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Recent
Stories
July
30, 2003
David
Lindorff
Poindexter the Terror Bookie
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
July
29, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
"Journalist Spotted! Journalist
Dead!" Guatemala Bleeds; US Press Yawns
Thomas
J. Nagy
The Belligerent Dr. Pipes
Kurt Nimmo
Tom Delay Goes to Jerusalem
Chris
Floyd
Dead Reckoning: Bush Warriors Sign Off on War Crimes
Robert
Fisk
Another Botched Raid; Another Massacre
Jason Leopold
Did Chalabi Help Write Bush's State of the Union Address?
Conn Hallinan
Food Bully: Bush's Biotech Shock and Awe Campaign
Dan
Bacher
Sacramento's War on Free Speech
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July 26 / 27, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Stop the Wall!
July
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses...Again
Robert
Fisk
The Ugly Story of Camp Cropper: The
US Torture Camp in Iraq
David
Lindorff
Dumb and Dumber in Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Ashcroft Demands Death Penalty in
Puerto Rico
David
Vest
Dylan in Bend
Tom Turnipseed
Killing Saddam & His Family Won't Stop Killing of US Troops
Douglas
Valentine
A Nation of Assassins
Stew Albert
Contract Killing
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Report on Palestinian Child Prisoners
July
23, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Caesar's Favor
David
Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft
Rebuked
Mano
Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists
Steve
Perry
Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies
John Stanton
Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope?
Patrick
Bond
Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission
Harry Browne
A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman
Paul
Beaulieu
When the WTO Comes to Montreal
Robert
Fisk
The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance
Will Grow
William
Witherup
Georgie Porgie
Website
of the Day
Lieberman & Falwell:
True Love at Last
July
22, 2003
Diane
Christian
Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces;
Peace Frees
Jeremy
Brecher
Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran
Steve
Kretzmann
and Jim Vallette
Plugging Iraq into Globalization
Sam
Smith
Greening the Golden Triangle
James
Plummer
Smile, You're on Federal Camera
Lucretia
Stewart
This Day Shall Not Define My Life:
January 18, 2003
Website
of the Day
Iraq Coalition Casualties
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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July
30, 2003
Why
Iraq and Afghanistan?
Cheney
Tells All: It's About the Oil
By MARJORIE COHN
Now that the rationale provided by Bush &
Co. for attacking Iraq is unraveling, it's time to ask what the
true motivation was for the rush to war. Many dismissed the signs
of antiwar protestors, which read "No blood for oil."
But if we connect the oily fingerprints, beginning with Vice
President Dick Cheney's, it appears those protestors were right.
Cheney's energy task force, in a May
2001 report, called on the White House to make "energy security
a priority of our trade and foreign policy" and encourage
Persian Gulf countries to welcome foreign investment in their
energy sectors. In August 2002, Cheney warned a meeting of veterans
that Saddam Hussein could seek to dominate the Middle East's
vast energy supplies, and said "there is no doubt that Saddam
Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction."
Before the invasion of Iraq, Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sought to decouple oil access from
regime change in Iraq, which, he said, had "nothing to do
with oil, literally nothing to do with oil." Rumsfeld, Bush,
Secretary of State Colin Powell, and National Security Advisor
Condoleezza Rice all invoked Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
and his ties to Al Qaeda, neither of which has materialized to
date, as imminent threats to the security of the United States.
Three days before the attack on Iraq, Cheney said, "we believe
he [Hussein] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."
That claim, and Bush's Niger uranium statement in his State of
the Union address, were bogus.
When U.S.-U.K. forces took control of
Iraq, their first order of business was to secure the oil fields,
instead of the hospitals and antiquities museums. Meanwhile,
Kellogg Brown & Root was awarded a controversial $7 billion
no-bid contract to rebuild Iraq's oil fields. KBR is a subsidiary
of Halliburton, the world's largest oil services company, formerly
headed by Cheney before he was tapped for vice president. In
a 1998 speech to the "Collateral Damage Conference"
of the Cato Institute, Cheney said, "the good Lord didn't
see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically
elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we
have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would
not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is."
The business is in Iraq. Since April
2001, the public interest group Judicial Watch has sought public
access to the proceedings of Cheney's energy task force meetings,
under the Freedom of Information Act. Yet Cheney has fought tenaciously
to keep them secret. On July 17, however, Judicial Watch secured
some of the documents from the task force, which contain the
smoking gun: "a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries
and terminals, as well as 2 charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas
projects" and "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts."
The documents are dated March 2001, two years before Bush invaded
Iraq.
The Bush administration's October 2001
bombing of Afghanistan, although justified as a response to the
September 11 attacks, was also part of U.S. oil strategy. Afghanistan
never attacked the U.S. Yet, the U.S. and U.K. ousted the Taliban
and secured Afghanistan for the construction of an oil pipeline
from Turkmenistan, south through Afghanistan, to the Arabian
Sea. Bush had been uncritical of the Taliban's human rights record
when Unocal oil company was negotiating for the pipeline rights
before September 11. After assuming control of Afghanistan, Bush
conveniently installed Hamid Karzai, a former Unocal official,
as interim president of Afghanistan. "Operation Enduring
Freedom" will allow oil corporations freedom to exploit
Afghanistan for profit, while the Afghans continue to live in
squalor.
Likewise, "Operation Iraqi Freedom"
has enabled U.S. corporations to exploit Iraq's oil, while thousands
of Iraqis continue to die, lose their jobs, and live without
electricity. American soldiers are still dying while U.S. taxpayers
foot the $3.9 billion monthly bill. Oil has proven to be the
most terrible weapon of mass destruction.
Marjorie Cohn,
a professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego,
is executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild. She
can be reached at: cohn@counterpunch.org
Weekend Edition Features for July 26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
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