Oh, My God!

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This re-enforces what we all knew from the beginning--even in the face of vast and numerous denials.

Eager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion

• Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain "a prisoner of its energy dilemma" as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.
• That April 2001 report, "Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century," was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the US Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

• The advisory committee that helped prepare the report included Luis Giusti, a Shell Corp. non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of British Petroleum; and David O'Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco.

• James Baker, the namesake for the public policy institute, was a prominent oil industry lawyer who also served as secretary of state under President George H.W. Bush, and was counsel to the Bush/Cheney campaign during the Florida recount in 2000.
• Ken Lay, then-chairman of the energy trading Enron Corp., also made recommendations that were included in the Baker report.

• The New Yorker's Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated February 3, 2001 - only two weeks after Bush took office - instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney's task force, which was "melding" two previously unrelated areas of policy: "the review of operational policies towards rogue states" and "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields."

• Ray Rodon, a former executive at Halliburton, the oil-service giant that Cheney once headed, said he was dispatched to Iraq in October 2002 to assess the country's oil infrastructure and map out plans for operating Iraq's oil industry.

What a terrible price this country has paid--soldiers lives and bodies and minds--for "the power and the glory" of BushCo! Sad, sad.

Will it never end?
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Dick Cheney ?

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Following Dick Cheney's warning on Wednesday (4 Feb 2009) that there is a

• “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and [that] he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.

BuzzFlash & Elliot D. Cohen, PhD, a political analyst, offer:

• Dick Cheney’s recent warning of a future “9-11 type” terrorist attack on the U.S. homeland was quickly dismissed by some mainstream media pundits [Keith Olbermann had a Special Comment.] as just another benign and misguided attempt by the former Vice President to frighten us. But perhaps he should be taken more seriously.
  
• What facts, if any, about an impending attack did Bush and Cheney know prior to 9-11? Were these attacks merely a convenient excuse to invade Iraq or was there some even more ominous connection? What stake does Cheney now have for trying to frightening the Obama administration into carrying out the mandates of the Bush administration? Merely assuming that Cheney is now just trying to save face is not sufficient and even appears to be inconsistent with his persistent, blatant disregard for the public’s perception of him. [Emphasis mine.] The media, no less than the Obama administration itself, should be investigating these matters instead of making assumptions.
  
• By simply dismissing Cheney as misguided rather than dangerous, the media fails to do its job. Cheney was more than just wrong when he waged a bloody war against Iraq based on phony intelligence. He was not just wrong when he sponsored rendition, torture, and deprivation of due process. He was most probably responsible for outing covert CIA agent Valerie Plame in an effort to punish her husband for exposing his fraudulent claim about Saddam Hussein’s attempt to purchase uranium yellowcake. These and other aggressive acts suggest that Cheney may be willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants.
• A wake up call from the annals of history is also in order. Cheney was the principle in the formulation of the military strategy that came to be called “The Bush Doctrine.” Stripping away all pretence, this doctrine advocates attacking sovereign nations for purposes of amassing geopolitical power. It is Machiavellian to the core and Cheney’s “Project for the New American Century” even countenanced a “new Pearl Harbor” as a catalyst for taking America into the “New American Century.”

Much as we would like to dismiss Cheney as part of a bad, eight year nightmare, perhaps we do need to think about why he said the things he said.

Did he hide something -- some intelligence briefing perhaps -- from the incoming Obama administration? Could he really be that convoluted? That evil? That dangerous? That willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants?

Oh, yes, my gentle snowflakes, oh, yes.
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Justice Served

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SINCE, Bush/Cheney grabbed so much power and used it against the American People and against the country.

AND SINCE, there is a great deal of argument for "moving forward" and not looking back. Mostly, I think from people who are trying to cover their own asses, but nevertheless.

AND SINCE, we will have no investigations, no trials, no ability to claim executive privilege or hide behind "issues of national security."

RESOLVED, with the powers GW instituted to meet his own insidious ends, Obama can simply declare GW, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Gonzales, Tom Delay, .... oh, come on, I know there's more of them, ........ are you ready?

"ENEMY COMBATANTS"

They certainly "combated" this country. Almost destroyed it, that certainly makes them "enemies." They have made no secret of their contempt for the rule of law so cherished by all who revel in the uniqueness of that concept in this country. They set up the system, they must certainly approve of it. Let' s "ye-use" it.

Problem solved: goes "forward" without looking back, can be done immediately, no grand jury, no special prosecutor, no gathering of evidence, just executive order. Then: no civil rights to worry about, no access to lawyers, no trial necessary, "detainment" until whenever, vile conditions, torture (I mean, seems only fair, they set it up), ..........

Not revenge -- the rule of "law," justice.

Sweet, sweet justice.
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Update: While not as viciously violent as my suggestion, John Dean (former Counsel to the President of the United States, 1970), offers a much more reasoned argument for visiting this problem.

• One would think that people like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Gonzales, Yoo, Haynes and others, who claim to have done nothing wrong, would call for investigations to clear themselves if they really believed that to be the case. Only they, however, seem to believe in their innocence – the entire gutless and cowardly group of them, who have shamed themselves and the nation by committing crimes against humanity in the name of the United States.