. The oil price wouldn’t average that for the year, the average would probably be in the high teens.

Would that be so horrible then?

That would be fine as an average for the year. But there would be a danger in the price dipping to $15 or so. The further it goes down (in penetration terms) and the longer it stays down, the greater the upward thrust of prices that could result. If you think (as I do right now) that the perfect price for oil is something between $20 and $25, then long periods of time above or below that number pose obvious dangers. So the case I come out with is that when we see the low in oil prices, probably in the next six months, that will most likely represent one of the better entry points into the oil stocks that we’re likely to have in the next decade.

The only trouble will be getting anyone to listen to a positive story on the oils when prices are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Right again. I don’t have any illusions about that. I’m not getting a big response from investors now when I talk about the Hubbert Curve. Most people don’t know what it is and those who know what it is are confused by the great number of voices proclaiming that the oil industry pays no attention to it, and neither does the government, and for good reasons.

The basic knock on the analysis is that it’s all extrapolation—
It’s not strictly formulaic, and I don’t claim that it is. All the data isn’t in. It can’t be proven by mathematical theorems. So its critics claim the Hubbert Curve is not discernable. That it’s one of these future trends that people project by studying the entrails of chickens. I think that’s a little harsh. There are a lot of reasons for uncertainty. I don’t think that you can really make projections about the useful life of OPEC reserves because we don’t know what prices are going to be 15, 20, 25 years out. If they’re high, then OPEC production will go on for a long time before it peaks. And if the OPEC production peak is a movable feast, then non-OPEC is going to be fairly movable, too. That’s where, I think, the problem lies. I can say that world oil production is going to peak in 2012 and someone can say, “No, in 2018 or 2025,” and I can’t disprove their arguments.

Everything depends on the assumptions you use.

Exactly. You can’t really fight that. But I think if we can separate the Hubbert Curve chart into one for the OPEC world, and one for non-OPEC, we can make meaningful assumptions about the next five years’ demand and prices. Those factors, combined with existing production trends in the U.S., Russia, the North Sea, China and Canada, suggest to me that non-OPEC production will peak sometime between 2005 and 2007. Admittedly, I’ve left myself a nice wide band there. But what counts is that it will peak within that time frame, I maintain.

Because that will put OPEC firmly back in the catbird seat?

Exactly, because once you’re in that “Oliver Twist” situation, each year the non-OPEC countries must metaphorically turn to OPEC and say, “Please sir, may I have more?” Economics 101 tells me that those parties that produce the incremental barrels in a world that counts on them for growth are quickly in a position to set the price on those barrels.

Then you disagree with Tom Petrie’s [w@w 11/23/01] hope that enough new production can be brought on, from offshore Africa, the Caspian and who knows where else, to keep OPEC’s negotiators “honest” for quite a while?

I agree to the extent that I think we’ll have huge new reserves found and developed. My only problem is that I’m looking at the size of the depletion of the mature fields around the world and I’m saying, you know, at 6% annual depletion (and five years out, it’ll be closer to 7% depletion) we’re going to be gobbling up an awful lot of that good news just to make up for that depletion. It isn’t that I don’t see huge new production coming on. It is just that it is largely offset. I would need a huge series of new finds to make a case for growth. But fact is, the industry isn’t making huge new finds today. Look at Kashagan, which may be the world’s largest field and Tengiz which may be the world’s No. 3 field. Kashagan was known in the early ’70s. The Soviets saw it on the seismic data. They knew about Tengiz in the late ’60s. Now, you can say that Tengiz wasn’t officially put on the world’s oil books until 1989, and Kashagan until 2000 and be strictly accurate. But those fields were known far earlier, they just couldn’t be drilled because of technical difficulties of pressures at 18,000-foot depths. At this point, we aren’t finding much large stuff anymore.

You’re saying we’ve run out of likely prospects?

The question is, “What are we actually finding now?” What is it that we don’t know about now but we will find in the outward years, in terms of big new reserves? Surprisingly enough, there’s little on the horizon. For instance, leaving aside the Kazakhstan side of the Caspian, looking over to the Azerbaijan side, it’s a laugh. I think they’ve found something like 6-7 billion barrels. Not enough to blow yourself up with. Remember, the world is using 27 billion barrels a year now. So finding only 7 billion barrels shifts the Hubbert Curve out by 3-4 months, not much.

So 7 billion barrels sounds like a lot, but it’s a drop in a barrel.
Again, in Angola, we are finding billion-barrel fields. It’s wonderful, if you’re Chevron, to find a billion-barrel field. But from a global perspective, when you’re burning up 27-28 billion barrels every year and reserves are dropping so much on the depletion side, you’ve got to find a heck of a lot of billion-barrel fields just to stay even.

True, but as long as there are new barrels coming from outside of OPEC, there will be at least some tempering influence on the cartel, keeping them a little honest.

I agree. We should bring on everything we can. But I don’t think, for instance, even if Bush succeeds in opening up more development in the North Slope, that it’ll be very important in terms of the volume of reserves. Still, it might be an important psychological factor. People will say, “Look what we’re doing. It’s terrific.” But when you actually work on the statistics, even if we found 8 or 10 new fields that together equaled the North Slope field, which I doubt we will, that would push that Hubbert Curve out about 4 months. It just isn’t worth it.

And you’re an optimist!

My basic point is that to the degree that we let oil prices fall below the $20-25 area and depending on the time that we spend below the 20-25 area, we are storing up for ourselves considerable horsepower on the upside for a future that could involve higher prices in 2003, ’04 and ’05. And that’s another reason why these oils are not going down. People are looking through this thing and saying, “There’s something on the other side.” And boy, do I ever think they're right.

Thanks, Charley.

http://www.weedenco.com/welling/archive/li/v03i23lilogo2.asp

Anonymous said...

The comment program seems to cut off the url, so I've tried to print it again here in two lines.

JD

http://www.weedenco.com/welling/arc

hive/li/v03i23lilogo2.asp

Anonymous said...

" And now, something completely different ";(Monty Python)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_ve37gVwxw

" Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook "!
-----------------------------------
While the U.S. of A. are 'rigthfully' held accountable for most of the warmongering and its catastrophic consequences wich are shaking 'our World' today, one tends to forget or oversee the role 'Europe in particular' is playing in this mess.

It is therefore that I dare say, beïng Dutch and an European as such, that for justice to be done and if it ever comes to a CONTEMPORARY WARCRIMES TRIBUNAL, many a European collaborator, political and corporate, (like Tony Blair, the Dutch P.M. and Shell, to name a few) should be indicted for theyr collaboration with the U.S. warcrimes and crimes against humanity.

The 'After Downingstreet' exposure made it clear from the very beginning, that Europe was involved and premeditated with the U.S. as how to gain and hold a geo-political/military control over the Middle-East and its oil.

The only thing more sickening black than the colour of Middle-East and the Iraqi-Oil, is EUROPE'S PATHOLOGIC HYPOCRISY!

Right next to the U.S. political, corporate (moral) bankruptcy, there's Europe's!

Jacob.

tiago said...

Len,
I cannot cite links to what I am about to say. I’m just an old man with a Dell computer Oog threw away.
“Unocal's own website stated that the pipeline was put on hold when the US struck against terrorist in the Sudan.”
That is as clear as mud. Afghanistan borders on China, Pakistan, and Iran. Sudan is in the Horn of Africa. Another continent, I’m afraid. Or perhaps, George dictated the statement. He was unaware Africa was a Continent until he visited there and promised those folks to help alleviate poverty and hunger. Bush lies a lot.
I submit that the pipeline was put on hold because the Taliban wanted more money and were holding it up until they got it, period.
Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.
The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taliban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah. Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.
I wonder why the United States, Bush regime, wanted Osama. Did they want to pay him his back pay. Osama was a laison between the Royal family of Saud and the CIA. He helped the CIA with their terrorism in Sudan, but after the first Gulf War, I think he turned. And why even talk of Afghan King Zahir Shah. Both Zamay and Karzai resided in the US before their stints as Viceroy. Zamay with Chevron and Karzai before going to Afghanistan to become the Unocal’s/Rockefeller puppet.
But the zinger;
GLASPIE: We have many Americans who would like to see the price go above $25 because they come from oil-producing states.
HUSSEIN: The price at one stage had dropped to $12 a barrel and a reduction in the modest Iraqi budget of $6 billion to $7 billion is a disaster.
GLASPIE: I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.
Does any one even remember the dispute. No, just a bunch of propaganda.
Saddam’s concern was one of the major oil companies, I don’t remember which, was slant drilling from Kuwait into the Iraqui southern oil fields. Kuwait was powerless to stop this, and Glaspie set the trap for Saddam to invade. The oil wells that were set on fire, were those slant drilling into Iraq.
That the Bush regime needed 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ is a gimme. Cheney admitted this during the 2004 election campaigns. He stated that his opponent was trying to turn the 9/11 into a ‘police matter’, which it is, and not into a war with no military solution.

tiago said...

Len,
I cannot cite links to what I am about to say. I’m just an old man with a Dell computer Oog threw away.
“Unocal's own website stated that the pipeline was put on hold when the US struck against terrorist in the Sudan.”
That is as clear as mud. Afghanistan borders on China, Pakistan, and Iran. Sudan is in the Horn of Africa. Another continent, I’m afraid. Or perhaps, George dictated the statement. He was unaware Africa was a Continent until he visited there and promised those folks to help alleviate poverty and hunger. Bush lies a lot.
I submit that the pipeline was put on hold because the Taliban wanted more money and were holding it up until they got it, period.
Mr Naik told the BBC that at the meeting the US representatives told him that unless Bin Laden was handed over swiftly America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar.
The wider objective, according to Mr Naik, would be to topple the Taliban regime and install a transitional government of moderate Afghans in its place - possibly under the leadership of the former Afghan King Zahir Shah. Mr Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where American advisers were already in place.
I wonder why the United States, Bush regime, wanted Osama. Did they want to pay him his back pay. Osama was a laison between the Royal family of Saud and the CIA. He helped the CIA with their terrorism in Sudan, but after the first Gulf War, I think he turned. And why even talk of Afghan King Zahir Shah. Both Zamay and Karzai resided in the US before their stints as Viceroy. Zamay with Chevron and Karzai before going to Afghanistan to become the Unocal’s/Rockefeller puppet.
But the zinger;
GLASPIE: We have many Americans who would like to see the price go above $25 because they come from oil-producing states.
HUSSEIN: The price at one stage had dropped to $12 a barrel and a reduction in the modest Iraqi budget of $6 billion to $7 billion is a disaster.
GLASPIE: I think I understand this. I have lived here for years. I admire your extraordinary efforts to rebuild your country. I know you need funds. We understand that and our opinion is that you should have the opportunity to rebuild your country. But we have no opinion on the Arab-Arab conflicts, like your border disagreement with Kuwait.
Does any one even remember the dispute. No, just a bunch of propaganda.
Saddam’s concern was one of the major oil companies, I don’t remember which, was slant drilling from Kuwait into the Iraqui southern oil fields. Kuwait was powerless to stop this, and Glaspie set the trap for Saddam to invade. The oil wells that were set on fire, were those slant drilling into Iraq.
That the Bush regime needed 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’ is a gimme. Cheney admitted this during the 2004 election campaigns. He stated that his opponent was trying to turn the 9/11 into a ‘police matter’, which it is, and not into a war with no military solution.

theBhc said...

Hi Len,

Good article.

Don't know if you saw this when it came out, but there is an even larger picture to the TAPI pipeline story that I think you would find interesting.

Pipelines and Imperial Missions

cheers,

Ken

Unknown said...

tiago said...

That is as clear as mud. Afghanistan borders on China, Pakistan, and Iran. Sudan is in the Horn of Africa. Another continent, I’m afraid. Or perhaps, George dictated the statement.

I wish I had saved the Unocal release. I recall reading it on their site at the time. At about this time, Osama was videotaped walking among his 'throng' of supporters. I have recently seen other footage that was taken that day from another camera. The 'official' footage was cropped tightly to give the appearance of a 'throng'. The wider shots reveal that the 'throng' consisted of what Hollywood would call a 'handful' of 'extras'. They were actually paid to walk beside Osama. It was not just a 'photo-op', it was a propaganda movie. Something the CIA would do.

In the months prior to 911, Osama was getting dialysis in Dubai. He was visited by two American CIA agents. What was that all about? It was about this same time that someone in the US state department was threatening Afghanistan with 'carpet bombs'.

One of the strangest 'coincidences' with respect to 911 is the case of FBI agent John O'Neill was an expert on the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and was involved in the capture of Ramzi Yousef. O'Neill had learned of Osama bin Laden and 'al Qaeda' --which I believe to be a creation of the CIA. Incidentally, O'Neill investigated the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia and the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000. Is that why he 'left' or was asked to leave. He was the subject of a Frontline documentary entitled: "The Man Who Knew."

O'Neill left the FBI to become head of security at the World Trade Center. He was only 49 when he died there on 911. I still wonder how much of the puzzle O'Neill had managed to put together. The New York Times --in a story dated August 19, 2001 --'suggested that O'Neill had been the subject of an 'internal investigation'". O'Neill was said to have lost an FBI 'briefcase' containing "highly classified information".

Does any one even remember the dispute. No, just a bunch of propaganda.

Saddam's meeting with April Glaspie was about the price of oil (of course) but he had wanted to speak with her about his position vis a vis Kuait. It was his contention that Kuwait was a part of Iraq. Glaspie told him that the US '...has no position on your Arab/Arab conflicts' (words to that effect). The 'interview' is significant. It proves that the US will 'lie' to provoke oil wars and it proves also that not only is the price of oil a concern, the US supports HIGHER PRICES for oil.

It's hard to put a date on it! At some point in time, our government CEASED to be legitimate. The entire apparatus of government now serves a handful of huge multi-national corporations. I am quite sure the Bush crime family still calls it a "New World Order'.

Unknown said...

Thanks Jay and bhc...

Great material...a busy couple of days. Hope to catch up with it all soon.

theBhc said...

tiago,

I have another article about the The First Gulf War, vis a vis, the "realists" of the Reagan and Bush I administrations, that you might find interesting, too. It cites a number of the issues you raised regarding Hussein and his dispute with Kuwait as well as Bush I agitating for war and bribing various countries to sanction the war through the UN.

The Old American Century: Twenty Years of Realist Foreign Policy

Much of the information -- especially surrounding the war crimes of Gulf War I -- comes from the Commission of Inquiry for the International War Crimes Tribunal, an investigation and report that was universally ignored by US media, natch.

Anonymous said...

Len, I find your blog informative and a source of confirmation on many levels. But I write to you because I am the artist of the cartoon you used in this comment.
Please get in touch we me through the email link at my website:
http://www.krankyscartoons.com
I am not looking for compensation, but would appreciate attribution and recognition.
"KRANKY", aka Chollgosh