American Blood for Price Stability

[Rohirrim]

Vincent Ferraro, "Another Motive For Iraq War: Stabilizing Oil Market," Hartford Courant, 12 August 2003

The United States invaded Iraq for a number of reasons. For some members of the Bush administration, it was probably a way to reshape the politics of the Middle East; for others, it was an opportunity to enhance Israeli security. One of the least-discussed reasons was to assure order in the international petroleum market. Perhaps this objective is rarely mentioned because it's obvious, or maybe because no discussion was necessary among decision-makers well versed in petroleum politics.

But one should not believe that the United States would occupy a country with the world's second largest reserves of petroleum without considering the effect of that act on the world's most important commodity. On the other hand, one cannot believe that the United States would ever articulate its objectives in terms that most would regard as vulgar and commercial. We now know that the evidence of an "imminent" attack by Iraq was flimsy, and known to be so at the time by the intelligence community. The threat to the stability of the international petroleum market, however, was real.

Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force was particularly concerned in March 2001 about non-American suitors for Iraqi oil, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch. Iraq had signed contracts with a variety of oil companies, including ones from France, China and Russia. That these companies would have access to huge reserves of oil was profoundly unsettling to the largest multinational oil companies (Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ChevronTexaco) because these newcomers would more than likely pump as much oil as they could in the shortest amount of time, thereby reducing the price of oil.

Overproduction of oil has long been a fear of the petroleum industry. When confronted with overproduction in the early 20th century, the major petroleum companies agreed to restrict access to areas to any producers who would not agree to restrict production as well. When oil was discovered in Bahrain in 1932 by a company not party to that agreement (Standard Oil of California), every effort was made to bring that company in line. The French exclusion from the major fields in Saudi Arabia in 1947 was partially due to the efforts of the U.S. State Department on behalf of American oil companies.

The Russians and the Chinese are newcomers to the world market, and their willingness to overproduce oil is unrestrained given their needs for energy and export revenues. Many in the United States had worried that support for Iraqi sanctions would erode in the United Nations and that Iraqi contracts with the French, Russians and Chinese would be revived and honored.

This would explain why the United States was so willing to undertake the invasion of Iraq without U.N. sanction, and also why it has been so reluctant to agree to a U.N. mandate, despite the considerable economic and political advantages in doing so. U.N. authorization could activate the Iraqi contracts with non-U.S. or non-British firms.

In May, the administration of the Iraqi petroleum industry was handed over to Philip J. Carroll, a former chief executive of Shell Oil Co., one of the companies committed to maintaining the price stability of petroleum. The French, Chinese and Russian firms will eventually be permitted to produce Iraqi oil, but how much they pump will be regulated by an Iraqi Oil Ministry heavily influenced by an American occupation. Already, oil contracts have been obtained by U.S. firms Exxon Mobil, ChevronTexaco, ConocoPhillips, Marathon and Valero Energy.

The U.S. and British interest in petroleum price stability is clearly self-interest, but one should be cautious about suggesting that the invasion of Iraq was motivated by simple greed. The slogan "No blood for oil" does not capture the complexity of the issue. The world does have an interest in stable oil prices: Very low prices encourage the extravagant use of a finite resource. On the other hand, the American occupation of Iraq favors the interests of American and British oil companies, maintains a higher price for oil than likely would have been the case under a U.N.-sanctioned occupation and seductively promises a more secure and less politically dangerous supply of oil than that offered by Saudi Arabia.

And American control over Iraq gives it the ability to use oil contracts to influence the conduct of other states: The Iraqi oil contract awarded to Mitsubishi the day after the Japanese agreed to send troops to Iraq is a dramatic example of how such power can be used.

The mixing of private and public interests in the Iraqi case raises serious questions. None of this is necessarily inconsistent with the public interest, but many of them satisfy private interests to a considerable extent.

Vincent Ferraro is Ruth C. Lawson Professor of International Politics at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass.
Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Vincent Ferraro, "Another Motive For Iraq War: Stabilizing Oil Market," Hartford Courant, 12 August 2003

That these companies would have access to huge reserves of oil was profoundly unsettling to the largest multinational oil companies (Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, ChevronTexaco) because these newcomers would more than likely pump as much oil as they could in the shortest amount of time, thereby reducing the price of oil.[/B]

Overproduction of oil has long been a fear of the petroleum industry. When confronted with overproduction in the early 20th century, the major petroleum companies agreed to restrict access to areas to any producers who would not agree to restrict production as well. When oil was discovered in Bahrain in 1932 by a company not party to that agreement (Standard Oil of California), every effort was made to bring that company in line. The French exclusion from the major fields in Saudi Arabia in 1947 was partially due to the efforts of the U.S. State Department on behalf of American oil companies.

How people could condone the oil cartel currently running the country and their polices is beyond me. I guess it's easier to understand when see that 33% of Americans think our government knowingly helped destroy the WTC towers.

[Rohirrim]

I'm surprised that Dman and Error haven't stumbled on this article and commented.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

This is why I always have to laugh at the dittoheads who say "I'd have more respect for Clinton if he just admitted that he inhaled."

I think a lot of people would have more respect for Chucklenuts if he just admitted "it's about the oil."

[SteveTensi13]

I'd much rather have America in charge of Iraqi oil then the french, russians and chinese!

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by SteveTensi13

I'd much rather have America in charge of Iraqi oil then the french, russians and chinese!

The Instant Israeli is overlooking one small, trifling detail:

It's Iraq's oil - not America's.

[Orange4ever]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

The Instant Israeli is overlooking one small, trifling detail:

It's Iraq's oil - not America's.

Oh really?

[Bronco_Beerslug]

Originally Posted by Orange4ever

Oh really?

Uh, yeah, really.

[DBruleU]

Originally Posted by Bronco_Beerslug

Uh, yeah, really.

Uh, no.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by DBruleU

Uh, no.

You're saying it isn't Iraq's oil?

[SteveTensi13]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

You're saying it isn't Iraq's oil?

Bingo!

[spdirty]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

You're saying it isn't Iraq's oil?

They owe us.

[Spider]

Originally Posted by spdirty

They owe us.

for what ?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by SteveTensi13

Bingo!

Nothing like a cop who thinks it's OK to take things that don't belong to you.

[SteveTensi13]

Originally Posted by L.A. BRONCOS FAN

Nothing like a cop who thinks it's OK to take things that don't belong to you.

It was bought and paid for by American blood!

[SactownOrangeSunday]

Originally Posted by Bronco_Beerslug

How people could condone the oil cartel currently running the country and their polices is beyond me. I guess it's easier to understand when see that 33% of Americans think our government knowingly helped destroy the WTC towers.

Do you have a link to the poll by chance?

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by SteveTensi13

It was bought and paid for by American blood!

Gee, that makes so much sense:

Invade and occupy a sovereign nation on utterly false pretenses, and then lay claims to its oil reserves because you invaded.

Did you come up with this argument all by yourself, or did you have help?

BTW, if you're going to use blood as oil currency, then the Iraqi civilian population has shed more than enough of its own to buy its own oil back tenfold.

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

"This war in Iraq has been the best thing in the world for Big Oil and OPEC. They've made the largest profits in the history of the world. The interesting thing about your book is you show how it was all planned from the beginning. The story is like a spy thriller." -- Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

THE JERK: WHY SADDAM HAD TO GO

by Greg Palast
Excerpt from 'Armed Madhouse'

The 323-page multi-volume "Options for Iraqi Oil" begins with the expected dungeons-and-dragons warning:

The report is submitted on the understanding that [the
State Department] will maintain the contents confidential.

More...

For two years, the State Department (and Defense and the White House) denied there were secret plans for Iraq's oil. They told us so in writing. That was the first indication the plan existed. Proving that, and getting a copy, became the near-to-pathologic obsession of our team.

Our big break came when James Baker's factotum, Amy Jaffe, first reached on her cell in Amsterdam, then at Baker's operation in Houston, convinced herself that I had the right to know about the plan. I saw no reason to correct her impression. To get the plan's title I used a truly dumb trick, asking if her copy's headings matched mine. She read it to me and listed its true authors from the industry.

The plan carries the State Department logo on the cover, Washington DC. But it was crafted in Houston, under the tutelage of the oil industry -- including, we discovered, Donald Hertzmark, an advisor to the Indonesia state oil company, and Garfield Miller of Aegis Energy, advisors to Solomon Smith Barney, all hosted by the James A. Baker III Institute.

After a year of schmoozing, Jaffe invited me to the Baker lair in Houston.

The James A. Baker III Institute is constructed a bit like a church or mosque, with a large echoing rotunda under a dome at its center, encircled by memorabilia and photos of the Great Man himself with the world's leaders, about evenly split between dictators and democrats.

And there is the obligatory shot of a smiling Nelson Mandela shaking Baker III's hand. (Mandela is not so impolite as to remind Jim that he was Reagan's Chief of Staff when Reagan coddled the regime that kept Mandela imprisoned.)

For tax purposes, it's an educational institute, and looking through the alarm-protected display cases along the wall was unquestionably an education. You could virtually write the recommendations of the 'Options for Iraqi Oil' report by a careful inspection of the trinkets of Baker's travels among the powerful.

There is the golden royal robe given Baker by Kazakh strongman Nazerbaev, the one who shared in the $51 million payment from ExxonMobil -- a James A. Baker client -- and alongside it a jeweled sword with a note from Nazerbaev, "Jim, there will always be a slice for you." (I made that up.)

Who is this James A. Baker III that he rates a whole institute, and one that will tell Iraq its oil future? Once Secretary of State to Bush Sr., Baker was now promoted to consigliere to ExxonMobil, the Republican National Committee and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In Houston, I found in Jaffe a preppy, talky Jewish girl with a Bronx accent like a dentist's drill who, stranded in a cowboy world, poignantly wanted to be one of The Boys. She thinks she can accomplish this through fashion accoutrements -- she showed me her alligator cowboy boots and rolled her eyes -- "for Rodeo Day!"

Lucky for me and my (hidden) recorder, she did not learn from Baker and the boys' Rule #1 for rulers: shut up.

So while Amy was in the mood to say too much, and before I got into the details of Big Oil's plan for Iraq, I needed Amy's help in finding the answer to the question that was just driving me crazy: why did Saddam have to go? Why did the oil industry promote an invasion of Iraq to get rid of Saddam?

The question is basic but the answer is not at all obvious.

We know the neo-cons' answer: Their ultimate target of the invasion was Saudi Arabia, which would be cut low by a Free Iraq's busting the OPEC oil cartel. But Big Oil wouldn't let that happen. The neo-cons' scheme ended up an unnoted smear under Amy's alligator boot heels.

And we can rule out Big Oil's desire for Iraq's oil as the decisive motive to invade. The last thing the oil industry wanted from Iraq in 2001 was a lot more oil.

Neither Saddam's affection for euro currency nor panic over oil supply 'peaking' ruffled the international oil industry. What, then, made Saddam, so easy to hug in the 1980s, unbearable in the 1990s?

Saddam had to go, but why?

Amy told me they held meetings about it.

Beginning just after Bush's Florida 'victory' in December 2000, the shepherds of the planet's assets got together to plan our energy future under the weighty aegis of the "Joint Task Force on Petroleum of the James A. Baker III Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations." The master plan makers included Paul Bremer's and Kissinger's partner, Mack McLarty, CEO of Kissinger McLarty Associates; John Manzoni of British Petroleum; Luis Giusti, former CEO of the Venezuelan state oil company (until Hugo Chavez kicked him out); Ken Lay of Enron (pre-indictment); Philip Verleger of the National Petroleum Council, and other movers and shakers crucial to such bi-partisan multi-continental group gropes -- all chaired by Dr. Edward Morse, the insider's insider, from Hess Oil Trading.

Their final report detailed Saddam's crimes. Gassing Kurds and Iranians? No. James A. Baker was the Reagan Chief of Staff when the U.S. provided Saddam the intelligence to better target his chemical weapons. Weapons of Mass Destruction? Not since this crowd stopped selling him the components.

In the sanitary words of the Council on Foreign Relations' report (written up by Jaffe herself), Saddam's problem was that he was a "swinger":

Tight markets have increased U.S. and global vulnerability
to disruption and provided adversaries undue potential in-
fluence over the price of oil. Iraq has become a key
"swing" producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S.
government.

Now hold on a minute: Why is our government in a "difficult" position if Iraq is a "swing producer" of oil?

The answer was that Saddam was jerking the oil market up and down. One week, without notice, the man in the moustache suddenly announces he's going to "support the Palestinian intifada" and cuts off all oil shipments. The result: Worldwide oil prices jump up. The next week, Saddam forgets about the Palestinians and pumps to the maximum allowed under the Oil-for-Food Program. The result: Oil prices suddenly dive-bomb. Up, down, up, down. Saddam was out of control.

"Control is what it's all about," one oilman told me. "It's not about getting the oil, it's about controlling oil's price."

So, within days of Bush's election in November 2000, the James Baker Institute issued this warning:

In a market with so little cushion to cover unexpected events, oil prices become extremely sensitive to perceived supply risks. Such a market increases the potential leverage of an otherwise lesser producer such as Iraq...

I met with Falah Aljibury, an advisor to Goldman Sachs, the Baker/CFR group and, I discovered, host to the State Department's invasion planning meetings in February 2001. The Iraqi-born industry man put it this way: "Iraq is not stable, a wild card." Saddam cuts production, or suddenly boosts it, playing games with the U.N. over the Oil-for-Food Program. The tinpot despot was, almost alone, setting the weekly world price of oil and Big Oil did not care for that. In the CFR's sober language:

Saddam is a "destabilizing influence... to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East."

With Saddam out of control, jerking markets up and down, the price of controlling the price was getting just too high. Saddam drove the oil boys bonkers. For example, Saddam's games pushed the State Department, disastrously, to launch, in April 2002, a coup d'etat in Venezuela.

This could not stand. Saddam delighted in playing cat-and-mouse with the USA and our oil majors. Unfortunately for him, he wasn't playing with mice, but a much bigger and unforgiving breed of rodents.

Saddam was asking for it. It was time for a "military assessment." The CFR concluded:

Saddam Hussein has demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon to manipulate oil markets... United States should conduct an immediate pol icy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and political/diplomatic assessments.

The true motive to invade Iraq, Saddam's "manipulation of oil markets," was there, but not yet, in April 2001, the official excuse.

Not surprisingly, the desires of the "Project for a New American Century," the neo-con field of dreams, of remaking Arabia, was not in the Baker Institute-CFR plan. However, the conclusion, Saddam must go, matched the neo-con's policy demand, if for highly different reasons. The Baker-CFR panel had a limited concern: Get rid of the jerk, the guy yanking the market.

Morse was close-lipped about who saw and used the 2001 Baker-CFR report, but Amy Jaffe could not help telling me that Morse reported its conclusions in a briefing at the Pentagon.

More important, back in early 2001, the initial Baker-CFR report (another participant tipped me) was handed directly to Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney met secretly with CFR task force members (including Ken Lay) to go over the maps of Iraq's oil fields. That, apparently, sealed it. Cheney took the CFR/Baker recommendations as his own plan for dissecting Iraq, I'm told, beginning with the none-too-thinly-veiled take-out-Saddam "assessment."

And whose plan was it? I knew the membership of the Baker-CFR group was Big Oil and its retainers. But I was curious to know who put up the cash for drafting the extravagant report that was so protective of OPEC and Saudi interests. This document was, after all, the outline on which the Bush administration drew its grand design for energy, from Iraq to California to Venezuela. According to Jaffe, the cost of this exercise in Imperialism Lite was funded by "the generous support of Khalid al-Turki" of Saudi Arabia.

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/338

[Rohirrim]

Well, that article is enough to give you a chill.

[Crushaholic]

Once again, we NEED to find a cure to our addiction to Middle East oil. Alternative fuel sources are becoming a must every day...

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by Crushaholic

Once again, we NEED to find a cure to our addiction to Middle East oil. Alternative fuel sources are becoming a must every day...

Ya think?

Carter Tried To Stop Bush's Energy Disasters - 28 Years Ago

In his recent news conference, George Bush Jr. suggested that our nation's "problem" with high gasoline prices was caused by the lack of a national energy policy, and tried to blame it all on Bill Clinton. First, Junior said, "This is a problem that's been a long time in coming. We haven't had an energy policy in this country."

This was followed by, "That's exactly what I've been saying to the American people -- 10 years ago if we'd had an energy strategy, we would be able to diversify away from foreign dependence. And -- but we haven't done that. And now we find ourselves in the fix we're in." As is so often the case, Bush was lying.

Consider President Jimmy Carter's April 18, 1977 speech. Since it was given nearly three decades ago, when many of the reporters in Bush's White House were children, it's understandable that they don't remember it. But it's inexcusable that Bush and the mainstream media (which, after all, has the ability to do research) would completely ignore it. It was the speech that established the strategic petroleum reserve, birthed the modern solar power industry, led to the insulation of millions of American homes, and established America's first national energy policy. "With the exception of preventing war," said Jimmy Carter, a man of peace, "this is the greatest challenge our country will face during our lifetimes."

He added: "It is a problem we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. "We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.

"We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the future control us." Carter bluntly pointed out that: "The most important thing about these proposals is that the alternative may be a national catastrophe. Further delay can affect our strength and our power as a nation." He called the new energy policy he was proposing, "[T]he 'moral equivalent of war' -- except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not destroy."

When Carter had become president three months earlier, the nation was still recovering from the "oil shock" of the 1973 Arab oil embargo, and scientists were realizing our nation was just then hitting the point of domestic peak oil production predicted more than a decade earlier by scientist M. King Hubbert. (The rest of the world is hitting the Hubbert Peak right now.) As Carter noted in his speech, "The oil and natural gas we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are running out. In spite of increased effort, domestic production has been dropping steadily at about six percent a year. Imports have doubled in the last five years. Our nation's independence of economic and political action is becoming increasingly constrained." Hubbert had predicted that the peak of oil production for the USA would come in the 1970s, and it did, hitting us with a shock.

"The world has not prepared for the future," said Jimmy Carter. "During the 1950s, people used twice as much oil as during the 1940s. During the 1960s, we used twice as much as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind's previous history." Hubbert said we must begin to conserve. Carter agreed.

"Ours is the most wasteful nation on earth," he said, a point that is still true. "We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan and Sweden." Carter directly challenged the fossil fuel and automobile industries. "One choice," he said, "is to continue doing what we have been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years. "Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would continue to carry only one person -- the driver -- while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our houses, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste. "We can continue using scarce oil and natural gas to generate electricity, and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process."

But that would be unpatriotic, anti-American, and essentially wrong. Who but a traitor sold out to special interests, or an idiot, would countenance such insanity?

The year 1977 was a turning point for America. If we didn't make clear and rapid progress, we would face painful times ahead. The Saudis would have their fingers around our necks. We'd face war in the Middle East to secure future oil supplies. "Now we have a choice," Carter said. "But if we wait, we will live in fear of embargoes. We could endanger our freedom as a sovereign nation to act in foreign affairs."

Failure to act in the 1970s and 1980s would inevitably lead to a time when the only way to maintain our lifestyle would be to rape our planet and seize control of oil-rich nations in the Middle East. If we didn't begin to develop alternatives like solar power, and dramatically reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, then, Carter said, even our cherished personal freedoms would be at risk. If we continued to simply follow past policies that enriched the oil industry and the Saudis, instead of becoming energy independent, Carter said, "We will feel mounting pressure to plunder the environment."

If we failed to develop alternative sources of renewable energy and conserve what we have, the alternative could be nasty. As Carter pointed out: "We will have a crash program to build more nuclear plants, strip-mine and burn more coal, and drill more offshore wells than we will need if we begin to conserve now. Inflation will soar, production will go down, people will lose their jobs. Intense competition will build up among nations and among the different regions within our own country. "If we fail to act soon, we will face an economic, social and political crisis that will threaten our free institutions."

Carter's speech drew a strong reaction from the Saudis and the oil industry. Think tanks soon emerged - many whose names are today familiar - to suggest there was really no energy problem, and they led the charge to establish a permanent right-wing media in the US. Within two years, Saudi citizen and oil baron Salem bin Laden's sole US representative, James Bath, would funnel cash into the failing business of the son of the CIA's former director, political up-and-comer George H. W. Bush. With that money from the representative of Osama Bin Laden's half-brother, George Bush Jr. was able to keep afloat his Arbusto ("shrub" in Spanish) Oil Company. And he would be in the pocket of the bin Laden and Saudi interests for the rest of his life. But Carter was incorruptible.

"We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will attack the part of this plan that affects them directly," he said. "They will say that sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country. If they succeed, then the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest group, would be crushing." But that would be wrong. It would be un-American. It would lead to future oil shocks, and the probable death of American soldiers in Middle Eastern oil wars. Instead of caving in to the Saudis and the oil industry, Carter said: "There should be only one test for this program: whether it will help our country."

Two years later, as the bin Laden family's sole US representative was bailing out George Bush Junior's failing oil business, Jimmy Carter gave another speech on energy, further refining his national energy policy. He had already started the national strategic petroleum reserve, birthed the gasohol and solar power industries, and helped insulate millions of homes and offices. But he wanted to go a step further. "I am tonight setting a clear goal for the energy policy of the United States," Carter said on July 15, 1979. "Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 -- never. From now on, every new addition to our demand for energy will be met from our own production and our own conservation. The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s..." In addition, we needed to immediately begin to develop a long-range strategy to move beyond fossil fuel.

Therefore, Carter said, "I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000." But then came the Iran/Contra October Surprise, when the Reagan/Bush campaign allegedly promised the oil-rich mullahs of Iran that they'd sell them missiles and other weapons if only they'd keep our hostages until after the 1980 Carter/Reagan presidential election campaign was over. The result was that Carter, who had been leading in the polls over Reagan/Bush, steadily dropped in popularity as the hostage crisis dragged out, and lost the election. The hostages were released the very minute that Reagan put his hand on the Bible to take his oath of office. The hostages freed, the Reagan/Bush administration quickly began illegally delivering missiles to Iran.

And Ronald Reagan's first official acts of office included removing Jimmy Carter's solar panels from the roof of the White House, and reversing most of Carter's conservation and alternative energy policies.

Today, despite the best efforts of the Bushies, the bin Ladens, and the rest of the oil industry, Carter's few surviving initiatives have borne fruit.

It is now more economical to build power generating stations using wind than using coal, oil, gas, or nuclear. When amortized over the life of a typical mortgage, installing solar power in a house in most parts of the US is cheaper than drawing power from the grid. (Shell and British Petroleum are among the world's largest manufacturers of solar photovoltaic panels, which can now even be used as roofing shingles.) And hybrid cars that get 50-70 miles to the gallon are increasingly commonplace on our nation's highways. Instead of taking a strong stand to make America energy independent, Bush kisses a Saudi crown prince, then holds hands with him as they walk into Bush's hobby ranch in Texas. Our young men and women are daily dying in Iraq - a country with the world's second largest store of underground oil. And we live in fear that another 15 Saudis may hijack more planes to fly into our nation's capitol or into nuclear power plants.

Meanwhile, Bush brings us an energy bill that includes eight billion dollars in welfare payments to the oil business, just as the nation's oil companies report the highest profits in the entire history of the industry. Americans struggle to pay for gasoline, while the Bush administration refuses to increase fleet efficiency standards, stop the $100,000 tax break for buying Hummers, or maintain and build Amtrak. George Bush Jr. is arguably right that gas prices are spiking because we don't have an energy policy. But instead of blaming Clinton, he should be pointing to the Reagan/Bush administration, and to his own abysmal failures over the past four years.

By Thom Hartmann

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0503-22.htm

[Rigs11]

Originally Posted by spdirty

They owe us.

They sure do. They owe us for all those WMD's we gave them in the 1980's

[baja]

Originally Posted by SteveTensi13

It was bought and paid for by American blood!

Do you really believe that?

[SteveTensi13]

Originally Posted by baja fan

Do you really believe that?

I dont mince words bubby!

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

Originally Posted by SteveTensi13

I dont mince words bubby!

You just abuse them.