...that ABC News added Bush flak (and contempt of Congress candidate) Karl Rove to its "This Week" roundtable lineup, while the advertising between segments is from BP, Bank of America and Chevron?
The disgraced former speaker of the House was on CSPAN this morning, and actually prompted me to pick up the phone and try to call in (I didn't get through.) Had I gotten through, I would have asked Newt Gingrich exactly who funds his "drill now!" group, called American Solutions for Winning the Future. Well... who do you think? (Hint: they're the same people that suddenly enjoy giving lots of money to John McCain...)
American Solutions for Winning the Future is a new, non-partisan organization built around three goals: to defend America and our allies abroad and defeat our enemies, to strengthen and revitalize America’s core values, and to move government into the 21st Century. The General Chairman is former Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Our mission is to become the leading grassroots movement to recruit, educate, and empower citizen activists and elected officials to develop solutions to transform all levels of government.
... The American people are tired of Red vs. Blue partisan bickering and want to create a Red, White, and Blue country. American Solutions is designed to rise above traditional gridlocked partisanship, to provide real, significant solutions to the most important issues facing our country. Yet, the current political governmental system has four major flaws which block it from developing the kind of solutions we need.
First, it is dominated by daily headlines, a focus on the negative, fights rather than discussions, and sound bites and commercials so short they can't communicate anything complex or positive.
Second, the old system simply does not have the ideas and techniques for being successful. Today's politicians are trapped in old ideas, old interest groups, and old bureaucracies that simply do not have the tools for solving America's problems.
Third, consultants dominate the current system, and they are essentially technicians with very limited knowledge of fundamental issues and historic lessons. So they tend to reduce the system to clever commercials and fancy fundraising gimmicks.
Fourth, the current system focuses on the Oval Office, yet there are 513,000 elected officials in America, from school board to city council to county commission to state legislature. Real solutions have to move through all these offices, not merely the White House.
Uh huh ... and they've even got their own rejiggered version of Newt's "Contract with America"...
However, it appears that American Solutions is less of a grassroots organization than it is a clearinghouse for the same old lobbyists, staffers and think tankers propping up the stale, bloated, conservative movement. From Matt Stoler over at OpenLeft on August 5th, following that so-called "spontaneous" protest of pro-drilling Americans in Washington D.C.:
I just came back from the Capitol, where Moveon volunteers and conservative movement group staffers were holding competing rallies around oil leasing (the full flickr set is here). Patrick Ruffini, one of the smartest consultants on the right, thinks this marks a turning point for the right. For the first time, he says, Moveon has mobilizes against "the House Republicans and the rightosphere".
The problem with this formulation is that the people that I spoke from Moveon came because they were volunteers, whereas the people from the pro-drilling groups were paid staffers from groups like the National Taxpayers Union and Dick Armey's FreedomWorks. I spent some time arguing with a nice young man from FreedomWorks about oil companies (though I'll spare you the video), and he was a law student who did economic policy for the group. These two groups are by and large funded by large companies, and they were formed by recognized conservative movement elites who came to power in the 1980s.
In fact, the entire drill drill drill campaign originated with Newt Gingrich, hardly the kind of leadership you'd expect from a real grassroots uprising. His group, American Solutions for Winning the Future, got a large grant from Peabody Coal at about the same time this campaign started, and is backed by the same crew of billionaires helping Freedom's Watch. Contrast this to Moveon, which was founded by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, or Dailykos, led by Markos Moulitsas-Zuniga, or even Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie of the New Right in the 1970s. These leaders came from the grassroots, and elevated a previously unorganized constituency into a powerful new voice. The Drill Drill Drill campaign has simply helped an existing powerful voice - the oil lobby - keep winning, the way it did earlier this year when it killed the Energy Bill in the Senate (with the help of John McCain and Mary Landrieu).
Now, this is not to say that the Drill, Drill, Drill campaign isn't popular. It is. But it is not some movement breakthrough on the right; new political movements are not populated entirely with paid staffers, funded by the extraordinarily wealthy winners of a society, and led by old over the hill political leaders. What is actually going on here is that the 1970s conservative movement is still around and still dominant. Right-wing billionaires are still funding Newt Gingrich, who is still dictating our agenda just as he did in the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. Conservative 'populism' in DC is still the same old Brooks Brothers Riot we saw in 2000, ie. paid staffers masquerading as grassroots.
So who are Gingrich's sugar daddies? The Alaska Wilderness League follows the money and finds a long breadcrumb trail of billionaires, Bushies and oil men. Just for fun, try to spot the guys who will "rise about gridlocked partisanship..."
• Thomas A. Saunders III ($200,000)—Saunders is a Trustee of the Heritage Foundation, a think tank devoted to free enterprise, limited government and individual freedom. Exxon Mobil is one of the Foundation’s biggest donors.
• Dan W. Evins ($100,000)—Evins was originally an oil jobber for Shell before starting the Cracker Barrel chain of restaurants.
• Michael G. Berolzheimer ($70,000)—The Berolzheimer Family began California Cedar Products in the 1920’s. CCP now produces Duraflame logs which are made by mixing saw dust with petroleum byproducts.
• Dave K. Rensin ($50,000)—Rensin is a software engineer for Reality Mobile, LLC. Reality Vision, a product of Reality Mobil, is currently being marketed to numerous industries including oil and gas production and refinement, as well as companies specializing in pipeline maintenance.
• Morton Fleischer ($25,000)—Fleischer is the Co-founder and Chairman of Spirit Finance. Fleisher is also a board member for Flying J, Inc., a chain of highway rest stops and gas stations. Fleisher also founded Franchise Finance Corporation of America which provided $15 million in capital for the merger of Miltenberger Oil Company and Jump Oil in 1999.
• Donald M. Wilkinson ($25,000)—Wilkinson is the Chairman and CIO of Wilkinson O’Grady & Co., the 15th largest investment company in the United States. They invest in numerous companies including National Oilwell Varco, Imperial Oil, Suncor Energy, EOG Resources, Schlumberger, Transocean, BHP Billiton, Apache Corporation, and XTO Energy.
• Edmund N. Carpenter II ($10,400)—Carpenter is now a retired attorney and past president of the Delaware State Bar Association. In 1977, he represented Texaco in a case involving a crash with the Texaco Caribbean and the Paracas, a Peruvian vessel.
• Clark Wamberg, LLC ($10,000)—Clark Wamberg, LLC is a consulting firm comprised of many different small businesses. One of these businesses is Federal Policy Group. In the first half of 2007, Federal Policy Group was paid $120,000 by Hess petroleum to lobby the federal government. Other clients of Federal Policy Group include GE and Teco Energy.
• Jack Caveney ($10,000)—Caveney works for Panduit, a provider of network and electrical solutions to a variety of markets including the oil, gas, and petrochemical market. Panduit strives to find solutions to problems with offshore platforms, refineries, and floating production storage-offloading (FPSO).
• Lewis Lehrman ($10,000)—Lehrman was one of the original investors in George W. Bush’s oil business, Arbusto Energy.
• Foam Fabricators, Inc. ($5,000)—Foam Fabricators, Inc., a state-of-the-art molding and fabricating plant, provides a variety of industries with economical and efficient shape molded and fabricated foam products, packaging and components. These products are made from expanded polystyrene manufactured primarily from petroleum.
• William T. Wolf ($4,000)—Wolf is employed by Allied Capital. In 2003, Allied Capital invested $18.4 million into Geotrace Technologies--a leading provider of subsurface imaging solutions and sophisticated reservoir analysis for the oil and gas industry worldwide.
• Kathleen Huff ($2,500)—Huff is employed by the Navteq Corporation. Navteq’s customers include Statoil, one of Scandinavia’s leading suppliers of fuel oil and gasoline.
Other Interesting Finds
• Sheldon Adelson ($4,597,632)—Adelson, of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, is the founder of Freedom’s Watch, a right-wing lobbying group which advocates to continue the war in Iraq and many other mainstream conservative ideas. [More on Sheldon and other bigwig donors from ThinkProgress.)
• Terry J. Kohler ($50,200)—Kohler, of Windway Capital, is a contributor to GOPAC, Gingrich’s PAC.
• Robert W. Johnson IV ($50,000)—Johnson is the owner of the New York Jets and big time Bush supporter. [Sidebar: He's the Johnson of the family that founded Johnson & Johnson]
• Stanley Gaines ($25,000)—Gaines is on the Board of International Coal Group, Inc.
• Frederick C. Palmer ($25,000)—Palmer is the Vice President of Government Relations at Peabody Energy, the world’s largest private sector coal company. Palmer is responsible for advancing state and federal policies related to the production and use of coal.
• Howard H. Callaway ($10,000)—Callaway was the Chairman of GOPAC from 1987-1993.
• Mel Sembler ($10,000)—Sembler was the former Ambassador to Italy and a founding donor for Freedom’s Watch. He also helped to finance the 2000 Florida recount battle between Bush and Gore.
• Tucker Anderson ($10,000)—Anderson is on the GOPAC Board.
• Frederic V. Malek ($5,000)—Malek, of Thayer Capital Partners was co-owner of the Texas Rangers with President Bush.
• Melvyn J. Estrin ($5,000)—Estrin serves on the Board of Directors of the Washington Gas & Light Company. He is also the director of WGL Holdings, Inc., a public utility holding company serving the D.C. metropolitan region.
American Solutions, which is a 527 group, has taken in more than $13 million this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. They also helpfully rank the donors in dollar order (Adelson is the biggest.) CRP also tracks the organization's spending, and finds that the single biggest expenditure has been travel. Gingrich's group is spending more money raising money and hiring consultants than they are on advertising.
Administrative
Miscellaneous Administrative
$34,374
Travel
$2,703,974
Salaries & Benefits
$1,441,594
Postage/Shipping
$3,284
Administrative Consultants
$36,519
Rent/Utilities
$357,659
Supplies, Equipment & Furniture
$63,836
Campaign Expenses
Materials
$39,894
Polling/Surveys/Research
$596,086
GOTV
$4,556
Campaign Events
$558,712
Political Consultants
$1,187,960
Campaign Direct Mail
$497,795
Fundraising
Fundraising Consultants
$12,471
Fundr Direct Mail/Telemarketing
$2,054,688
Media
Miscellaneous Media
$277,120
Broadcast Media
$155,298
Internet Media
$180,795
Media Consultants
$48,709
Instead of buying ads, the Gingrich oil salesmen are relying on all the free media they're getting, on CSPAN this morning, on the cable networks, but especially on right wing blogs and talk radio, which has picked up the "drill here, drill now" message full bore. In fact, tune in randomly to ANY right wing talk show (or to Fox News) at any time of the day or night, from Limbaugh to Hannity to the local wingnuts like Todd Schnitt down here in South Florida, and you'll find the hosts talking about little else besides the need to drill, ludicrous arguments that the oil companies really aren't making that much money, and the total canard, put forward with hilarious results last Saturday by Mike McConnell, that more drilling would actually LOWER oil companies' profits (he got his clock cleaned by a guy from Public Citizen.)
So far, American Solutions (with the help of Big Oil's newly minted talk radio shills,) has been able to get more than 1 milliondimwits Americans to sign their petition demanding that the oil companies be given drilling rights in the Rocky Mountains, off our coasts, and in the Alaskan wilderness (I can just see the Colorado rockies now, pock-marked with dirty, belching oil rigs. Great for tourism!)
And interestingly enough, NONE of the "Drill Now!" talk show hosts or civilians appears interested in demanding that the good capitalists at the big oil companies actually sell any oil they extract in the U.S., to Americans. In fact, the idea that oil companies would extract oil, and then sell it at lower prices here, when they could make more money selling to the highest international bidder (probably the same Indian or Chinese markets that are driving up demand today,) is not only crazy, it's downright anti-capitalist. Perhaps that's why John McCain opposed a measure that would have demanded that newly extracted oil be sold in the U.S. The American Solutions petition reads:
We, therefore, the undersigned citizens of the United States, petition the U.S. Congress to act immediately to lower gasoline prices (and diesel and other fuel prices)* by authorizing the exploration of proven energy reserves to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources from unstable countries.
Not a word about "drill here, SELL here..." because that's not what Newt's friends in Big Oil intend to do. Meanwhile, the idea that oil companies really don't make that much money when you look at their profit margins is equally daft, as Public Citizen's Tyson Slocum points out:
In most industries, when the main component (crude oil) of a product (gasoline) skyrockets in price, those higher costs eat into profit margins. But not the oil industry because ExxonMobil and the other major oil companies operate as a type of monopoly, with massive oil production, refining and retail marketing operations.
It isn't just Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah who gets rich when a barrel of oil hovers at $60/barrel; it's ExxonMobil and the other oil companies, since collectively the five largest oil companies produce 10 million barrels of oil a day - more than Saudi Arabia's 9 million barrels of oil a day. And much of the oil ExxonMobil et al is producing is coming from land owned by U.S. taxpayers (more than one-third of the oil and natural gas America produces every day comes from federal land). It only costs a company like ExxonMobil about $10 to produce a barrel of oil, but they're selling it to Americans for close to $60/barrel - a huge windfall profit.
The oil companies' windfall profits don't end there. Because the largest five oil companies also own half of America's oil refining capacity, they're more easily able to manipulate markets. The Federal Trade Commission confirmed this when it investigated the industry in 2001 and concluded that U.S. oil companies "withheld or delayed shipping additional supply in the face of a price spike" and that one oil company executive "made clear that he would rather sell less gasoline and earn a higher margin on each gallon sold than sell more gasoline and earn a lower margin. Another employee of this firm raised concerns about oversupplying the market and thereby reducing the high market prices."
The proof of these uncompetitive markets stemming from recent mergers is in the numbers. As late as 1999, U.S. oil companies made 22.8 cents for every gallon of gasoline they refined. By the summer of 2005, they made 99 cents on every gallon.
And while the Republicans are pulling off a pretty good marketing stunt that is moving the needle of public opinion in favor of Big Oil (for perspective, think of Marie Antoinette's press team in 1789 convincing the bourgeousie to revolt, not against the royals, but on the side of the royals against the peasants...) and Republicans are enjoying a lot of free publicity for their lights out stunt on Capitol Hill, House Republicans are diametrically opposed to forcing oil companies to sell any oil they "drill here" ... here:
(July 17) Today, Congressman Wexler voted for the Drill Act, which would bring 10.6 billion barrels of oil immediately to American consumers by requiring oil companies to being producing oil from acres of land already leased.The legislation would have allowed other companies to take over these leases if the oil company currently in possession failed to begin oil production.
The Drill Act would have also required the Administration to oversee the construction of a pipeline from these Alaskan reserves for the transport of oil and gas to the lower 48 states.The pipeline project would have created an estimated 10,000 new jobs.In addition, the legislation banned the export of this American-made energy, reserving resources for here at home. Unfortunately, House Republicans blocked the Drill Act, which required a two-thirds vote of support in order to pass."Oil companies are actively holding 10.6 billion barrels of oil hostage from the American people and this legislation would have required them to begin production immediately,” said Congressman Wexler. “While House Republicans claim they want to increase domestic supply of oil and gas to the market, by blocking this legislation they took a hard stand against the development of our domestic resources.
Huh.
So the next time you hear Newt Gingrich talking about his "grassroots movement," think oil-soaked grass in the Antarctic after all the snow melts from global warming ... think big, fat profits for the Big Six oil companies. But whatever you do, don't think of lower gas prices, 'cuz if the GOP's clients in the oil industry have it there way, they ain't coming.
At last, a genuine attack ad from the Obama camp. Reuters breaks it down:
CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama attacked Republican rival John McCain as a tool of big oil companies in a television ad released on Monday.
Seeking to tap into Americans' anger over soaring gasoline prices, Obama's ad opens with a shot of a driver pumping gas and refers to huge profits made by oil companies in the past year.
"Every time you fill your tank, the oil companies fill their pockets," a narrator says. "Now Big Oil's filling John McCain's campaign with $2 million in contributions."
The ad shows McCain standing next to fellow Republican President George W. Bush as the narrator says, "After one president in the pocket of big oil -- we can't afford another."
The ad touts Obama's plan to offer American families $1,000 tax breaks to help offset higher energy costs as well as the Illinois senator's proposal for a tax on windfall oil company profits. It accuses McCain, an Arizona senator, of seeking to give oil companies additional tax breaks.
Watch the ad:
Meanwhile, the candidates, and the parties, are slugging it out on the energy issue, including everything from clean energy (on the Obama side) to drilling (Big Oil's Republican minions in the House of Representatives are even threatening another good old fashioned government shutdown.) And the McCain people are reprising an anti-Kerry tactic, distributing tire gauges to mock Obama in the same way the same team, led by the same guy, Karl Rove protege Rick Davis, put out those purple bandages to mock Kerry's purple hearts:
McCain aides are distributing them to the campaign's travelling press corps and back at the HQ they're offering Obama tire gauges in exchange for donors who send in $25.
"John McCain says we need offshore oil drilling and we need it now," says campaign manager Rick Davis in an email to supporters. "Senator Barack Obama has consistently opposed offshore drilling - calling it a "gimmick." Senator Obama's solution to high gas prices is telling Americans to make sure their tires are inflated."
That's not his "solution" at all, and this latest gambit will surely bring yet more head-shaking disappointment from some quarters about McCain resorting to juvenile tactics.
But it seems increasingly clear that McCain is committed to the sort of aggressive and mocking campaigns that Republicans have been running against Democrats for years.
The battle in this election has been joined. The GOP is going to fight this thing on the basis of drilling, ironically, pushing the American people to side with the oil companies against the Democrats. They feel that they have a winner, and ironically, a hedge against rising gas prices. If they go up: the GOP can argue that we need to drill NOW. If they go down, Repubs will take credit, saying their call for drilling is having an impact.
How the Obama fights this will be a tough call. He can neutralize it by saying OK to the bi-partisan compromise that includes offshore drilling, and risk pissing off his base... He can stand fast against drilling and watch his state by state poll numbers slide, and continue to be RickRoved... or he can go on the offense, as he did in the new ad, by lashing John McCain to greedy oil profiteers, and the two oil men in the White House. I vote for number three, plus number one. But he's got to come hard, and get ugly.
It's not a comfortable look for the Democrats, but at least it takes the campaign off of the subject of race (though I'm sure not for long...)
This morning on "This Week," George Stephanopoulos demanded of Nancy Pelosi, at least eight, ten times, to know whether she would bring a vote on offshore drilling to the floor of the House. Why wouldn't she do it? Would she do it as part of a "comprehensive package?" "Why NOT allow an up or down vote on offshore drilling?" "Didn't you promise to bring votes to the floor?" "Why, why, why, won't you let the Republicans bring a drilling measure to the floor?"
Right after the Pelosi segment, George threw to break. The first advert? Chevron. Later in the program? It was the American Petroleum Institute's turn. (There was also an ad by T. Boone Pickens for his "alternative energy" plan.)
Telling. In radio, on-air personalities are always very much aware of who the advertisers and sponsors are, and management is very skittish about hosts dissing those advertisers. There's always a tug of war between the sales and programming departments about how much deference should be paid. Don't think for a moment that it's not much the same in television.
Chevron began its advertising push last September with a spashy ad intended to portray the company as a good global citizen. The current spot attempts to do the same thing, portraying the company as a leader in clean energy technology. The API ad attempts to convince the viewer that the oil industry makes much smaller profits than other industries, and invests billions in finding new sources of energy for America's moms and dads. The API isn't just going on the air, they're also taking it to the streets, with "educational programs" designed for America's classrooms, in which they enlist elementary school teachers as on the ground surrogates for the industry. Seriously. Both Chevron (and its friends, like Exxon-Mobile) and the API are also engaged in efforts to combat, not global warming, but the notion that it exists.
Exxon Mobile strikes a blow for America's victory in the global war on terror, posting record-shattering profits, and Wall Street actually yawns:
HOUSTON - Exxon Mobil reported second-quarter earnings of $11.68 billion Thursday, the biggest quarterly profit ever by any U.S. corporation, but the results fell well short of Wall Street expectations and shares fell in premarket trading.
The world's largest publicly traded oil company said net income for the April-June period came to $2.22 a share, up from $10.26 billion, or $1.83 a share, a year ago.
Revenue rose 40 percent to $138.1 billion from $98.4 billion in the year-earlier quarter.
... But investors expected even bigger profits Thursday, especially after Europe's Royal Dutch Shell reported a 33 percent jump in second-quarter earnings of $11.6 billion, which fell just shy of Exxon's own record earnings from 2007.
Shares fell 2 percent, or $1.68, to $82.70 in premarket trading.
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — Royal Dutch Shell PLC reported a 33 percent jump in second-quarter profits Thursday, its biggest quarter ever at $11.6 billion thanks to high oil prices and the weak dollar.
The company earned $8.67 billion in the same quarter last year.
Shell said its selling price per barrel of oil was around $112, up from $64 a year earlier. That pushed earnings at its main exploration and production arm up 90 percent to $5.88 billion, despite a 1.1 percent fall in production to 3.05 million barrels of oil and equivalents per day.
Chief Executive Jeroen van der Veer dismissed calls in Britain for a windfall tax on oil companies.
Britain's BP PLC reported this week that its profits jumped 28 percent to $9.47 billion in the quarter.
"If we do less investment there will be less supply for consumers" which would drive prices higher, Van der Veer said.
"The world needs energy."
Way to go, boys. You are true heroes of the West. And once again you've proved that George W. Bush's strategy of preemption pays great dividends. ... really great dividends...
Why did John McCain cancel his big, Obama-upending trip to Louisiana the other day? Was it ... because Bobby Jindall doesn't want to be seen with Mac and Cheese? ... maybe ... or, was it because of the weather ...? Maybe ... or was it the oil spill...
(The Politico) So why exactly did Sen. John McCain cancel an event yesterday on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana?
According to the McCain campaign, the event was canceled over weather concerns.
However, that explanation is not sitting well with Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, who claims McCain canceled the event because of a nearby oil spill that dumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the Mississippi.
“Look up ‘irony’ in the dictionary and you will find a description of this turn of events. Having to cancel your big oil drilling photo op because of a massive oil spill is like canceling a crime safety photo op because the house next door just got robbed," said Menendez.
"In selling his absurd coastline drilling plan to the American people, Sen. McCain has time and again pointed to advanced technology that would supposedly eliminate the threat of massive oil spills. As he can now personally attest, even with the most modern technology, we can’t prevent massive oil spills like the one currently devastating the Mississippi, just as we couldn’t prevent 7.7 million gallons of oil spills after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. This is the type of straight talk about oil drilling the American people deserve to hear.”
Whatchou talkin' bout Willis? I didn't hear the McCain-hating mainstream media talk about any "oil spill" ...
On Wednesday, a 600-foot tanker and a barge loaded with fuel oil collided near New Orleans, breaking the barge in half. While there were injuries, more than 419,000 gallons of thick oil spilled from the barge, forming a slick 12 miles long.
For all the condemnation of Zimbabwe, Foreign Policy in Focus reminds us that the world, and the U.S., are much more tolerant when it comes to thuggish leaders of countries that have vast natural resources, including "Swaziland, Congo, Cameroun, Togo, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Gabon, Egypt, and Tunisia. None of these countries holds free elections, and all have severely suppressed their political opposition."
And the worst of all? Our good friends, Equatorial Guinea. My take here, FPIF's take as follows:
Among the worst of these African tyrannies has been the regime of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. Obiang has been in power even longer than the 28-year reign of Mugabe and, according to a recent article in the British newspaper The Independent, makes the Zimbabwean dictator “seem stable and benign” by comparison. Obiang originally seized power in a 1979 coup by murdering his uncle, who had ruled the country since its independence from Spain in 1968. Under his rule, Equatorial Guinea nominally allowed the existence of opposition parties as a condition of receiving foreign aid in the early 1990s. But the four leading candidates withdrew from the last presidential election in December 2002 in protest of irregularities in the voting process and violence against their supporters. In that election, Obiang officially received more than 97% of the vote (down from 99.5% in the previous election.)
Though the U.S. State Department acknowledged that the election was “marred by extensive fraud and intimidation,” the Congress and the administration devoted none of the vehement condemnation that was so evident after the recent, similarly marred election process in Zimbabwe.
One major reason for the difference in response is oil. The development of vast oil reserves over the past decade has made Equatorial Guinea one of the wealthiest countries in Africa in terms of per capita gross domestic product. Virtually all of the oil revenues, however, goes to Obiang and his cronies. The dictator himself is worth an estimated $1 billion, making him the wealthiest leader in Africa; his real estate holdings include two mansions in Maryland just outside of Washington, DC. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the country’s population lives on only a few dollars a day, and nearly half of all children under five are malnourished. The country’s major towns and cities lack basic sanitation and potable water while conditions in the countryside are even worse.
During his most recent visit to Washington in 2006, Obiang was warmly received by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who praised the dictator as “a good friend” of the United States. Not once during their joint appearance did she mention the words “human rights” or “democracy.” At the same press conference, Obiang praised his regime’s “extremely good relations with the United States” and his expectation that “this relationship will continue to grow in friendship and cooperation.” None of the assembled reporters raised any questions about the regime’s notorious human rights record or its lack of democracy, instead using the opportunity to ask Secretary Rice questions about the alleged threat from Iran.
In 2002, the dictator met with President George W. Bush in New York to discuss military and energy security issues. He followed up in 2004 with meetings with then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham.
Cozy Relations
Equatorial Guinea receives U.S. government funding and training through the International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). In addition, the private U.S. firm Military Professional Resources Incorporated – founded by former senior Pentagon officials who cite the regime’s friendliness to U.S. strategic and economic interests – plays a key role in the country’s internal security apparatus. Furthermore, as a result of Obiang’s understandable lack of trust in his own people, soldiers from Morocco – one of America’s closest African allies – have served for decades in a number of important security functions, including the role of presidential guards.
Maintaining close ties with such a notorious ruler has led even conservative Republicans like Frank Ruddy, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to Equatorial Guinea in the mid-1980s, to denounce the Bush administration for being “big cheerleaders for the government – and it’s an awful government.”
Though the Chinese have also recently begun investing in the country’s oil sector, U.S. companies ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess, Chevron/Texaco, and Marathon Oil have played the most significant role. A report by the International Monetary Fund notes that U.S. oil companies receive “by far the most generous tax and profit-sharing provisions in the region.” Congressional hearings recently revealed how U.S. oil companies paid hundreds of millions of dollars destined to state treasuries directly into the dictator’s private bank accounts. A Senate report faulted U.S. oil companies for making “substantial payments to, or entering into business ventures with,” government officials and their family members.
The Bush administration can, in essence, rant and rave about Zimbabwe all it wants, with no consequences. The Bush administration gets to pretend it means business with all this talk of "democracy," even as they know that South Africa, Russia and China will likely block any serious sanctions against Zimbabwe in the U.N. Security Council. And they get to keep on ignoring and playing ball with the vicious governments of places like E. Guinea and Nigeria, where so long as the oil keeps flowing, the U.S. could give a damn.
The great crhttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifude runoff
Some states vow to stop Big Oil from plundering their shorelines, with the governors of California, North Carolina and New Jersey standing fast, while others pledge to throw open their shores to drilling: flip-flopper Charlie Crist of Florida, and the governors of South Carolina and Virginia. The ban is not likely to be lifted by the current Congress ... emphasis on likely ... but if it were to happen, could the tourism wars be next? (I can just see the ads now: "Come to North Carolina, avoid the Florida oil slick...")
Meanwhile, could offshore rigs be a tempting terrorist target? Let's ask Nigeria, where an oil platform was recently attacked by rebels.
Here in the Sunshine State, Charlie Crist's switcharoo on offshore drilling (just what parts of your soul wouldn't you sell to become the vice presidential nominee, Miss Charlie?) isn't exactly drawing rave reviews from the state's CFO, Democrat Alex Sink. Said Sink:
"He's one person, he's one public official, and I'm another statewide elected official who heard a lot about this when I was out campaigning," Sink said. "This is not the right thing to do in Florida. I don't want those people in Washington to think all of a sudden the people in Florida support oil drilling off our coast."
Sink said she was "stunned" when she heard the news. "The more I thought about it, the angrier I got," said Sink, the only Democrat to sit on Florida's three-person Cabinet.
But that doesn't mean that if they could, lawmakers in Florida and other states won't go for the drills. As one Florida tourism official put it, with gas prices rising, the anti-drilling armor is cracking...
Four oil giants are set to sign no-bid contracts with the Iraqi government, returning them to Iraq's oil ... I mean to the country ... after a 36 year absence.
Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields, according to ministry officials, oil company officials and an American diplomat.
The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations.
The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts, which would run for one to two years and are relatively small by industry standards, would nonetheless give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts in a country that many experts consider to be the best hope for a large-scale increase in oil production.
There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. It is not clear what role the United States played in awarding the contracts; there are still American advisers to Iraq’s Oil Ministry.
Sensitive to the appearance that they were profiting from the war and already under pressure because of record high oil prices, senior officials of two of the companies, speaking only on the condition that they not be identified, said they were helping Iraq rebuild its decrepit oil industry.
For an industry being frozen out of new ventures in the world’s dominant oil-producing countries, from Russia to Venezuela, Iraq offers a rare and prized opportunity.
John McCain, the Enron loophole, and your gas tank
Last night, "Countdown" did an exceptional investigative piece that should be required viewing for any American who wants to know why gas prices are so high. In essence, it isn't simple supply and demand: it's speculation, or in Bushian terms, the enronization of everything. Watch:
Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure.
… The act, he declared, would ensure that neither the sec nor the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (cftc) got into the business of regulating newfangled financial products called swaps—and would thus "protect financial institutions from overregulation" and "position our financial services industries to be world leaders into the new century."
It didn't quite work out that way. For starters, the legislation contained a provision—lobbied for by Enron, a generous contributor to Gramm—that exempted energy trading from regulatory oversight, allowing Enron to run rampant, wreck the California electricity market, and cost consumers billions before it collapsed. (For Gramm, Enron was a family affair. Eight years earlier, his wife, Wendy Gramm, as cftc chairwoman, had pushed through a rule excluding Enron's energy futures contracts from government oversight. Wendy later joined the Houston-based company's board, and in the following years her Enron salary and stock income brought between $915,000 and $1.8 million into the Gramm household.)
Of course there are other factors contributing to high energy costs, most notably global demand (see India and China) and the weak U.S. dollar. But regulating speculation is within the direct control of Congress, and the recent slew of media coverage has finally pushed members of Congress, including Sen. Carl Levin (MI) to act, including putting a provision closing the Enron loophole into the recently passed farm bill (which is why John McCain voted against it.) That might not be enough, however. This month, former CFTC Trading and Markets Division head Michael Greenberger testified on the Hill about speculation's role in boosting energy prices, and stated that closing the Enron loophole could reduce gas prices dramatically -- perhaps by 25% overnight:
Michael Greenberger, the former head of the CFTC's Division of Trading and Markets, testified yesterday before the Senate Commerce Committee on the topic of Energy Market Manipulation. He stated that the investment banks, namely Goldman Sachs (GS) and Morgan Stanley (MS), control the price of oil and natural gas through the ICE futures market. He cited that Morgan Stanley currently owns 27% of the natural gas futures.
He stated that former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas sneaked the Enron loophole through a large piece of insignificant legislation years ago: the result was that regulations upon the futures industry were abandoned. This loophole eventually allowed the current CDO-subprime crisis, and the current energy market crisis because regulations, which once protected the market from manipulation, are no longer enforcable.
Greenberger suggested that the current attempt of closing the Enron loophole by Senator Levin through the Farm Bill, would not work - as it would leave the government with the constant burden of proof to prove manipulation was occurring. Also it would only be enforcable on domestic market manipulators and not international ones. ...
Wall Street is lobbying hard to prevent Congress from taking further action (surprise, surprise.)
As ThinkProgress points out, the call is a flip-flop for Dubya, too -- he opposed offshore drilling when he ran for president on a "humble" America platform back in 2000. Now, Bush II is calling for drilling in so-called "deep water" wells, and he calls such drilling environmentally friendly, to boot! Bush and his friends on the right see an opening with ordinary Americans, whereby skyrocketing gas prices -- which were produced by the oil companies themselves, and by Bush's other close friends: Wall Street speculators -- could break down Americans' resistance to handing over our coastlines and Alaskan wilderness to Big Oil; something they have sought for decades. The hostage-taking aspect of this scenario (we're going to raise your gas prices to the point of recession unless you hand over the leases) is lost on many cable TV pundits, but not on those of us who have been in the business of reporting crime...
Meanwhile, the new right wing talking point: gas prices are high because the Democrats won't let the oil companies drill here at home, has taken hold across the wingerweb, (though even Michelle Malkin has noted Johnny Mac's flip-floppery) and within the McFlip campaign itself, so much so that he has converted former opponents among Florida's elected Republicans, at least one of whom apparently hopes to be paid for his apostasy in vice presidential chits...
So if the righties are right, how do they explain the fact that not since the Teapot Dome scandals of the early 20th century has the federal government opened so much American land to an oil industry that accepts billions of dollars in federal subsidies, but refuses to drill on that land? Check this out: According to a study by the Environmental Working Group a couple of years ago...
The federal government has offered 229 million acres of public and private land in 12 western states for oil and gas drilling, an area greater than the combined size of Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona, according to an EWG analysis of land use records maintained by the federal government from 1982 to the present. This acreage represents the sum of total land actively leased in 1982 and land newly offered from 1982 through 2004.
Despite access to more than 200 million acres of public land over the past 15 years (1989-2003), the oil and gas industry has produced enough energy from this land to satisfy only 53 days of U.S. oil consumption and 221 days of natural gas consumption, according to EWG's analysis of well-by-well oil and gas production records obtained August 16 2004 via a Freedom of Information Act Request. This rate of production amounts to an average of 3.6 days per year of oil and 14.8 days per year of natural gas (MMS 2004, EIA Petroleum Review 2004, EIA Natural Gas Review 2004).
As these small production figures suggest, drilling on federal lands in the West has done nothing to reduce our dependence on foreign energy. In fact, since 1982, our dependence on foreign oil has doubled and our dependence on foreign natural gas has tripled (EIA Petroleum Review 2004, EIA Natural Gas Review 2004). A recent government estimate found that the five most oil- and gas-rich basins in the western U.S. contain about a 280-day supply of oil and an 8-year supply of natural gas at current rates of consumption -- an analysis that likely overstates the amount of energy that is economically available (Energy Inventory 2003).
Despite the relatively small amounts of energy in the West, the Bush administration has removed barriers to drilling on a net 45 million acres in 12 western states and has lifted environmental protections and emphasized drilling on lands already open to oil and gas development.
Again, we're talking about 229 MILLION acres leased to the oil companies since the Reagan administration. And how much of that land has the present Bush administration made available? 65 million acres, including more than 5 million acres located in national parks:
Bush Administration Removes Protections From 45 Million Acres in 12 Western States
Note: Numbers in green represent acres protected. Numbers in (red) inside parentheses represent land where protections against oil and gas drilling were removed.
This table lists major federal designations through which land potentially open to oil and gas was protected from drilling and land previously closed to oil and gas was opened to potential drilling during the past two administrations. A small portion of the land listed as protected in 1993-2000 was previously protected under other administrations.
And yet, the oil companies are producing almost nothing on that land. And when they do drill, they create more methane-rich, undrinkable, contaminated water than either oil or natural gas.
So what are the oil companies doing, if not drilling for oil? Well one thing they're not doing is building refineries. While the Saudis and the Dutch are putting up new refineries in Texas, our domestic companies all but refuse to do so, even as they go to their friends in Washington and blame insufficient refinery capacity for their giant profits ... I mean ... our high gas prices. The oil industry's lackeys on the Hill even push for legislation that allows Big Oil to build refineries only if they have a guarantee of never being sued for any environmental damage they might cause. Even with the help of their Republican friends, U.S. oil companies have broken ground on exactly one oil refinery in 30 years. Not that they need them. American oil companies today exist to reap record profits from speculation-driven, overpriced oil from foreign countries, and they have zero incentive to pump more oil at home.
Why? Just to be fair and balanced, let's go to the right for the answer, specifically, the CATO Institute:
The case for oil subsidies is laughably thin. Proponents argue that the more you subsidize oil production, the more oil you'll get, and that, after all, is a good thing for consumers when gasoline prices are around $2.25 a gallon. Unfortunately, there's simply not enough unexploited oil in the United States that might be exploited as a consequence of those subsidies to greatly affect world crude oil prices. Tufts economist Gilbert Metcalf, for instance, demonstrates that even if domestic production subsidies were worth 10 percent of the current price of oil (and they are worth no more than about 3 percent today), the increased production that might result would only reduce oil prices by 0.4 percent. Even if reducing foreign oil dependence is the main objective, Metcalf shows that domestic production would only increase by a trivial 0.2 percent were domestic subsidies to increase threefold-above current levels.
Some on the Right, of course, would argue that any taxation of corporate activity is counterproductive in that it unfairly taxes earnings twice (once when booked by corporate accountants and then again when those earnings are disbursed to stockholders). From this perspective, tax breaks simply allow companies to keep what is best left to them in the first place and should not be thought of as a subsidy. A variation of this argument holds that the less government takes in the better, so all tax breaks (and tax cuts, for that matter) are worth embracing.
While there is something to be said for both arguments, they ignore the fact that targeted tax breaks and preferences distort the economy by making some investments artificially more attractive than others. The end result is that some sectors are starved of funds while other sectors are awash with more money than they can efficiently use...
But apparently, not more than they can possibly covet.
Charlie Crist with John McCain. ... Oh, what a man wouldn't do to be v.p. ...
First, John McCain reverses his decades-old stance on off-shore oil drilling, to cater to the Fox News set. Now, it's Sideshow Mel's turn, just days after his rebuke of Dick Cheney and George Will's Chinese-Cuban oil derrick fantasy. Meet the new Mel (courtesy of the Miami Herald's Naked Politics blog):
Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, once "joined at the hip" with Sen. Bill Nelson when it comes to opposing offshore oil drilling, told reporters at the Capitol today he's inclined to support John McCain's bid to lift the decades-old coastline drilling ban.
He said that if McCain's plan embraces the 2006 compromise that he and Nelson struck -- giving Florida a 125-mile buffer -- "the rest of it is something I can probably live with...I think it's about providing enough resources where the states want to do it and permit it."
Of course, Melly Mel isn't alone in showing off his version of the Florida flip: Miss Charlie, you're up!
TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Charlie Crist dropped his long-standing support for the federal government's moratorium on offshore drilling Tuesday and endorsed Sen. John McCain's proposal to let states decide for themselves.
The governor said he reversed his position because of rising fuel prices and states rights.
"I mean, let's face it, the price of gas has gone through the roof, and Florida families are suffering," Crist said. "And my heart bleeds for them."
Yes, I can see it bleeding through your perfectly pressed shirt ... I wonder why Crist the Rock has suddenly become Crist the oil man...
Crist is considered a possible running mate for McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee.
Ah, it all starts making sense. Well, I still have my memories...
Just last year Crist had urged federal lawmakers to reject legislation, which they did, that would have allowed drilling as close as 45 miles off Florida's beaches. He also supported the moratorium during his 2006 campaign for governor.
Most Florida politicians historically have opposed drilling because they fear it would harm the state's beaches that are so vital to its tourism economy.
They also have been worried drilling would interfere with weapons testing and training in and over the Gulf of Mexico by Florida military bases.
And all of this has the Florida Democratic Party breaking out your father's old scold book:
Democrats also argued additional offshore drilling would not affect prices set on the world market.
"It would only increase oil companies' record-breaking profits," said Florida Democratic Party spokesman Mark Bubriski.
He compared Crist's reversal to his recent proposal for a temporary reduction of Florida gasoline taxes after McCain made a similar proposal at the national level. Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, criticized it as a campaign gimmick.
"If John McCain jumps off a cliff, will Charlie Crist jump, too?" Bubriski said.
Silly Mark, of COURSE he would ... now ... McCain's just a Senator. But if Mac were to get into the White House, Miss Charlie not only would refrain from jumping after McCain, he'd immediately start planning the state funeral down to the last flamingo-shaped napkin and get his decorator to the West Wing faster than you can say "George Takei!"
How out of touch is John McCain? Apparently, out of touch enough to throw Florida under the bus in order to pander to voters in red states he's likely to win anyway. Because John, the voters you're pandering to ... the wingers who want to drill up, dig up, and strip mine every inch of arable land that doesn't have a depreciating home or a strip mall on it? Those wackos who don't get that America's oil fields are mostly tapped out, that the U.S. has one-tenth the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia, one-fourth that of Venezuela and third that of Russia, and who want to turn the entire coastal plain into a scene out of "There Will be Blood" for a few more drops in the tank? They live in places like Alabama, Indiana, West Virginia ... you know, red states. The wingers who DO live in blue states are so overwhelmed numerically by Democrats, they don't matter. And the ones in swing states like Pennsylvania and Ohio? Have you taken a look at the voter registration numbers from the primary? They're going to get overwhelmed in November, too, by suburban moderates and urban hardcore Dems who care about the environment and don't cotton to ideas like ... say ... major tax breaks for the oil companies ... you know, stuff you like.
Meanwhile, McCain must think that a four point lead in Florida in a Quinnipiac poll from May translates into a lock on the state in November. That's the only conceivable reason he would do something as politically suicidal for his prospects in Florida as this:
Sen. John McCain called yesterday for an end to the federal ban on offshore oil drilling, offering an aggressive response to high gasoline prices and immediately drawing the ire of environmental groups that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has courted for months.
The move is aimed at easing voter anger over rising energy prices by freeing states to open vast stretches of the country's coastline to oil exploration. In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, nearly 80 percent said soaring prices at the pump are causing them financial hardship, the highest in surveys this decade.
"We must embark on a national mission to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil," McCain told reporters yesterday. In a speech today, he plans to add that "we have untapped oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. . . . It is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions."
McCain's announcement is a reversal of the position he took in his 2000 presidential campaign and a break with environmental activists, even as he attempts to win the support of independents and moderate Democrats. Since becoming the presumptive GOP nominee in March, McCain has presented himself as a friend of the environment by touting his plans to combat global warming and his opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and in the Everglades.
A reversal...? From John McCain??? Say it isn't so!
Representatives of several environmental groups criticized him for backing an idea they said would endanger the nation's most environmentally sensitive waters.
"It's disappointing that Senator McCain is clinging to the failed energy policies of the past," said Tiernan Sittenfeld, legislative director for the League of Conservation Voters.
Sierra Club political director Cathy Duvall said McCain "is using the environment as a way to portray himself as being different from George Bush. But the reality is that he isn't." The group began running radio commercials yesterday that criticize McCain's environmental record in the battleground state of Ohio.
Democratic Sen. Barack Obama joined the criticism, calling the idea of lifting the ban the wrong answer to out-of-control energy prices. "John McCain's plan to simply drill our way out of our energy crisis is the same misguided approach backed by President Bush that has failed our families for too long and only serves to benefit the big oil companies," Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said.
Interestingly enough, McCain continues to oppose drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), a view that allows his to continue pissing off right wingers in his party while his goal of trashing California and Florida helps him to kiss off moderates and independents, too. I think they call it "symmetry..."
McCain's speech today comes just after the candidate's Florida ally, Melly Mel Martinez smacked down Vice Lord Dick Cheney on the Senate floor over the issue of ... wait for it ... drilling off the coast of Florida:
Florida's Mel Martinez took to the Senate floor today to refute Republican assertions that China is drilling off the coast of Cuba.
"Reports to the contrary are simply false," Martinez said. "They are akin to urban legends. China drilling off the coast of Cuba only 60 miles from the Keys, that is not taking place..."
Republicans have pushed the "someone is drilling 60 miles off the Florida coast" for 2 years to back up efforts to open the coastline up to drilling. But experts familiar with the situation say there's no proof.
That's not stopping the story from making the rounds: speaking at the US Chamber of Commerce vice president Dick Cheney today quoted columnist George Will as saying "oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida..."
The spat illustrates the potential minefield McCain is laying for himself on the issue of offshore drilling. No matter what his campaign says, McCain has no shot of winning California (where much of the Naval Petroleum Reserve is located, and mostly now in private hands following a Clinton-era privatization push, but largely undeveloped because at least in parts of California, there are houses and apartment buildings on the land...) But Florida IS in play, and picking a fight with Charlie Crist and Mel Martinez isn't exactly smart politics in a state with 22 percent independent voter registration.
LONDON (AP) -- BP PLC and Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's two biggest oil producers, posted forecast-busting first-quarter earnings on Tuesday thanks to record crude oil prices that are expected to bolster profits across the industry. The combined profits of $17 billion reignited calls for a windfall tax on oil profits as consumers struggle to pay for food and fuel.
... BP posted a 63 percent surge in first-quarter net profit to $7.6 billion (4.9 billion euros), while Shell reported a 25 percent rise, to a record $9.08 billion (5.81 billion euros).
Revenue at BP jumped 44 percent to $89.2 billion (57.1 billion euros), while sales at Shell soared 55 percent to $114 billion (72.95 billion euros).
Last week ConocoPhillips reported a 16 percent rise in net income to $4.14 billion. Like BP and Shell, the third biggest U.S. producer far outpaced industry expectations. More big profits are expected from the biggest two U.S. companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp., when they report first-quarter earnings later this week.
Crude oil hit $111.80 per barrel during the quarter, while gas jumped an average of 22 percent. Crude has pushed even higher since, reaching a record $119.93 per-barrel this week.
BP shares jumped 5.7 percent to 611.5 pence ($12.06, while Shell rose 5.2 percent to 26.03 euros ($40.51).
The WaPo posts an article by energy writer Steven Mufson that takes a fresh look at whether the Iraq war, whose fifth anniversary is approaching, was waged primarily to secure U.S. access to oil:
Instead of making Iraq an open economy fueled by a thriving oil sector, the war has failed to boost the flow of oil from Iraq's giant well-mapped reservoirs, which oil experts say could rival Saudi Arabia's and produce 6 million barrels a day, if not more. Thanks to insurgents' sabotage of pipelines and pumping stations, and foreign companies' fears about safety and contract risks in Iraq, the country is still struggling in vain to raise oil output to its prewar levels of about 2.5 million barrels a day.
As it turns out, that has kept oil off the international market at just the moment when the world desperately needs a cushion of supplies to keep prices down. Demand from China is booming, and political strife has limited oil production in Nigeria and Venezuela.
In the absence of Iraqi supplies, prices have soared three-and-a-half-fold since the U.S. invasion on March 20, 2003. (Last week, they shattered all previous records, even after adjusting for inflation.) The profits of the five biggest Western oil companies have jumped from $40 billion to $121 billion over the same period. While the United States has rid itself of Saddam Hussein and whatever threat he might have posed, oil revenues have filled the treasuries of petro-autocrats in Iran, Venezuela and Russia, emboldening those regimes and complicating U.S. diplomacy in new ways.
American consumers are paying for this turmoil at the pump. If the overthrow of Hussein was supposed to be a silver bullet for the American consumer, it turned out to be one that ricocheted and tore a hole through his wallet.
"If we went to war for oil, we did it as clumsily as anyone could do. And we spent more on the war than we could ever conceivably have gotten out of Iraq's oil fields even if we had particular control over them," says Anthony Cordesman, an expert on U.S. strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies who rejects the idea that the war was designed on behalf of oil companies.
But that doesn't mean that oil had nothing to do with the invasion. Says Cordesman: "To say that we would have taken the same steps against a dictator in Africa or Burma as we took in Iraq is to ignore the strategic realities that drove American behavior."
Dick Cheney continues his campaign of using the American military to oust his former business partners. First it was Iraq, where Halliburton continues to make a ton of profits, even without his and Don Rumsfeld's buddy Saddam. Next, there's increasing talk that Cheney is looking for ways to get around Condi Rice, and even George W. Bush, so that he can attack Iran, another frequent Halliburton business partner.
... The person in the Bush administration who most wants a hot conflict with Iran is Vice President Cheney. The person in Iran who most wants a conflict is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force would be big winners in a conflict as well -- as the political support that both have inside Iran has been flagging.
Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.
This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.
The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).
This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war. ...
Cheney is insane. Or maybe not.
His oil holdings stand to substantially benefit from another war, and he and his cronies have to fear that if Republican support seriously erodes in September, the major oil companies and oil exploitation firms like Halliburton stand to lose substantial income should the war draw down, Iraq's insurgency cools without the pressure of U.S. occupation, and gas prices begin to fall. So what to do? Start another war, take Iran's oil off market (or seriously reduce the output of the world's fourth largest oil exporter, and watch the profits from sky-high gas prices roll in. Cheney & Co. also have to realize that with Democrats in control of both houses of Congress, investigations into current gouging could force Big Oil to bring the prices down.
So what to do? Start another war.
War is the answer to the Oil Industrial Complexes dreams of unlimited profits. They saw what the defense industry was able to make of the wars from Korea onward, and what industrial America was able to reap from World War II. They want their piece of the pie, and they're not going to let anybody stop them. Not even George W. Bush.
Clemons' conclusion is chilling:
The zinger of this information is the admission by this Cheney aide that Cheney himself is frustrated with President Bush and believes, much like Richard Perle, that Bush is making a disastrous mistake by aligning himself with the policy course that Condoleezza Rice, Bob Gates, Michael Hayden and McConnell have sculpted.
According to this official, Cheney believes that Bush can not be counted on to make the "right decision" when it comes to dealing with Iran and thus Cheney believes that he must tie the President's hands.
On Tuesday evening, i spoke with a former top national intelligence official in this Bush administration who told me that what I was investigating and planned to report on regarding Cheney and the commentary of his aide was "potentially criminal insubordination" against the President. I don't believe that the White House would take official action against Cheney for this agenda-mongering around Washington -- but I do believe that the White House must either shut Cheney and his team down and give them all garden view offices so that they can spend their days staring out their windows with not much to do or expect some to begin to think that Bush has no control over his Vice President.
Update: Did you hear the one about the undersecretary of defense who made up a fake company in the Netherlands in order to justify going to war with Iraq?
