Thursday 28th of March 2024

a new best pal .....

‘Nothing the Bush administration
ever does is about oil. It didn’t invade Iraq because that country might have
more oil than Saudi Arabia. It isn’t threatening Iran because Iran has a tenth
of the world’s oil and one-sixth of its natural gas. And the United States
isn’t cozying up to autocrats in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan because the Caspian
Sea is a mini-Persian Gulf in the middle of Central Asia, either. 

So it stands to reason, doesn’t
it, that Washington isn’t making a fuss over Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez because
that country is a major supplier of oil to the United States? And that it isn’t
making nice to Libya’s erratic Colonel Gadhafi because of oil, either? 

“This decision is not undertaken
because Libya has oil,” said David Welch, the U.S. assistant secretary of state
for Near East affairs, in announcing that the United States is restoring
diplomatic ties with Libya and removing that country from the
hard-to-get-off-of list of nations linked to terrorism. Nevertheless, expect U.S.
oil companies to flock into Libya.’ 

Oil
Diplomacy

Going according to "fail" plan.

From the New York Times

LAW AND DISORDER
Misjudgements Marred U.S. Plans for Iraqi Police

By MICHAEL MOSS and DAVID ROHDE
Published: May 21, 2006
As chaos swept Iraq after the American invasion in 2003, the Pentagon began its effort to rebuild the Iraqi police with a mere dozen advisers. Overmatched from the start, one was sent to train a 4,000-officer unit to guard power plants and other utilities. A second to advise 500 commanders in Baghdad. Another to organise a border patrol for the entire country.

Three years later, the police are a battered and dysfunctional force that has helped bring Iraq to the brink of civil war. Police units stand accused of operating death squads for powerful political groups or simple profit. Citizens, deeply distrustful of the force, are setting up their own neighbourhood security squads. Killings of police officers are rampant, with at least 547 slain this year, roughly as many as Iraqi and American soldiers combined, records show

read the rest at the New York Times

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Gus is not surprised since it is obvious the whole "liberation" and democratisation" of Iraq was concocted as for it to fail... Imagine you liberate the people and the whole country becomes a majority fundamentalist democracy, something which would have happened if the Americans held fair and square elections. Something Bush and his cronies did not want... So something had to be created to divide the country, something very subtle, something very sneaky... "over-stretching the US forces: in Iraq would lead to some fundamental breakdowns while minimising the growing upset of "overwhelming occupation"... Our Rummy Ducky was playing a very smart and fine game when he only ordered the invasion with minimal amount of troops... See the US has 2.26 million in its armed forces including "reserves" but Rummy Ducky sent "few" troops including reservists (some quite untrained for prison duty as we've seen) to Iraq... There are only 130.000 US troops in Iraq. So, as if it was planned in advance, the US "would not be able to contain insurgency" but manage it so it would hurt mostly Iraqi... In the mean time this would weaken the Iraqi ability to rule themselves under a fundamentalist government, thus the management of Iraq would be done via a washed down government under the thumb of the US, while the ethnic division would be overtly regretted but secretly encouraged to "enforce" the US to maintain a long presence in Iraq... Why so? because of the petrol despite what some Asian bushit academic (already mentioned on this site) would say..

the miracle of snake oil .....

‘Libya's "rehabilitation" as a country that has
renounced WMD and state-sponsored terrorism - for which it will soon be
rewarded with a real live American ambassador - provides an exquisite
illustration of how the Bush administration is replacing its "spreading
freedom" mantra with support for the "Global War on Terrorism. 

And Libya's role as an energy
source has made the administration's job much easier to sell. Its removal it
from the list of state sponsors of terror follows the return to Libyan
oilfields of the Oasis Group of US companies, according to a top Libyan oil
official. 

He said he was "positive and
confident" the former pariah state would be wiped from the list, with the
expected backing of the Oasis Group, comprising ConocoPhillips, Marathon and
Amerada Hess.’ 

Another Lipsticked Pig?

move over Todd & Brant …… next thing you know, Colonel
Gadhafi will be honoured with an invitation to the people’s “Great Hall”, just like
those other champions of freedom & democracy: President General Pervez Musharraf
of Pakistan, “aussie tony”, President Hu Jintao of China and, of course, the
great “bushit” himself ….. true rodents all.

new, improved libya .....