He's smart, he's capable, but he insists on splitting up Iraq. It's a plan he developed with Les Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations; Biden is a member. In fact, they're all members except Kucinich and Paul -- go figure eh? The CFR was pushing for war with Iraq, even co-developing one of the plans that was drawn up for post-Saddam occupation.
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 mar-
kets… 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.
Greg PalastHere's another Russian translated piece:
Recently, a recognizable tendency re-emerged within a part of the Russian political establishment: the US Democrats paving their way to power with the corpses of the US soldiers killed in Iraq are viewed with the same kind of hope as B. Clinton - «our friend Bill» - was viewed by Russian liberals with rather murky credentials in the 1990ies. Seeking exposure, folks from the political and business circles frequent Washington.
They seem to be full of good intentions as they try to make contact with the «reasonable» people likely to be in the future Democratic Administration. However, the problem is that, if you look at things closely, the concentration of the «reasonable» among the Dems is not higher than in the ranks of the Republicans. And even those who can be found are a lot more hawkish than Bush, Cheney, and Co.
This is particularly clear when it comes to world affairs. While disapproving of G. Bush's military escapade in Iraq, they are eager to make even more trouble. A notable example of the kind is the charismatic Barack Obama’s idea of shifting the priorities of the war on terrorism from Afghanistan to Pakistan and bombing entire regions of the country (which has been a nuclear power since 1998).
In the meantime, Senator Hillary Clinton suddenly got preoccupied with the Kosovo problem. She suggests finalizing the job started by her rather promiscuous husband in 1999, when, acting without a UN mandate, NATO attacked Yugoslavia and practically deprived Belgrade of any control over Kosovo. Now, H. Clinton proposes to perpetuate the result of the aggression and to recognize the independence of Kosovo: “In the event of Priština declaring independence, I will firmly urge the U.S. to recognize that country and I call on the EU to do likewise“. Commenting on the negotiations on the issue within the US-EU-Russia Troika, she said: “Bearing in mind that Russia is threatening to use its veto for any proposal brought before the Security Council, we must be ready to resolutely support the will of the vast majority of Kosovo people“.
It is no secret that the current US Administration also supports Kosovo's bid for independence. Nevertheless, neither Secretary of State C. Rice nor US President G. Bush (even during his visit to Albania) ever expressed the view that the unilaterally declared independence must be recognized with such «readiness».
LinkJon Edwards co-authored a report to the CFR called 'Russia's Wrong Direction'(
PDF). From
Mike Whitney:
John Edwards and Jack Kemp were appointed to lead a CFR task force which concocted the pretext for an all-out assault on the Putin. This is where the idea that Putin is "rolling back democracy" began. In their article "Russia's Wrong Direction", Edwards and Kemp state that a "strategic partnership" with Russia is no longer possible. They claim that the government has become increasingly authoritarian and that the society is growing less "open and pluralistic".
Kemp and Edwards provided the ideological foundation upon which the entire public relations campaign against Putin has been built. And it is quite an impressive campaign. A Google News search shows roughly 1,400 articles from the various news services on Putin. Virtually all of them contain exactly the same rhetoric, the same buzzwords, the same spurious claims, the same slanders. It is impossible to find even one article out of 1,400 that diverges the slightest bit from the talking points which originated at the Council on foreign Relations.
It's interesting to see to what extent the media has become a propaganda bullhorn for the national security state. Putin's personal approval ratings confirm his enormous popularity, and yet, the media continues to treat him like he's a tyrant. It is utterly incongruous.
In most articles, Putin is disparaged as "anti democratic"; a charge that is never leveled at the Saudi Royal family even though women are forbidden to drive, they must be fully-covered at all times, and can be stoned to death if they are found to be unfaithful. Also, in Saudi Arabia, beheading is still the punishment of choice for capital crimes.
When Saudi King Abdullah visits the US, he is not heaped with scorn for his regimes' repressive treatment of his people. Instead he's rewarded with flattering photos of he and George Bush strolling arm-n-arm through the Crawford sage.
Why is Putin blasted for "rolling back democracy" when American client, Mikhail Saakashvili, arbitrarily declares martial law and deploys his truncheon-wielding Robo-cops to beat protesters senseless before dragging them off to the Georgia gulag? The pictures of Saakashvili's bloody crackdown appeared in the foreign press, but not in the US. Rather, the media had all its cameras focused on Garry Kasparov (contributing editor to the Wall Street Journal and right-wing loony) as he was led off to the Moscow hoosegow in handcuffs for protesting without a permit.
Putin's real crime is that he serves Russia's national interests rather than the interests of global Capital.
Didn't think you were being polemical - I just felt the point isn't articulated often enough that the neo-cons are just an extreme manifestation of a deeper infestation that cuts across the party lines.
So yeah... I like Kucinich lol
Happy reading ! :)
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