Oil. Black Gold. Texas Tea.
Though every thinking person suspects it, it seems that the only ones talking about it openly are those of us who have been suspicious of the rationale(s) for this war from the beginning. Big Oil and Halliburton feed on chaos and instability and today, thanks to the Bush Administration, their bellies are fit to bust. Gas prices are now so high that some people, especially in rural areas, cannot afford to leave their homes. The instability from the three-year train-wreck that is Iraq and Bush's clumsy saber rattling against Iran and Venezuela are some of the main reasons for today's punishing oil prices (The riots in Nigeria are also a factor so you can't blame absolutely everything on our incompetent commander-in-chief.)
This is the perfect issue for mainstream Democrats to raise as a club with which to drive the Republicans into the sea. Every time any Democrat mentions the President or Vice President they need to preface their names with "oilman." Every time voters fill up at the pumps they need to be reminded to curse oilmen Bush, Cheney and their buddy, outgoing Exxon CEO Lee Raymond who raked in $144,573 a day. The evidence that this war was planned from the very beginning as a long-term grab at Middle Eastern oil is inescapable and ever mounting. (And I'm not just talking about what's going on on Fox's24.)
** It is now well-documented historical fact that the Bush administration was intent on invading Iraq well before 9/11.
**Greg Palast has uncovered a State Department, Treasury and Pentagon report on privatizing Iraqi oil. Read it here. In Palast's interview with Paul Bremer's predecessor in Iraq, General Jay Garner, we learn that General Garner had planned to quickly turn over the country to Iraqi rule. But, according to Palast
"Garner knew, a freely chosen coalition government would mean the death-knell for the neo-con oil-and-assets privatization grab. On April 21, 2003, three years ago this month, the very night General Garner arrived in Baghdad, he got a call from Washington. It was Rumsfeld on the line. He told Garner, in so many words, 'Don't unpack, Jack, you're fired.'"
**As I've written here several times, we are currently slashing budgets for reconstructing everything in Iraq to zero -- except for training an army and the oil sector.
**Halliburton. They got paid to build the wells before the war, paid during the war to feed the troops, then paid again to re-build the wells.
**The American embassy in Baghdad will be larger than the U.N.'s headquarters in New York, about the size of the Vatican and by far our biggest in the world. And we're busily constructing fourteen permanent military bases.
When anti-war activists shout, "No Blood for Oil" they are routinely dismissed by the MSM as a lunatic fringe. It is time for the vast majority of Americans who are against this war to stand up and shout that it's not worth it. Just because it's good for Exxon doesn't mean that it's good for us.
