Richard W. Behan: 'A Republican businessman vilifies George Bush'
Posted on Monday, October 18 @ 10:21:17 EDT
This article has been read 11107 times.
Mr. Karl Schwarz -- Conservative and Devoutly Christian -- and His Wild Book of Outrage
By Richard W. Behan
George Bush is not a Christian, Karl Schwarz tells you. He is a liar, and Christians don't lie.
Schwarz is telling this to anyone who might listen, including President Bush, to whom he fired off a smoking email entitled "An American Demands the Truth From You."
Other listeners are adding up quickly. First he sent to his stockholders--300,000 people or so--a PowerPoint presentation daylighting the greed, deception, and stupefying corruption of the Bush Administration. Lately he is making the rounds of the talk show circuit, and the wild book of outrage will soon be on the streets.
It is a formidable read. 810 pages. And a comprehensive title to match: One Way Ticket to Crawford, Texas: A Conservative Republican Speaks Out on September 11, 2001; Afghanistan; Iraq; Bush-Cheney 2004; Imperial Oil "Strategeries".
<snip>
The book displays the ongoing transformation of a decent democracy into the functional fascism of corporate empire. The Republicans are not uniquely responsible for this--Schwarz takes directed swipes at the Clinton years--but the Bush Administration's frenzied, happy sellout to the corporate and the wealthy is rapidly completing the process. George Bush and his henchmen, Schwarz asserts, are brazenly using the military might of the United States to enrich their political supporters and their associated corporate interests.
Karl W. B. Schwarz lives in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was twice asked by his party (but declined) to run for governor, opposing Bill Clinton. He was a top fundraiser for the Republican National Committee, as a close personal friend of RNC treasurer, William J. "Mr. Mac" McManus. Schwarz was active at the highest levels in the re-election campaign of George H.W. Bush. He has not been a lightweight Republican.
<snip>
Schwarz' signature revelation is the story of what happened to an obscure Argentinean company, the Bridas Corporation--and how that might explain 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
There is $7.34 trillion worth of petroleum and another $3 trillion of natural gas in the Caspian Basin. A pipeline across Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India could bring it to market. (Included in this "market" are a number of gas-fired power plants in Pakistan, owned by US corporations, and, at the time, an Enron project in Dabhol, India.)
In 1995 the Bridas Corporation was negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan to build the pipeline. The U.S. Government and the Unocal Corporation were pressing the Taliban fiercely to decline. In January of 1996, however, Bridas signed the contract to proceed: it now controlled the flow of Caspian riches.
Fast forward to1998. The Project for a New American Century is staffed by a group of "neoconservatives," starkly rightwing political thinkers and activists. It is committed to maintaining the military and economic supremacy in the world accorded the United States by the collapse of the Soviet Union. On January 26, 1998, the PNAC sent a letter to President Clinton urging the removal of Saddam Hussein by military means, if necessary. Should he remain in power, much would be put at hazard, including "a significant portion of the world's supply of oil." Signing the letter were Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, Zalmay Khalilzad, John Bolton, Richard Armitage, and Elliott Abrams.
<snip>
One more fast forward: to January of 2001. The Bush Administration has taken office, and the linkages with the oil industry are intimate, historic, and huge. The president and vice president are just the openers: eight cabinet members and the National Security Advisor were drafted directly from the oil industry, and so were 32 other officials, in the Departments of Defense, State, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, and the Office of Management and Budget.
Vice President Dick Cheney convenes his supersecret "Energy Task Force." Its membership and deliberations remain deliberately obscured, but Schwarz is certain the forced removal of the Taliban and the Bridas Corporation was discussed. The citizen group Judicial Watch did force the release of a few documents, however, with a lawsuit. Prominent among them is a map of the Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, tanker terminals, and oil exploration blocks: the Cheney Task Force had more than a passing interest in Iraqi oil, as well.
From Paul O'Neill and others we know the new Bush people, from their first days in office, intended to invade Iraq. Less well known was the covert planning, undertaken in the spring of 2001, for an attack on Afghanistan. The State Department gained the concurrence of both India and Pakistan for the attack, but as late as August 2, U.S. negotiators were still asking the Taliban to rescind the pipeline contract with the Bridas Corporation. The negotiations were fruitless.
<snip>
To Karl Schwarz' credit, he chooses only to establish the dots of fact, leaving it to others to connect them and find culpability. But his dots show the Bush Administration was fully aware of the Bridas contract and its threat to the domestic oil industry.
Anyone past middle school can understand how desperately the Bush Administration needed a credible excuse to proceed with its planned attack on Afghanistan. To suggest 9/11 was engineered is risky, but to consider it an unrelated coincidence is asking a great deal. Can anyone be that lucky? There is, of course, a middle ground between engineering and random good fortune: the Bush Administration might in fact have known about the impending disaster but chose, as half of the New Yorkers believe, to do nothing.
<snip>
The $10 trillion of hydrocarbon fluids in the Caspian Basin are now firmly controlled by US oil companies, including BP/Amoco, Chevron-Texaco, Amerada Hess, Devon Energy, and Remington/Western Resources. (These companies also have in common a law firm to represent them: Baker Botts of Houston, Texas. The senior partner in the firm is James Baker, the engineer of George Bush's selection as President by the Supreme Court, and former Secretary of State in the first Bush Administration. Baker Botts has been retained also by Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Defense Minister of Saudi Arabia. Prince Aziz has been accused of complicity in 9/11--and sued--by the families of World Trade Center victims, and Baker Botts is defending him.)
<snip>
President Bush spoke repeatedly of an al Qaida-Iraqi linkage, deliberately and successfully (and we know now falsely) persuading the American public Saddam Hussein was an accessory to 9/11. Chemical weapons, biological weapons, soon-to-be nuclear weapons. Months and months of lies and deception at home, of arm twisting abroad and at the United Nations. And then came the "pre-emptive" invasion.
Now that the lies of the Bush Administration have been exposed, we are told the Iraqi adventure was undertaken to bring freedom and democracy to that tragic region of the world. Liberation to the Iraqis, however, looks more like occupation. And the construction, once more, of permanent military bases in Iraq provides ample reason to feel that way.
US military might has now cordoned off, during the Bush Administration, both the $10 trillion in Caspian Basin resources and the world's second largest pool of petroleum in Iraq. This is a fact, one of Karl Schwarz' dots. Is it truly just a collateral result, a mere by-product of bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East?
Ask who benefits from the fact. Ask who bears the costs. And ask how it happened. Karl Schwarz can answer all three questions, with names, dates, and places. He will let you connect his dots.
Mr. Schwarz has seen what other Republicans need to see: Emperor Bush is utterly naked. He is a geopolitical Wizard of Oz. Behind the curtain of his "freedom and democracy" rhetoric there lies indeed a world-class liar, a wretched charlatan.
As no other president in history, George W. Bush has directed a Big Lie campaign against his own country, disgracing our nation in the eyes of the world and dividing our people at home
<snip>
We need to give George W. Bush a one-way ticket home.
This essay is deliberately not copyrighted, so permission to reproduce it is unnecessary. Richard W. Behan's latest book is Plundered Promise: Capitalism, Politics, and the Fate of the Federal Lands (Island Press, 2001). For information about the book go to
http://www.rockisland.com/~rwbehan/. Behan is currently working on a more broadly rendered critique, Degenerate Democracy: A Failing U.S. Constitution and the Triumph of Corporate Avarice. He can be reached at rwbehan@rockisland.com.
http://smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=18312&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0Excerpts from review posted at length with full permission. Read the Book
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
