More on the war for oil

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I’ve been engaged recently in a dispiriting debate with some friends about whether the war in Iraq had something to do with oil fields. It’s generally gone like this:

Me: Hey, here’s some new evidence on the web.

Them: The matter’s resolved, you lunatic. Stop buying into conspiracy theories.

The summary of my argument is that there’s a multibillion dollar honeypot in Iraq, the administration is run by former oilmen, and hey, maybe that has something to do with all this? Doesn’t strike me as farfetched, or evidence that I think the world’s being run by the extraterrestrial branch of the Trilateral Commission.

Anyway, news today that so far the reconstruction contracts are so tilted towards Halliburton that even insiders like Bechtel are complaining. Bechtel isn’t even bothering bidding.

Which is funny, because you’d think they’d be interested in getting a piece of the blanket immunity for anything they do related to Iraqi oil that GWB signed back in May.

Keeping us in the dark

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As I write this, I’m enjoying the benefits of electric power, unlike many people to the north.

A day like today exemplifies the limitations of using the Internet to get your news. Most of my usual news sites are running the same AP articles, so bouncing around isn’t getting me more details. Kudos to the Washington Post for running a sidebar on how power grids work; ironically, this is also on the AP feed, but the Post was the only site in my normal diet to run it.

And of course, the usual chorus of bloggers who provide facts-on-the-ground in such situations are reliant on electricity to do their job. So while on September 11th I was able to get lots of first-hand information that contradicted some of what I was hearing in the national media, today it’s traditional news or bust.

The parallels to 2001 are obvious, and it’s safe to say that my initial search for news was to determine my own guidelines for how far my disaster drill should go today. (I ended up limiting it to getting some cash in my pocket in case the ATM and plastic networks go down.) But what was frustrating—and probably expected—was just how short on information the day is from official sources.

Right now, we’re not sure why the power’s out. But we’re certain it’s not the work of terrorists. So everyone should just rest easy and drink lots of water.

Beyond that, nada. No word on why we’re certain it’s not the work of terrorists. No word on best guesses as to what’s going on. Rumors that this all started somewhere near the Canadian border, but not about why the blackout miraculously stopped somewhere in the Jersey Pine Barrens.

My biggest moment of concern came from this map on the CNN web site, which seemed to show that the outage was limited to major metropolitan centers. That’s not how power grids work—I knew that before I got to the AP article. An area map showing affected regions would have been a lot more useful, but CNN probably doesn’t have that information either. So far better to put up a misleading map that makes today look much more dangerous than it already is.

Two lessons seem to be drawable from today’s events, one good, one bad:

  1. Despite all of the misinformation and pseudonews about terrorist activity and color-coded levels of alert, most people seem able to act calmly and rationally in bad situations. Pat on the back for Americans.
  2. The officials in charge continue with their policy of providing unsupported assertions and generally keeping the public in the dark, which someday will override the impulses that are keeping us calm today. It’s in the absence of trusted information that rumors spread—one report from NYC today relayed a rumor that Los Angeles had gone dark. Those of us who follow terrorist activities know that an attack on the power grid is a likely target, but I don’t think this has gotten to the general public yet. On the other hand, given the hype on dirty bombs, I wouldn’t expect to see the Northeast so calm if the issue were some geiger counters that were ticking ominously.

So while today is a great opportunity for a wake-up to slumbering officials, I’m afraid that the power is still out on their alarm clocks.

If you loved Gulf War II, just wait for the sequel

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The subtext of the current controversy over the Niger forgeries is so obvious that it needs to be spelled out with much greater frequency.

Bushies and their apologists are trying to spin this as a tempest in a teapot. The real story here — and it’s profoundly missed by most people reporting it (and many people reading it) — is that this is evidence, if not ironclad proof, that the Bush administration was hellbent for war and that they weren’t going to let a little thing like the truth stop them.

That, I think, is more important than the question of whether or not the Bush adminstration is willing to lie to us about their policies, data, or basic physical laws. It amazes me that this is even under dispute. We knew this already.

No, what’s really important is whether we as Americans can cling to our tattered self-image as reluctant warriors, only engaging in “good wars”, and then only when dragged in by the sheer Hitlerian evil of our enemies. We don’t go to war merely to flex our military might. We certainly don’t go to war for partisan advantage. And we surely don’t go to war in order to annex the natural resources of other nations, such as, say, oil.

This last bit has the Bushsymps especially ostrich-like, as they ignore all evidence that shows that, well, we just overthrew a nation at least partially for mercenary reasons. Remember that Energy Task Force headed by Dick Cheney that everyone thought was stonewalling on keeping its records private because of their nefarious dealings with Enron? Turns out that it might be all that and Iraq too.

But the real question is when and where we’ll start rolling out the tanks again. There are damn few people, even among those on the side of GWB, who are entirely copacetic with the idea of heading on to Damascus, Tehran, or Pyongyang. In fact, their support of the war on Baghdad seems oddly hinged on the idea that this war was a one-off. You’d think Kabul would be fresh in their minds, but that was so 2001. So therefore it goes to reason that if our administration actually is secretly planning to hit a few more beaches, we should see some antiwar sentiment start to come from the moderates and even a few conservatives.

Which is why I was so struck by the juxtaposition of two news articles I read over the weekend. The first concerned John Bolton — who, as I’m sure we all recall, was called the “Armageddon nominee” by the Boston Globe when he was named as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security. Seems he was supposed to testify before Congress, but his appearance was delayed. The brouhaha, according to Warren Strobel at the Miami Herald:

In a new dispute over interpreting intelligence data, the CIA and other agencies objected vigorously to a Bush administration assessment of the threat of Syria’s weapons of mass destruction that was to be presented Tuesday on Capitol Hill. […] U.S. officials told Knight Ridder that Bolton was prepared to tell members of a House of Representatives International Relations subcommittee that Syria’s development of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons had progressed to such a point that they posed a threat to stability in the region.

The CIA and other intelligence agencies said that assessment was exaggerated.

Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve banged the war drums against Syria. Surely we’re not planning on invading anytime soon? For this, we turn to the reassuring words of Douglas Feith, undersecretary for defense policy — the #3 job at the Pentagon; and Lawrence Di Rita, special assistant to Don Rumsfeld, as quoted in the LA Times:

Looking back from the third floor of the Pentagon, Feith dismissed [criticism of postwar planning] as “simplistic.” Despite initial problems, he said, progress is being made, with order returning to most of the country and a new Iraqi governing council in place.

Still, he and other Pentagon officials said, they are studying the lessons of Iraq closely — to ensure that the next U.S. takeover of a foreign country goes more smoothly.

“We’re going to get better over time,” promised Lawrence Di Rita, a special assistant to Rumsfeld. “We’ve always thought of post-hostilities as a phase” distinct from combat, he said. “The future of war is that these things are going to be much more of a continuum.”

“This is the future for the world we’re in at the moment,” he said. “We’ll get better as we do it more often.”

Italics and boldface added, just so you wouldn’t miss what these two are saying here.

I have to admit, the one guy I feel sorry for at the moment is Scott McClellan, the new Ari Fleischer. Here he is, watching the press corps acting like lap dogs for his boss over the past two years, getting away with lines like the one pictured here (excerpted from a cartoon by Carol Lay). And now he’s stepping into the role just as the press is waking up to this fact, and looking for a little blood to mix into their newsprint.

I’ve cut down the following excerpt for brevity’s sake, but for a fuller picture of a man flopping about like a gutted trout on a hot sidewalk, check out the Talking Points Memo from whence it came:

QUESTION: Scott, you said it was “nonsense” to say that the White House was pressuring the CIA to put this in the speech. Is it nonsense to say —

Scott McClellan: I think the question that you asked about was that someone was insisting —

QUESTION: Durbin said, a White House official insisted —

Scott McClellan: — insisting that it be put in there in an effort to mislead the American people, I think is what —

QUESTION: You didn’t explicitly give a motive.

Scott McClellan: And I said I think that’s just nonsense. […]

QUESTION: I’m saying, does your “nonsense” statement apply to the idea that the White House wanted it in the speech and negotiated with the CIA on a way to get it in the speech?

Scott McClellan: I think that it still goes back to, these drafts go to the various agencies, it goes to the CIA, this is an intelligence matter. It was based on information in the National Intelligence Estimate. That’s the consensus document of the intelligence community, and that’s what the information was based on in that speech.

QUESTION: So what I asked you about in that speech, your “nonsense” statement —

Scott McClellan: I’m trying to walk you —

QUESTION: You’re trying to walk me out the door. (Laughter.)

Scott McClellan: I’m trying to walk you through this. […]

QUESTION: Scott, on Keith’s question, why can’t we just expect, basically what would be a non-answer, which is, of course the President is responsible for everything that comes out of his mouth. I mean, that’s a non-answer. Why can’t you just say that?

Gulf War III, early previews

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Note to Damascus: you’ll be getting a few years’ reprieve. The Financial Times reports that Rummy is looking to Iran as the next target of invasion and occupation regime change. The irony, of course, is that on the issues of nuclear weapons development and connections to terrorism, Iran outranks Iraq as a threat, and always has.

Can You Spot the Obviously Fake News Photo?

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One of these photos was published last week by a major metropolitan newspaper. The other was published months ago by a satirical web site, intending to be humorous by showing an image that was too ludicrous to ever occur in real life. Can you tell which is which?

Important note: in the real news photo, that arrow pointing to GWB’s head with the word “rescue”? Part of the original image.

9/11 Revisited

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The Center for Cooperative Research has posted a fascinating — and comprehensively researched — timeline of Bush’s and others’ actions on September 11. Most interesting are some details that seem to have been extensively rewritten to make questionable decisions seem worthwhile, and cover up some incompetence. Seems a few lies were told at the time — notably the security threat that had Bush bouncing around Air Force bases all day long.