Cheney Admits: No IRAQ/9-11 Link

jlew24asu wrote:

you dont stay in business for almost 100 years and employ over 50,000 people if you are bad at what you do.

jlew24asu wrote:

polaris_x wrote:

jlew24asu wrote:

you dont stay in business for almost 100 years and employ over 50,000 people if you are bad at what you do.

uhhh ... maybe if you had powerful people giving you no-bid contracts has something to do with it? ...

do you really know nothing about this company? they do far more then work in Iraq.....and have been around alot longer then bush or cheney.

dasvidana wrote:

I suggest reading "Armed Madhouse" by Greg Palast. He outlines (with documentation) how there were really two factions (Dept of Defense vs. State Dept) within the Bush administration who had contrasting reasons for warring with Iraq. Both wanted war but for slightly different reasons. One (DOS) wanted access to the Iraqi oil for cheap (e.g. keep it cheap for the US by having diplomatic relations which wasn't happening under Sadam) vs. privatizing Iraqi oil (DOD) (which also wasn't happening under Sadam) thereby letting US & British oil companies own the rights to it in order to make a sweet profit here in the US & in Britain. Clearly, neither have anything to do with WMD or threats to national security as the administration posited.

I think Armed Madhouse should be required reading for anyone who questions why we're in Iraq. By the way, Palast's other book, Best Democracy Money Can Buy, is also a good read.

AMY GOODMAN: There certainly is. And right now, Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, who you recently met with and interviewed and we broadcast on Democracy Now!, was in Vienna, offering to the poor of Europe cheap oil. Of course, the deaths continue in Iraq, both U.S. soldiers and Iraqis. We have the spy scandal that is unfolding here in the United States. Link them.

GREG PALAST: Yeah, that’s why I wrote a book, because it does link the whole thing together. I mean, I just got back from meeting with Chavez, as you know, and you showed our interview a few weeks ago. He’s offered the U.S. $50-a-barrel oil. That’s a third off of what we’re paying right now. Now, you would think our president would be down in Caracas kissing Hugo Chavez’s behind and saying, “Thank you, thank you for dropping the price of oil by a third, and let’s make a deal,” because Chavez wants a deal.

But he’s not doing that, our president, even though the high prices are costing about a million jobs right now. And the reason he’s not is that what Chavez will not do is that Chavez will not return the money. It’s not about petroleum, it’s about petrodollars, as I explain in the book. In other words, when George Bush rides around King Abdullah in his little golf cart on the Crawford ranch, he’s not trying to get Abdullah’s oil. Abdullah can’t drink the stuff. He’s got to sell it to us and Japan. But Abdullah takes the money back from the—when you fill up your SUV, you give your money to Saudi Arabia, the big oil companies, Saudi Arabia. But then he returns it the form of petrodollars, and that is what is funding George Bush’s mad spending spree.

We have a president who has racked up $2 trillion in extra debt, you know, stone sober, apparently. And someone’s got to pay for that. And basically we’re paying for it by effectively an oil tax, which is returned to us, because the Gulf states and our other trading partners are now buying up $2 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds and debt. So, in other words, they’re recycling the money back and paying for George Bush’s spending spree on ending inheritance taxes, you know, several wars, etc.

Now, Hugo Chavez says, “I’ll give you cheap oil, not only to the poor, but to everyone. But I’m not giving you back the money. That money is going to stay in Latin America to build our nations.” And he just withdrew $20 billion out of the U.S. Federal Reserve. You have to understand, this is a punch in the face of the U.S. administration, far more than withholding oil, withholding and withdrawing petrodollars, as I explain in the book, and that’s why you have that little nice floater from—balloon thrown out by Reverend Robertson, Pat Robertson, saying “Hugo Chavez thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, and I think we ought to just go and do it,” because they have got to get that—it’s not that they need that oil, they need that oil money. And if they can’t get it, they have to eliminate Hugo Chavez.

AMY GOODMAN: Is the war in Iraq a war for oil?

GREG PALAST: Is the war in Iraq for oil? Yes, it’s about the oil, but not for the oil. In my investigations for Armed Madhouse, I ended up with a story far more fascinating and difficult than I imagined. We didn’t go in to grab the oil. Just the opposite. We went in to control the oil and make sure we didn’t get it. It goes back to 1920, when the oil companies sat in a room in Brussels in a hotel room, drew a red line around Iraq and said, “There’ll be no oil coming out of that nation.” They have to suppress oil coming out of Iraq. Otherwise, the price of oil will collapse, and OPEC and Saudi Arabia will collapse.

And so, what I found, what I discovered that they’re very unhappy about is a 323-page plan, which was written by big oil, which is the secret but official plan of the United States for Iraq’s oil, written by the big oil companies out of the James Baker Institute in coordination with a secret committee of the Council on Foreign Relations. I know it sounds very conspiratorial, but this is exactly how they do it. It’s quite wild. And it’s all about a plan to control Iraq’s oil and make sure that Iraq has a system, which, quote, “enhances its relationship with OPEC.” In other words, the whole idea is to maintain the power of OPEC, which means maintain the power of Saudi Arabia.

And this is one of the reasons they absolutely hate Hugo Chavez. As you’ll see in next week’s Harper’s coming out, which is basically an excerpt from the book, Hugo Chavez on June 1st is going to ask OPEC to officially recognize that he has more oil than Saudi Arabia. This is a geopolitical earthquake. And the inside documents from the U.S. Department of Energy, which we have in the book and in Harper’s, say, yeah, he’s got more oil than Saudi Arabia.