Antiwar.com Blog

One might think that Louisianans would be less inclined than other Americans to indulge in the France-bashing that so amuses hooligans like Emmett Tyrrell. Sadly, though, that’s not the case, as shown by the statements of elected boors and an op-ed in Wednesday’s Baton Rouge Advocate, titled “No Heavy Lifting for the French,” which ends as follows:

All terrorists are allies. But not all governments, even democracies, are allies in the fight against terrorism.

I take issue not so much with the rote Francophobia that precedes this bit, but with the stupidity of “All terrorists are allies.” Congratulations to the Bush administration for selling this concept so well, but it makes no sense. For the umpteenth time, terrorism is a tactic, one used by all parties who refuse to distinguish civilians from combatants. Palestinian terrorists practice it, and so does the Israeli government; I suppose the genius quoted above would solve the whole Palestine/Israel conflict by informing Al Aqsa and the IDF of their manifest alliance?

We were apparently so busy looking for Saddam’s “WMD-related program activities,” that we didn’t even bother to secure his real nuclear waste stockpile back in April, creating a health and environmental disaster for the people of this small rural village in Iraq.

Back in the 1980’s, nuclear armed Israel carried out a pre-emptive bombing of Iraq’s Al-Tuetha nuclear power station which is located just south of Baghdad. While Saddam Hussein didn’t posses nuclear weapons, his nuclear power station which was being constructed still had much radioactive waste stored in two large warehouses. The waste, stored mostly in large metal drums, sat dormant for many years.

After the Anglo-American Invasion last spring the warehouses were looted, and many of the barrels containing radioactive material were carted away to be washed out in the small stream which separates the tiny rural village from Al-Tuetha. After being cleaned in the water supply for the area, the barrels were then sold to uneducated people in the village to be used for storing their drinking water. Thus, the water and now food of the entire village is contaminated with radioactive material.

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More than 500 pairs of empty Army boots were placed side-by-side in downtown Chicago Wednesday to serve as a reminder of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq. The black boots, some dusty and dirty from use, were placed on Federal Plaza in front of a posterboard display that listed the names, ages and states of all soldiers killed in the war…

Sometimes, we have to go back to the innocence of our childhood, when we learned to count using apples and beads as numbers, to fully appreciate how many of our troops have died unnecessarily in Iraq. The boots show us the visual reality of the number “500.” That’s an awful lot of boots, and lives. Take a look.

the 500 boots

They flew together, they fought together, now the five rest together in a single flag-draped coffin…in peace at Arlington.

Although “bringing democracy” to Iraq, Syria and Iran and “protecting the world from terrorists and WMD” have been the stated goals of the Bush Administration, it becomes more apparent that one of the main unstated goals is control of the Persian Gulf’s oil production — and thereby control of growing Asian economies such as those of China and India, as well as Japan and S. Korea, which now consume 90% of Middle Eastern oil exports. The use of oil embargoes to exert control over other nations’ policies can have disastrous effects, as did the embargo against Japan, dependent upon the United States for 80% of its oil in 1941, which led to war. From The Daily Star (Lebanon), a fast primer on the changing face of Mideast oil politics by Youssef F. Ibrahim of the Dubai-based Strategic Energy Investment Group. He previously served as senior Middle East correspondent for the New York Times and Energy Editor of the Wall Street Journal for 26 years.

Once upon a time there were four US oil companies that controlled the world of oil. Their names were Exxon, Mobil, Chevron and Texaco. The world of oil then was focused. These four found the oil, pumped it, and set its price to the world…Over the past 40 years, however, the world of oil has been turned upside down, and the rules have changed. The most important of these changes is that American oil companies no longer constitute the entirety of what we call “Big Oil.”

The other big change is that the US is no longer the most important client in need of oil. The new giant consumer of oil is China ­ a burgeoning economic superpower and the fastest growing market on earth, with over a billion consumers. Then there is India, another major oil customer that is growing fast. In fact, statistics show that 90 percent of the oil produced from the Gulf region that includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE, among others, is going to Asia, not America.
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