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By Elton Beard There are two kinds of people in the world, those who divide people into two kinds and those who don't. I don't. |
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| ARCHIVE | ARCHIVE | ARCHIVE |
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Q Ari, what is the President's response to those at home and abroad who have the perception that he wants to take Iraq's oil fields? And I have a follow-up.MR. FLEISCHER: Well, there's just nothing to it.
Q Nothing to it?
MR. FLEISCHER: No. I think the fact of the matter is -- go ahead, Helen.
Q Would he renounce any control of oil if we are victorious in Iraq, if he ever invades?
MR. FLEISCHER: The only interest the United States has in the region is furthering the cause of peace and stability. And what has brought the region to the point where the United Nations is making decisions about what the appropriate means are to enforce Saddam Hussein to comply with U.N. resolutions is his defiance of U.N. resolutions, not his country's ability to generate oil.
Q So you would never take over the oil fields, and they're not coveted by our country?
MR. FLEISCHER: The purpose of any plan the United States has is to make certain that Saddam Hussein complies with all U.N. resolutions.
[...]
Q But you acknowledge, don't you, that this is a widespread perception that we want the oil?
MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, if the issue was the United States wanted the oil, then why not lift the sanctions? Iraq is limited in the amount of oil that it can deliver as a result of the sanctions that the United States supports that are imposed on Iraq under the oil for food program. So I totally dismiss that.
Q Yes, but if we got control of it all, we could divvy it up.
MR. FLEISCHER: That's not the way America works.
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The chief executive of BP, Lord Browne, has warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of any future war.Lord Browne must have been reading his Oil and Gas International:[...]
Lord Browne's comments serve to underline concern that the US is primarily concerned with seizing control of Saddam Hussein's oil and handing it over to companies such as ExxonMobil rather than destroying his weapons of mass destruction.
The Bush administration wants to have a working group of 12 to 20 people focused on Iraqi oil and gas to be able to recommend to an interim government ways of restoring the petroleum sector following a military attack in order to increase oil exports to partially pay for a possible US military occupation government - further fueling the view that controlling Iraqi oil is at the heart of the Bush campaign to replace Hussein with a more compliant regime.Is the Bush/Cheney administration after Iraq's oil fields? Petroleum industry players are "concerned" (albeit mostly about getting a share of the spoils), and this is their area of expertise. Yet when asked about the widespread perception that control of the oil fields is a significant motivator for the proposed American invasion of Iraq, the White House spokesman dismissively tells us that there's just nothing to it. He says that's not the way America works. He assures us that the only interest the United States has in the region is furthering the cause of peace and stability.
So if, in the process of enforcing compliance with U.N. resolutions, we somehow get stuck with those pesky oil fields - Fleischer won't speculate on whether or not that could happen - well, so be it. A country's got to do what a country's got to do. This administration will bear any burden, pay any price to further the cause of peace and stability.
That's why the world has become so much more peaceful and stable since
Bush took office.
| Thursday, October 31, 2002 |
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That having been said, I could be wrong. And besides, there are
obviously many who favor the war, some of whom are even more
powerful than bloggers, and with insufficient opposition they could still
have their way. So I welcome and applaud
Stand Down,
the new politically agnostic site created by Max Sawicky of
MaxSpeak
and dedicated to opposing the proposed war.
It's a cooperative effort and already, at two days old, a terrific read.
May its influence wax and wax.
| Wednesday, October 30, 2002 |
Media Availability. A top-secret Department of Defense study has determined that press conferences have been draining the valuable time of high-level government officials, whose primary duties are to devise and execute war plans against Axis of Evil charter members Iraq, Iran, North Korea and the Democratic Party.
In a double-secret-probation session, Congress has taken action to address this problem by passing the Official Simulation Act of 2002. This act creates the Dept. of Official Simulation (DoOS), tasked with minimizing time wasted on media availability by certain U.S. Government officials who have been designated as essential to national security.
DoOS will make available for press conferences and interviews simulated officials virtually identical to the originals with regard to talking points, lucidity and veracity.
A crack DoOS team of FORTRAN programmers, on loan from DoD, is racing to generate a preliminary release of the Official Simulation program by early 2005.
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As a public service, the crack-free Busy, Busy, Busy team has spent a whole afternoon coding up our own private-sector version of the program. Now, you too can have a press conference with Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Condoleezza Rice, Don Rumsfeld or Paul Wolfowitz, just like the major media.
As noted media analyst Bob Somerby often says, you know what
to do. Be the media: interview a government official of your choice with the
unofficial Official Simulator.
It's virtually indistinguishable from the real thing.
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Busy, busy, busy. What bokononists whisper whenever they think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is. |
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