Let's go 'head an consolidate all these so called "conspiracy theories" and posts concerning America's policy on energy.

All Syria, Iran, Central Asia, Iraq, Russia, China, and North Korea posts can be housed here.

First let me say that I don't believe that America's current policy is Bush's doing alone. America has LONG held an energy vision who's goals could only be met by the actions in both Clinton's and Bush's administrations.

I beleive this is a policy that will extend into the next 40 or 50 years, and that any side money Bush and his family might be making is only icing on the cake.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nssall.html



******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

Senator Clinton Urges Punishment for Syria
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer
March 1, 2005, 11:46 AM EST

WASHINGTON -- Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton called Tuesday for tougher punishment against Syria, saying the country was aggressively supporting terrorism in the "dangerous neighborhood" of the Middle East.

In lambasting Syria, Clinton joined a growing chorus of officials in Washington urging the United States to take a harsher stance against that country following a Feb. 14 bombing in Beirut that killed the former premier of Lebanon.

Speaking to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Clinton branded Syria and Iran bad neighbors bent on upsetting the fragile balance in the region.

"It is not only a dangerous neighborhood, but a neighborhood in which very few of the neighbors are committed to what Prime Minister (Ariel) Sharon is doing or what we hope to come from the Palestinian leadership," said Clinton.

Iran and Syria "pose such great threats not only to peace and stability, but in Iran's case the potential for nuclear capacity, and in Syria's case, with the continuation of the support for terrorism that flows from Damascus," she said.

Both Iran and Syria were cause for alarm, but Clinton said Syria deserved special attention.

"I've been particularly troubled by the Syrians' aggressive posture," said Clinton. "We need to send a very clear message that we will not tolerate what we believe to be and have reason to know is the continuing support for terrorism that comes out of Syria and Iran."

Clinton, considered an early front-runner for her party's nomination to the White House in 2008, has asked the Bush administration to toughen economic sanctions against Syria.

She was followed to the stage by Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who hinted that Syrian President Bashar Assad may find it difficult to hold onto power amid the push for greater democracy in neighboring Lebanon.

"It will be interesting to see what happens inside Syria. ... In this day and age it's hard to be a ruthless dictator," said McConnell.

Syria has come under intense worldwide scrutiny since the bombing that killed former Lebanese premier Rafik Hariri and 16 others.

Assad, in an interview published Monday in an Italian newspaper, denied any involvement, saying such a role would spell "political suicide."

The United States already enforces sanctions against Syria as a state sponsor of terrorism, but the criticism has escalated amid complaints that Syria and Iran allow militants to slip across the borders with Iraq to conduct attacks on U.S. forces.

Assad told La Repubblica he believed the U.S. might attack his country, but said such a confrontation would be averted because Damascus is critical to any peace effort.




******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

These people are investment bankers in the field of energy. The information they provide is there for people looking to do research or invest in energy globally.

Now, while some of their numbers might be abit askew for sales purposes, you can get a FEEL for the situation in Central Asia, and the middle east. You will be able to understand what Populations in China and Russia bring to the table competition wise for owning this energy and you can see where emerging markets fall in.

It's a pdf so I don't know how to cut and paste it but it is replete with graphs, charts and informatoin that isn't at all Biased from what I've seen.

So called conspiracy theorist will find an abundance of information backing their claims, and so will conservative knuckle draggers that belive that what we do over there is an issue of national security. Inferences will need to be made tho.

Background info on the company providing the information:

http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/

Simmons and company is the only independant investment bank specializing in the entire spectrum of the energy industry...


And the link to the pdf file:

http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/CSIS%20(B&W).pdf


******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

Issues as they were seen in 1998:

http://www.hri.org/MFA/thesis/winter98/geopolitics.html





Notice that this date is 1998: (text)

The Geopolitics of Oil in Central Asia
By Constantine Arvanitopoulos, Assistant Professor of International Politics at the Panteion University and Head of Planning at Institute of International Relations (I.I.R.)

One important geopolitical consequence of the demise of the Soviet Union was the rise of intense political and commercial competition for control of the vast energy resources of the newly independent and vulnerable states of the Caucasus and Central Asia.

These energy resources and, in particular, the oil and natural gas deposits have now become the apple of discord in Central Asia introducing, according to analysts, a new chapter in the ÃGreat GameÅ (1) of control over Eurasia.

Although the stakes involved remain the same, i.e., power, influence, security, wealth, the new playing field is further complicated by an array of problems. These include intra-regional conflict, political instability, fierce competition among multinational conglomerates, and a shortfall in commercial expertise and legal infrastructures (2).

Moreover, the fact that the three countries which share the majority of the regionÅs energy and resources, namely Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan, are landlocked makes them depend on their immediate neighbours for access to the Western markets.

The essence of this new geopolitical game in Central Asia is twofold: first, control of production of the oil and gas, and second, control of the pipelines which will transfer the oil to the Western markets (3).

From a geopolitical point of view, Central Asia has always been important (4). From the middle to the end of the 19th century, while the region was part of the Russian Empire, the oil-bearing areas of Baku were producing half of the worldÅs oil supplies (5). In World War II, during his campaign against Russia, Hitler tried to capture Baku and the Caucasian oil fields as part of his strategy for world domination. After the war, the Soviets retained these areas as reserves, choosing to exploit oil deposits on Russian soil, in Tatarstan and Siberia (6).

Following the collapse of communism, the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia, especially Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, have been trying to exploit their natural resources, since they consider oil to be the prime means of securing their economic and political independence. According to the estimates of geologists, the oil deposits of the Caspian Sea may not be quantitatively comparable to the deposits of the Persian Gulf, but they are still considered of excellent quality and able to provide a significant alternative source of energy in the 21st century (7). In particular, it is estimated that the entire Caspian Sea is a basin full of oil and natural gas, starting from Azerbaijan and continuing to the opposite shore in the territory of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. These deposits take on enormous importance because of the expected exhaustion of the deposits of Alaska and the North Sea by the year 2015.


The Issue of Production

Azerbaijan


Azerbaijan belongs to one of the areas of the world richest in oil and has a long history in the production of oil and natural gas. Despite its age-old production, Azerbaijan still possesses considerable oil deposits, which have remained unexploited. During the 20th century, the oil industry in Azerbaijan drew oil from the deposits in the countryÅs land subsoil, while offshore development began only in the middle of our century, and at a small depth. The first major offshore oilfield from which oil was drawn was the ÃOil RocksÅ, in 1949. When this source was exhausted, it was replaced by another offshore oilfield, the ÃGuneshliÅ, which was discovered in 1980 and by 1991 covered 57% of AzerbaijanÅs output. In addition, offshore exploration for oil deposits in the Caspian Sea had already borne fruit in the 1980s with the discovery of three major oilfields - ÃChiragÅ, ÃAzeriÅ, ÃKapazÅ - at great depth (8).

The problem was that, even though the Soviet oil industry had successfully developed its offshore oilfields and was even among the pioneers in this field, it had done so through virtually primitive means. The Soviet oil industry was never technologically able to develop offshore oilfields at great depth. Thus, AzerbaijanÅs offshore oilfields have remained, to a large extent, undeveloped. AzerbaijanÅs government has invited major foreign oil companies possessing the necessary technology, capital and project organisation to develop its offshore fields (9). The three biggest Azeri oilfields are being developed by the Azerbaijan International Operating Company, a twelve-company consortium which includes BP and Amoco (10).

The negotiations on the development of these oilfields involve complex legal, technical and commercial issues. The most important problem is the lack of a legal framework for the development and exploitation of AzerbaijanÅs oil. Furthermore, the restructuring of the domestic oil industry and negotiations with foreign companies have been hampered by the frequent changes of government. In order to improve the prospects for foreign investment, Azerbaijan is considering the adoption of a more flexible legal framework on oil contracts. Within this context, the government of Azerbaijan founded in August 1992 a public oil company adopting the norms of modern international oil companies. Every negotiation with foreign companies is conducted through this government company, while the development of joint stock status is being considered.

In order to conform to international practice and complete the negotiations as soon as possible, the government of Azerbaijan has also sought the advice of experienced international consultants (11).

Apart from the development of the oilfields, which has already begun, Azerbaijan continues its explorations for other deposits in the Caspian Sea. In the part of the Caspian belonging to Azerbaijan, around 24 sites have been singled out as suitable for drilling.

It is obvious that the development of the energy sector will have beneficial effects on AzerbaijanÅs economic development, in general. The prospects of AzerbaijanÅs energy sector will depend on whether new projects for the exploitation of the new deposits under the seabed prove to be satisfactory. The oil balance sheet is expected to show improvements compared with the current year, particularly if the exploitation of the ÃGuneshliÅ oil field continues unobstructed. In the long run, total oil production is expected to reach 25.6 million tons per year in the year 2000 and 45.2 million tons in 2005, by which time the exploitation of other offshore deposits will have begun. Since domestic consumption is not expected to rise significantly, the total quantity of oil for export is expected to reach 20.8 million tons in 2000 and 39.7 tons in 2005 (12).


Kazakhstan


Kazakhstan, ranking second -after Azerbaijan- among the oil-producing countries of the former Soviet Union, also commands abundant energy resources. Because of the countryÅs position, the transit routes and oil pipelines, Kazakhstan exports oil mainly to the Russian Federation (13). Oil represents 15% of KazakhstanÅs total exports. If the programme of reforms and the pace of foreign investments proceed according to schedule, it is estimated that in 1998 oil will account for 60% of KazakhstanÅs exports (14).

Kazakhstan has tried to attract foreign investors with advanced technology and expertise for the extraction of these deposits. A large number of foreign investments are already in progress in Kazakhstan. The most important ones include the agreement with Chevron to develop the oilfield of Tengiz, in western Kazakhstan, and the agreement with a consortium which includes British Gas, Agip and Texaco, to develop the Karachaganak field in northern Kazakhstan (15). ChevronÅs investment in Tengiz began in 1993 and, when completed, it is expected to come up to the level of 20 billion dollars. The investment of the British Gas/Agip consortium is of approximately the same size. The completion of these investments will have important consequences for the oil exports and the economic development of Kazakhstan.

The government of Kazakhstan is also examining various alternative proposals for the construction of an oil pipeline which will channel the oil to the West. The most feasible proposal seems to be the one that entails the upgrading of the existing network which traverses the area around the northern part of the Caspian Sea, ending at the port of Novorossisk, in conjunction with the modernisation of the facilities of this Russian port. This solution entails close Cupertino with Russia and Azerbaijan. Other proposals under examination include an oil pipeline, which will cross the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan and Georgia to end at a Turkish port. Another proposal, which was turned down after American pressure, involved an oil pipeline which would cross Iran, ending in the Persian Gulf.

With regard to the financing of the oil pipelines, meetings are being held and promises made by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The construction of the new pipeline or the upgrading of the existing network for the channelling of oil to the West will undoubtedly be the key to the countryÅs economic development.


The issue of pipelines


With deals to develop the oilfields in Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan already signed, the biggest problem facing foreign investors is how to transport the oil to foreign markets. Unlike other big oil producers, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan are landlocked. The issue of pipeline selection has therefore acquired enormous geopolitical significance for the future of the region. The existing pipeline routes for oil from Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan ran through Russia to the port of Novorossisk on the Black Sea, giving Moscow a considerable advantage in the process of pipeline selection (16). Following the agreement between Chevron and Kazakhstan, Moscow initially refused to allow crude oil through its pipeline system. It later placed restrictions on the amount of oil which could be transported through its pipelines and imposed a series of high tariffs. All these manoeuvres resulted in a deal which allowed Russia to become member of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, which will build a $2 billion pipeline from Kazakhstan to Novorossisk.

The Azerbaijan International Operating CompanyÅs Ãearly oilÅ is being transported along two routes which for the most part use existing pipelines: a northern route through Dagestan and Chechnya to Novorossisk, and a second western route to the Georgian port of Supsa. Oil is already flowing along the northern route, and so far, the Chechens have been bought off with substantial transit fees (17).

These pipeline arrangements are temporary solutions dealing only with the transport of the early oil. The final decision regarding the selection of the pipelines which will carry the main oil is expected sometime in 1998. In theory, new pipelines could go in almost any direction. Northern routes could enhance the existing network and serve RussiaÅs needs. Western routes could serve Europe, while southern or eastern routes could serve the Asian markets (18).

The main options are the following: (19)

1. The northern route favoured by Russia. According to this option, Kazakhstan would expand its existing pipelines to link them to the Russian network and Azerbaijan would build a pipeline from Baku to Novorossisk. The shortcomings of this option have to do with fears of establishing excessive Russian control over the pipeline and also the issue of security, since the pipeline would go through Chechnya.

2. The western route favoured by Azerbaijan, Turkey, Georgia and the United States. This pipeline route would bring the oil to the Georgian port of Supsa and then ship it through the Black Sea and the Bosporus to Europe. Turkey insists that the straits cannot cope with increased tanker traffic and has proposed, instead, to construct a pipeline from Baku to the port of Ceyhan on the Turkish Mediterranean coast. However, excessive costs (around $2.9 billion) and serious security concerns (this route would pass through unstable Kurdish territory) make this option difficult to implement. Instead, the Bosporus could be by-passed by a pipeline linking the Bulgarian port of Burgas with the Greek port of Alexandroupolis.

3. The southern route. Economically, this is the most viable option, since Iran already has an extensive pipeline system, and the Gulf is a good exit to the Asian markets. The United States, however, has practically vetoed this option.

4. Eastern route. This pipeline would transport oil from Kazakhstan to China. It will be the costliest pipeline (covering 2,000 km in Kazakhstan alone) but the Chinese consider it as a strategic decision and are willing to implement it.

5. South-eastern route. The American oil company Unocal has proposed the construction of oil and gas pipelines from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan to Pakistan and later to India. This route makes sense geographically but not politically, since it will have to go through unstable Afghanistan.

The final decision about the pipeline or the pipelines which will transport the Caspian oil will be taken sometime in 1998 and is hard to predict in view of the multiplicity of options and competing interests. Given the strength of the Russian and American support for the northern and the western routes respectively, these pipelines seem to have an advantage over the others.


The Policies of the Great Powers in Central Asia

US Foreign Policy


The structure of the oil industry in the West changed radically and perhaps permanently in 1973. Control of the worldÅs oil resources shifted from the big multinational oil companies to a small number of oil-producing countries, most of them members of OPEC. The oil crisis of 1973-4 and the two increases in oil prices which followed, one in 1973 and another at the end of the 1970s, forced the countries of the West to reshape their policy on energy by emphasising alternative sources of energy. Despite that fact, the fall in oil prices in the 1980s, as these could not have remained at the high levels of the 1970s, increased demand and oil imports. Thus, while in 1973 world oil consumption was 57 million barrels a day, in 994 it approximated to 68 million barrels (20).

The USA leads the world in oil consumption, with 17 million barrels a day in 1991. Of this quantity, 50% is imported, so that dependence on oil imports is expected to rise steadily in the next decade. Even though US government committees, examining the issue, have found that dependence on oil imports threatens US national security, American oil policy has not changed radically with regard to imports. These findings have not led to the formation of a new oil policy which would aim at the progressive reduction of oil imports. They have, however, led the American Government to seek diversification of supply, to avoid dependence on a single supplier or team of suppliers. The addition of new exporters, such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, to the already existing oil-producing and exporting countries provides more freedom of choice for importing countries such as the US, while it also helps to keep oil prices down (21).

Within this framework, one can explain the American interest in the restructuring of the Russian oil industry as well as in participation in the development of oilfields in the Caspian Sea and the surrounding countries. These oil deposits constitute new sources of supply from countries outside the OPEC and are, for this reason, extremely important on the political as well as on the economic level. The Caspian Sea basin has attracted US interest for the following reasons:

1. The oil of this region is considered to be of good quality.

2. The biggest part of this oil is intended for export, since the needs of the producing countries are relatively low and are expected to remain low.

3. The fact that the countries of the region lack the capital and the technology to proceed independently to the development of these oilfields offers American companies, such as Chevron, considerable investment opportunities.

In this context, we can better understand the geopolitical and economic aims of the US in Central Asia. At the geopolitical level, the United States wants to help the countries of Central Asia to develop their oil and natural gas industries. According to the estimates of the American Government, this development will bring about economic growth and will help these countries move away from the Russian sphere of influence.

At the economic level, the development of the oil industry of these countries means investment opportunities for the American construction and oil companies. Politically, the United States will be in a position to control these new important energy resources and diversify its own sources supply. American private companies have been supported by the US Government in at least two countries of Central Asia, namely, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Other American political objectives include the containment of Iran and the reinforcement of TurkeyÅs role in the region. The US has not only blocked any pipeline route passing through Iran, but has also cancelled IranÅs participation in the international consortium which has undertaken oil production in Azerbaijan (22).

To sum up, US foreign policy in Central Asia is founded on the following rationale:

The US intends to help the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan develop their oil and natural gas industries.
Through the development of their oil and gas industry, which will bring economic growth, the US hopes to extricate them from the Russian sphere of influence.
The US Government is actively supporting American companies in Central Asia involved in oil development as well as in the construction of pipelines which will channel the oil to the West.
The US will try to channel the oil coming from those countries into the international markets in order to diversify its own sources of supply and keep oil prices at low levels.
The US Government believes that economic growth will promote regional stability and the resolution of local disputes.
Finally, the US aims at reinforcing the role of Turkey in the region, while at the same time maintaining the policy of containment and isolation of Iran. For that reason it has actively lobbied for a pipeline which will transport oil from Baku to the Turkish port of Ceyhan.
Russia


At this point it should be mentioned that control over these energy resources has set off a smouldering rivalry between Russia and the US which has two dimensions: the first concerns control of oil production and the second specific questions relative to the legal status of the Caspian Sea. Russia claims that the Caspian is an inland lake and not a closed sea, which means that it is not subject to the Law of the Sea. Consequently, exploitation of the Caspian resources must be subject to an agreement among all five coastal states.

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan maintain that the Caspian Sea is just that, a sea, and as such should be divided into national sectors. The US holds the same position and it recently took a firm stand on the issue. Glen Rase, the director of international energy policy at the US State Department, declared in March 1995 that each of the countries in the region has the right to develop its own economic resources according to its own best interests... and there should be no misunderstanding. The US recognises legitimate security concerns, but does not recognise spheres of influence. The US will defend its companiesÅ interests in the Caspian (23). In this context the American Government has supported the private companies which have undertaken production on behalf of the former Soviet republics of the Caspian Sea. The United States wants to avert Russian control over the Caspian energy resources and will resist it as much as possible.

Russia, on the other hand, is concerned with the attempts to oust it from its traditional sphere of influence but is also worried that investment in the Caspian Sea oilfields will divert Western financial backing and interest from its oilfields in Siberia and the Far East and capture some of its market. In the competition over Caspian oil, therefore, Russia sees both the erosion of its geopolitical position and the loss of key economic resources and their potential revenues (24).

MoscowÅs initial response was an effort to strengthen the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States, but this was not successful. Russia is now trying to find ways to deal with its competitors. In this context it has recently co-operated with Iran to offset AzerbaijanÅs and KazakhstanÅs claims in the Caspian and has participated in the construction of the Burgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline in an effort to by-pass Turkey.

In the past, the Soviet Union rarely used oil and gas exports to support her national interests. These exports were viewed as the countryÅs best earners of hard currency and nothing more. That approach seems to be changing. Russia has become much more aware of the geopolitical role that energy can play. She intends to use her oil and gas strength as a means of supporting foreign policy aims (25).

It is quite evident that there can be no game unless Russia is invited to the table. Giving Russia a seat at the table means equity participation both in pipeline construction and operation and in oil development projects (26).


Concluding Remarks


Energy resources are reshaping the geopolitical map in Eurasia. Eventual control of the development of oil deposits as well as the eventual pipeline routing will determine the political and economic future of Russia, Turkey and the Central Asian states; it will determine IranÅs position in the region and its relations with the West; it will determine the realignment of the strategic triangle among the US, Russia and China; and it will have strategic consequences by lessening dependence on Persian Gulf oil.

The importance of the eventual pipeline routings was pointed out by the Russian newspaper ÃIzvestiyaÅ: The struggle for future routings of oil from CIS countries to the world market is entering a decisive stage. The victor in this struggle will receive not only billions of dollars annually in the form of transit fees: the real gain will be control over pipelines, which will be the most important factor of geopolitical influence in the TransCaucasus and in Central Asia in the next century (27). n


1. The phrase Great Game has been borrowed from Rudyard KiplingÅs description of the rivalry between Tsarist Russia, Victorian England and the Ottoman Empire in Central Asia for control of trade routes to India in the 19th century. See Fiona Hill, Pipeline Politics, Russo-Turkish Competition and Geopolitics in the Eastern Mediterranean in Security and Cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean, edited by Andreas Theophanous and Van Coufoudakis. (Cyprus: Intercollege Press, 1997), p. 200.
2. Rosemarie Forsythe, The Politics of Oil in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Adelphi Paper, No 300, (May 1996), p. 6.
3. While the Central Asian states have physical possession of their oil and gas reserves, they do not possess the capital and the technology that would allow them to go into production alone, a fact which brings in the foreign companies with a share in production and revenues.
4. Colin S. Gray, The Geopolitics of the Nuclear Era: Heartland, Rimlands, and the Technological Revolution (New York: Crane, Russak and Co., 1977).
5. The Rothschilds, and the Nobel Brothers, first provided Russia with the know-how to develop the Caspian oil resources. See Robert W. Tolf, The Russian Rockefellers, (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1976), pp.50-60.
6. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991).
7. Proved and inferred reserves are estimated to be as high as 200 billion barrels, putting the region on a par with Iraq. In addition, the area is rich in natural gas with estimated and proved reserves of up to 7.89 trillion cubic metres - as much as those of the US and Mexico combined. Rosemarie Forsyth, The Politics of Oil in the Caucasus and Central Asia, p. 6. The Caspian Sea oil cannot compete with Persian Gulf oil in terms of easy access to the major world markets, nor will this oil be able to compete in terms of levels of production or costs of production. Once the production of the Caspian region reaches its peak - and that will be of the order of several million barrels per day - its contribution to the world oil supply may not be decisive but it will certainly be important. These reserves are significantly bigger, for example, than EuropeÅs proved reserves of about 50 billion barrels of oil equivalent. See Robert E. Ebel, The Dynamics of Caspian Sea Resources, paper presented to a Conference on Conflict Resolution, organised by the Institute of International Relations, Panteion University, on Corfu on 30-31 August 1996. Also see Central Asia: A Survey, The Economist, (7-13 Feb. 1998), p.6.
8. Azerbaijan: Energy Sector Review, Document of the World Bank, Report No. 12061-AZ (World Bank,Washington DC, 1993).
9. For these oil companies, the Caspian holds a further attraction. Unlike the majority of the worldÅs proved oil reserves, these resources are available for exploitation by Western firms. Iran and Iraq, the underdeveloped giants of the Persian Gulf, are closed to outsiders, so for the moment the oil firms are concentrating on the Caspian. Central Asia: A Survey p. 6.
10. Ibid.
11. Azerbaijan: From Crisis to Sustained Growth, A World Bank Country Study (The World Bank, Washington DC, 1992).
12. Azerbaijan: Petroleum Technical Assistance Project, Document of the World Bank (The World Bank, Washington DC, 28 March 1995).
13 Kazakhstan: The Transition to a Market Economy, A World Bank Country Study (The World Bank, Washington DC, 1993).
14. Ibid.
15. Central Asia: A Survey, The Economist, p.6.
16. Ebel, p. 6; Hill, p. 209, The Economist, p. 6.
17. Central Asia: A Survey, p. 8.
18. Ibid, p. 8.
19. For a detailed analysis see Rosemarie Forsythe, The Politics of Oil in the Caucasus and Central Asia, pp. 44-55; Central Asia: A Survey, pp. 8-9.
20. Robert E. Ebel, Petroleum: A New Factor in the Black Sea Security Context, unpublished paper presented to a conference on Security and the Black Sea, held in Varna, Bulgaria, 9-10 May 1995; Robert E. Ebel, Michael P. Croissant, Joseph R. Masih, Kent E. Calder, Raju G.C. Thomas, Policy Forum: Energy Futures, The Washington Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Autumn 1996): 71-99.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid, p. 6; Rosemarie Forsythe, The Politics of Oil in the Caucasus and Central Asia, p. 55-58; Hill, Pipeline Politics, pp. 212-217.
23. Ebel, Petroleum: A New Factor in the Black Sea Security Concept p. 7; John Lloyd, Battle Lines Drawn Over Caspian Oil and Gas, Financial Times, 3 March 1995.
24. Hill, Pipeline Politics, p. 216.
25. Ebel, p. 9.
26. Ebel, The Dynamics of Caspian Sea Resources, p. 8.
27. Ebel, p. 9.




******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

www.freerepublic.com


MOSCOW: As the Roman Empire spread two millenniums ago, maps had to be redrawn to reflect new realities. In similar fashion, the expansion of the British Empire kept cartographers at their drawing boards, reshaping territories from Southern Africa to India to Hong Kong.

Now, as the United States wages its 'war on terrorism' in Afghanistan - and deploys troops for the first time in the energy-rich regions of Central Asia and the Caucasus - the borders of a new American empire appear to be forming.

Firmly in the Russian and later Soviet sphere of influence since Napoleon's day, these strategic regions, along with their Middle Eastern ramparts to the south, are now home to 60,000 American troops.

Some of these soldiers are building what appear to be long- term bases at remote Central Asian outposts, raising critical questions about America's future role.

One aim is the containment of Islamic extremism, a goal shared by Russia on its vulnerable southern flank. Looking to challenge OPEC leader Saudi Arabia in the oil markets, Russia is also worried about protecting its growing economic interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus, which are criss-crossed by oil and gas pipelines - and potentially lucrative new routes. But the new nearness of America is triggering heated debate in Moscow, where President Vladimir Putin, by permitting US deployments, is being widely blamed for "losing" Central Asia and succumbing to a new American imperialism.

Others say that Putin - recognizing that 70 per cent of Russia's state budget comes from oil and natural gas exports - has simply traded in cold-war baggage for a new, clear-eyed pragmatism amid Russia's harsh economic realities.

Already 3,000 Americans are based in Uzbekistan, and are believed to run both overt and covert operations in Afghanistan from there. Commanders are setting up new facilities in Kyrgyzstan for a combat air wing and humanitarian missions, with 3,000 more troops.

A deal has been struck with Tajikistan - where Russia has 10,000 of its own troops guarding the Afghan border. Americans have held secret military meetings with Armenia - a key Russian ally - and talks with Kazakhstan.

While the US may have grand imperial designs - some experts even go so far as to speak of US troops "guarding" Caspian energy resources in case Iraqi oil supplies are disrupted by any American attempt to change the regime in Baghdad - others emphasize common US-Russian economic interests.

While the presence of American forces and the overthrow of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan are causing fresh thinking about how to tap Caspian riches, the context of cold war rivalries - played up by regional leaders often eager to wiggle free of Russia's influence - still dominates discourse.

During a recent tour of the region, state Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov, warned that "Russia will not endorse the emergence of permanent US military bases in Central Asia." Such considerations haven't escaped notice in Washington, where US Secretary of State Colin Powell last December said that Kazakhstan's oil was becoming of "critical importance."

And "Caspian reserves could be critical to future global energy supply," notes an analysis earlier this month by the respected, London-based Jane's Foreign Report. "This is in line with the doctrine of 'full-spectrum dominance' that now seems to govern American foreign policy and is manifesting itself in the Caucasus and Central Asia," the report said.

Escaping the template of Cold War rivalry is proving difficult, even though US-Russian economic interests often coincide. "The Russian security establishment still contains a high proportion of dinosaurs," says Anatol Lieven, a regional analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

Many in the US see Russia through old prisms, despite Moscow's demonstrated commitment to helping the US wage war in Afghanistan and elsewhere. "You have people who are still saying Russian policy in the 'near abroad' (the former Soviet states) is a key threat to American interests," Lieven says.

That some in Washington want to keep US troops in Central Asia beyond the Afghanistan campaign "accentuates the fact that the 'war on terrorism' is horribly complicated, and risks being lost by being overloaded with other agendas," Lieven adds. "One problem is that some in the Pentagon are gung-ho for world domination. And then you have (others) who say: 'Hang on a second, we are not prepared for that.' "

Moscow's former domains stretch from Uzbekistan to Ukraine, and have often bristled under Russia's strong-arm tactics to re- exert control. The US arrival may be forcing changes. "The fact that Russia has acquiesced to US troops in Central Asia and indeed Georgia, shows that Russia itself is prepared to play a much more open and even-handed role in the region," says Julian Lee, a senior analyst at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London. "But we're seeing Russian interest in business channels, rather than political and military ones. It's the sensible way forward."

Some observers say that Putin's KGB background makes him as wary as anyone of American moves - but also realistic about the imperative of a pro-West future.

Pipelines can be another point of cooperation. The US has long pushed for an oil line from Azerbaijan to Turkey, which deliberately bypasses Russia and Iran. But Russia has a key stake in the year-old, Chevron-led CPC pipeline, which carries Kazakh oil to a Russian Black Sea port.

And though laughed at when first proposed during Taliban rule, plans to build two pipelines, oil and gas, across Afghanistan are now being dusted off. Cutting Russia into any such deal to provide gas to South Asia could make sense, analysts say.

That could help satisfy Russia's bottom line - maximum market share. Russian gas reserves are the largest in the world, but a European Union decision this weekend will break Russia's decades- long monopoly there.

"Putin's a realist, and economics are everything," says Szymczak, of "Oil and Gas Eurasia." The result is a tricky balancing act for Putin, as American influence spreads to Russia's borders. "The reality is that a lot of the money to run this country comes from gas sales," Szymczak says. "Putin needs markets to the east - or the whole thing unravels, and he's got a bigger problem than just a few people thinking: 'Oh goodness, we've got Americans in Uzbekistan!"-Dawn/The Christian Science Monitor News Service.





******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

Oil rush in Central Asia
While beating the drums for a second war against Iraq, the American media has paid relatively little attention to an equally significant development in US foreign policy: the drive to gain control of the huge oil and gas resources of the Caspian Sea region. The combined energy reserves of the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are estimated at over 100 billion barrels, the third largest in the world after the Persian Gulf and Siberia.

On November 12 the direct shipment of Caspian Sea oil to the world market resumed, for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the opening of the rebuilt pipeline from Baku through war-torn Chechnya to the Russian port of Novorossisk on the Black Sea. President Heydar Aliyev of Azerbaijan is one of two Communist Party regional chieftains before the breakup of the USSR to retain power today, in large measure because of the resources provided by huge contracts with Western oil firms.

The other surviving former Stalinist party boss, Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, has had similar success in holding power through control of oil resources. He visited Washington and Houston November 18-20 and signed contracts with Texaco, Mobil, Chevron and other US oil companies which are worth a staggering $600 billion over the next 40 years.

Foreign oil companies have already pumped $3.5 billion into the Kazak economy since 1991, establishing joint ventures with the state oil company in the huge Tengiz oilfield (Chevron, Mobil), the Karaganak oilfield (Texaco, British Gas) and an oil exploration site offshore in the Caspian Sea (Mobil, Shell). While the oil companies rush to exploit Kazakhstan's energy resources, the working class population faces severe poverty and widespread fuel and power shortages.

Nazarbayev has established close ties with US imperialism, carrying out the most rapid privatization of any of the former Soviet republics, authorizing joint military exercises with American forces on Kazak soil, and appointing as his prime minister Nurlan Balgimbayev, a former employee of Chevron Oil who went on to head the state-run Kazakoil.

During his Washington visit, Nazarbayev was honored at a private dinner in the exclusive Metropolitan Club, hosted by longtime Democratic Party wheeler-dealer Robert Strauss, and attended by oil company CEOs, Clinton crony Vernon Jordan, Energy Secretary Federico Pena, and media personalities like Sam Donaldson--who led the toast to Nazarbayev--and William Safire.

A display behind the head table at the dinner spelled out American capitalism's interest in Kazahstan. It read: "USA PROJECTED CONSUMPTION: 20 Million Barrels Per Day. KAZAKHSTAN POTENTIAL PRODUCTION: 10 Million Barrels Per Day."

The principal issue in discussions between the Kazakh president and the Clinton administration was the choice of pipeline routes to bring his country's oil and gas to the world market. Both Nazarbayev and Washington want an alternative to the Russian-controlled Baku-Novorossisk pipeline. The US government is opposed to the shortest and most economical pipeline, south across Iran to the Arabian Sea, and pressed Nazarbayev to support an east-west pipeline from Baku, through Georgia and Turkey to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean, which would cost three times as much.

The US posture is based not merely on hatred of Iran, still under effective American embargo nearly 20 years after the revolution which overthrew the Shah, but on the growing conflict between American imperialism and its major rivals in Western Europe. France is investing heavily in Iran, with the oil company Total signing $2.9 billion in contracts to develop gas fields in the southern part of the country. Siemens of Germany has been contracted by Iran and by several French oil companies to conduct feasibility studies for a Kazakhstan to Iran pipeline. The British-Dutch Shell Oil is building an east-west pipeline across Iran to deliver natural gas from Turkmenistan to ports in Turkey.

China is also being drawn into the conflict: the Chinese National Oil Company has contracted to develop a Kazak oilfield and it has proposed construction of an east-west pipeline from the Caspian to Chinese-controlled Sinkiang, and eventually across China to the sea.




******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

http://www.foil.org/resources/9-11/FOIL-0109xx-OilFactsheet.htm
Title/Description: FACTSHEET -- Afghanistan and Oil Interests in Central Asia
Author/Source: FOIL List?
Date: September 2001


This factsheet is intended simply to offer a brief history of US oil interests in Central Asia; most of it is drawn from the Department of Energy’s own circulars.



1. “Afghanistan’s significance from an energy standpoint stems from its geographical position as a potential transit route for oil and natural gas exports from Central Asia to the Arabian Sea.” (DOE)



2. Afghanistan was a major natural gas supplier the Soviet Union in the 1970s, supplying 70-90% of its natural gas output to that region. By the late 1990s, Afghanistan’s production had dropped drastically due to the Soviet invasion and the ensuing civil war. Currently it is estimated that Central Asian oil and natural gas is more than ten times the reserves held by Saudi Arabia. Afghanistan also has an estimated 400 million tons of coal reserves.



3. Only 6% of Afghanistan’s population have access to electricity; the rest use diesel, firewood or manure for fuel.



4. In January 1998, the Taliban signed an agreement that would allow a proposed 890 mile, $ 2 billion natural gas pipeline project undertaken by Centgas, an international consortium led by Unocal. Project finalization was delayed by the continuing civil war. In December 1998, Unocal announced that it was pulling out of the consortium.



5. Beside the gas pipeline, Unocal had also considered building a 1,000-mile pipeline linking Turkemenistan to Pakistan’s Arabian coast via Afghanistan. The continuing civil war which stems from opposition to the Taliban makes these projects unviable until the situation is resolved. The DOE points out that for a range of reasons, “including high political risk and security concerns…financing for this project remains highly uncertain.”



6. The Taliban has not always been seen as a US enemy and its capture of power in Afghanistan was seen by US oil interests as “very positive” (Christoper Taggart, VP of Unocal). Originally, a policy of “engagement” was attempted with high level officials such as Robin Raphel holding high level meetings with the Taliban in Khandahar to smooth the passage for US oil interests. These negotiations eventually failed leading to a breakdown of relations between the Taliban and the US governments.



7. An improvement in Afghanistan’s “political and military situations”—a stable, U.S and Europe friendly government would be of great importance to the fulfillment of these projects.



Some more sources for Oil and Afghanistan:



http://pages.prodigy.net/gmoses/nvusa/does2401.html#OVER (US Energy Information Administration)



http://www.zmag.org/zmag/articles/ShalomIranIraq.html

Article on Iran-Iraq war by Stephen R. Shalom including a short section title "Some Crude History." Shalom is author of Imperial Alibis : Rationalizing U.S. Intervention After the Cold War. South End Press. 1992




******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

There is more, but this is a good start. More to come...


http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq




February 15, 1848


In a letter to his law partner, William H. Herndon, Abraham Lincoln disagrees with Herndon's argument for preemptive war. “Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion ... and you allow him to make war at pleasure. ... The provision of the Constitution giving the war making power to Congress was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions, and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and places our President where kings have always stood.”
People and organizations involved: Abraham Lincoln





1950s


The first “Zippe-type” gas centrifuge, named after one of its main developers, German scientist Gernot Zippe, is produced. The centrifuge uses duralumin rotors. Centrifuge rotors are thin-walled tubes that spin at high speeds producing enriched uranium 235. Centrifuge rotors are highly sensitive and must be made from specialized high-strength material.
People and organizations involved: Gernot Zippe





After the 1950s


The use of aluminum for rotors in gas centrifuges is discontinued. Other materials, such as maraging steel and carbon fiber, are used instead.





Early 1980s


At this time, an engineer named “Joe T.,” is working in the gas centrifuge program at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His work pertains not to actual centrifuges, but to the platforms upon which the centrifuges are installed.
People and organizations involved: Joe T.





Mid-1980s-late 1990s


Joe T., an engineer, begins working for the CIA.
People and organizations involved: Joe T.





(Late 1980s)


Iraq begins developing “Zippe-type” centrifuges (see 1950s). The centrifuges use rotors made from maraging steel and carbon fiber, which are more advanced than aluminum and allow the rotor to spin at significantly higher speeds. But Iraq has problems building them—even with considerable assistance from German experts.





Mid-1990s


Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Palestinian, moves to Europe where he forms al-Tawhid, a terrorist organization whose aim it is to kill Jews and install an Islamic regime in Jordan. While in Europe, Al Zarqawi and other members of his group make plans to attack Jews and Israeli targets in Germany. In late 1999, Al Zarqawi is allegedly involved in an attempt to blow up the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, Jordan, whose customers are frequently Israeli and American tourists. At some point during this period, Al Zarqawi establishes a terrorist training camp near Herat, Afghanistan, which competes with al-Qaeda for new recruits. According to the Bush administration, the training camp specializes in poisons and explosives. While in Afghanistan, Zarqawi maintains contact with his cells in Europe.
People and organizations involved: Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi





January 1990


Speaking before the Senate Armed Services Committee, CIA Director William acknowledges the West's increasing dependency on Middle East oil.
People and organizations involved: William H. Webster





Mid-September 1990


The Pentagon, citing top-secret satellite images, claims that some 250,000 Iraqi troops and 1,500 tanks are gathering on Saudi Arabia?s border in preparation for an attack. But two commercial Soviet satellite images of the border area, taken at the same time, obtained by Florida?s St. Petersburg Times, show only an empty desert. “The bulk of the mighty Iraqi army, said to number more than 500,000 in Kuwait and southern Iraq, couldn't be found,” Newsday reports. ; Los Angeles Times, 1/5/03; St. Petersburg Times, 1/6/91]





May 1990


The US National Security Council presents a white paper to President Bush in which it describes Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq as the optimum contender “to replace the Warsaw Pact” and on that basis argues for the continuation of Cold War-level military spending.
People and organizations involved: George W. Bush





August 2, 1990


The UN Security Council adopts Resolution 678 authorizing “Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait ... to use all necessary means to uphold and implement resolution 660 (1990) and all subsequent relevant resolutions and to restore international peace and security in the area.”
People and organizations involved: United Nations Security Council





August 2, 1990


The UN Security Council adopts Resolution 660 condemning Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and demanding that Iraq “withdraw immediately and unconditionally all its forces to the positions in which they were located on 1 August 1990.”
People and organizations involved: United Nations Security Council





Late 1990


An unconfirmed report of Iraqi soldiers entering a Kuwaiti hospital and removing newborns from their incubators is distributed widely. The rumor, which later turns out to be false, is seized upon by senior executives of the PR firm Hill and Knowlton, which has a $10 million contract from the Kuwaiti royal family to win support for a US-led intervention against Iraq. The PR firm, which has very close ties to the Bush administration, helps a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only as “Nayirah,” prepare to speak before a congressional caucus. In her testimony, she describes in detail how she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers storm the hospital where she was an intern and steal the incubators, leaving 312 babies “on the cold floor to die.” President Bush refers to the incident numerous times as he lobbies Congress to authorize the use of military force against Iraq. But it is later discovered that Nayirah is actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and that she was never an intern at the Kuwait hospital. The story was a complete fabrication. ; Christian Science Monitor 9/6/02 ; Los Angeles Times, 1/5/03]
People and organizations involved: Hill and Knowlton, George Herbert Walker Bush





1991-2003


After the First Gulf War, the British Defense Ministry's Defense Intelligence Staff creates a secret intelligence office known as Operation Rockingham. The purpose of the top secret cell is to collect intelligence that can be used by the US and British to support the case for maintaining UN sanctions on Iraq. After the September 11 attacks, Rockingham helps build Britain's case for the need to use military force against Iraq. Former US Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter, who has first-hand knowledge of the operation, will later tell reporters that the members of the cell were backed by officials “from the very highest levels,” including military and intelligence officers, as well as civilian officials from the ministry of defense. Sources equate Rockingham to the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (see August 18, 2003), which is also later accused of producing misleading assessments on Iraq based on the selective use of intelligence. The operation is similar to Operation Mass Appeal (see 1991-2003), another British intelligence disinformation program.
People and organizations involved: Scott Ritter Additional Info
Statements


Unnamed report
The report acknowledged the existence of Operation Rockingham and linked it to the UNSCOM inspections. — 1998
Scott Ritter
“The Government would feed off those reports to promote the notion that Iraq was a nation ruled by a dictator addicted to WMD.” — winter 2003
“ was an organization designed to support a pre-ordained conclusion of the British Government that Iraq will never be found in compliance with UN Security Council resolutions.” — winter 2003
“The Government would feed off those reports to promote the notion that Iraq was a nation ruled by a dictator addicted to WMD.” — winter 2003
“ Rockingham was spinning reports and emphasizing reports that showed non-compliance (by Iraq with UN inspections) and quashing those which showed compliance. It was cherry-picking intelligence.” — summer 2003
Rockingham's intelligence was built from “single source data of dubious quality.” — November 2003
“Operation Rockingham cherry-picked intelligence. It received hard data, but had a preordained outcome in mind. It only put forward a small percentage of the facts when most were ambiguous or noted no WMD... It became part of an effort to maintain a public mindset that Iraq was not in compliance with the inspections. They had to sustain the allegation that Iraq had WMD Unscom was showing the opposite.” — summer 2003








1991-2003


The British MI6 establishes Operation Mass Appeal, a British intelligence mission “designed to exaggerate Iraq's weapons of mass destruction” in order to shape public opinion. The operation plants stories in the US, British, and foreign media from the 1990s through 2003. Intelligence used by Mass Appeal is said to be “single source data of dubious quality.” After the First Gulf War, the operation seeks to justify the UN sanctions policy. But after the September 11 attacks, its objective is to secure public support for an invasion of Iraq. The mission is similar to Operation Rockingham (see 1991-2003), another British intelligence disinformation program. Former US Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter says in late in 2003 (see November 21, 2003) that he supplied Mass Appeal with intelligence while serving as UN chief weapons inspector from the summer of 1997 until August 1998 and that he met with British agents involved in the operation several times in both New York and London.
People and organizations involved: Scott Ritter Additional Info
Statements


Scott Ritter
Operation Mass Appeal “took this information and peddled it off to the media, internationally and domestically, allowing inaccurate intelligence data, to appear on the front pages.” — November 2003
The intelligence data provided to the media by Operation Mass Appeal “dealt with Iraq's efforts to procure WMDs, with Iraq's efforts to conceal WMDs. It was all single source data of dubious quality, which lacked veracity.” — November 2003
“The government, both here in the UK and the US, would feed off these media reports , continuing the perception that Iraq was a nation ruled by a leader with an addiction to WMDs.” — November 21
“I was approached by MI6 to provide that data, I met with the Mass Appeal operatives both in New York and London on several occasions. This data was provided and this data did find its way into the international media.” — November 2003
“The government, both here in the UK and the US, would feed off these media reports, continuing the perception that Iraq was a nation ruled by a leader with an addiction to WMDs.” — November 21, 2003
“They took this information and peddled it off to the media, internationally and domestically, allowing inaccurate intelligence data, to appear on the front pages.” — November 21, 2003
“I was brought into the operation in 1997 because at the UN... I sat on a body of data which was not actionable, but was sufficiently sexy that if it could appear in the press could make Iraq look like in a bad way.” — November 21, 2003
“I was approached by MI6 to provide that data, I met with the Mass Appeal operatives both in New York and London on several occasions. This data was provided and this data did find its way into the international media.” — November 21, 2003
“It was intelligence data that dealt with Iraq's efforts to procure WMDs, with Iraq's efforts to conceal WMDs. It was all single source data of dubious quality, which lacked veracity.” — November 21, 2003


Commentaries


Seymour Hersh
“Over the next year , a former American intelligence officer told me, at least one member of the UN inspection team who supported the American and British position arranged for dozens of unverified and unverifiable intelligence reports and tips-data known as inactionable intelligence-to be funneled to MI6 operatives and quietly passed along to newspapers in London and elsewhere. ‘It was intelligence that was crap, and that we couldn't move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world,’ the former officer said. There was a series of clandestine meetings with MI6, at which documents were provided, as well as quiet meetings, usually at safe houses in the Washington area. The British propaganda scheme eventually became known to some members of the UN inspection team. ‘I knew a bit,’ one official still on duty at UN headquarters acknowledged last week, ‘but I was never officially told about it.’ ” — October 2003
Unnamed Clinton Administration official
“I knew that was going on. We were getting ready for action in Iraq, and we wanted the Brits to prepare.” — October 2003








1991-1997


Under the supervision of UNSCOM weapons inspectors, Iraq destroys more than 38,000 filled and unfilled chemical munitions, 690 tons of chemical warfare agents, over 3,000 tons of precursor chemicals, more than 400 pieces of production equipment, 48 missiles, 6 missile launchers, and 30 missile warheads modified to carry chemical or biological agents. After cross-referencing weapons-making materials found in Iraq with sales records from other countries, UNSCOM inspectors conclude that at least 90% of Iraq's weapons have been destroyed or dismantled. Chief UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter believes that a good portion of the remaining 10% was destroyed during the First Gulf War, thus leaving only a small fraction unaccounted for.
People and organizations involved: Scott Ritter





March 8, 1992


The Defense Planning Guidance document, a “blueprint for the department's spending priorities in the aftermath of the first Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union,” is leaked to the New York Times. The paper causes controversy, because it hadn't yet been “scrubbed” to replace candid language with euphemisms. The document argues that the US dominates the world as sole superpower, and to maintain that role it “must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” ] As the Observer summarizes it, “America's friends are potential enemies. They must be in a state of dependence and seek solutions to their problems in Washington.” The document is mainly written by Paul Wolfowitz and Lewis Libby, who hold relatively low posts at the time, but under Bush Jr. become Deputy Defense Secretary and Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, respectively. The document conspicuously avoids mention of collective security arrangements through the United Nations, instead suggesting the US “should expect future coalitions to be ad hoc assemblies, often not lasting beyond the crisis being confronted.” It also calls for “punishing” or “threatening punishment” against regional aggressors before they act. Interests to be defended pre-emptively include “access to vital raw materials, primarily Persian Gulf oil, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles, threats to US citizens from terrorism.” Senator Lincoln Chafee (R), later says, “It is my opinion that plan for preemptive strikes was formed back at the end of the first Bush administration with that 1992 report.” In response to the controversy, in May 1992 the US releases an updated version of the document that stresses the US will work with the United Nations and its allies (see also January 1993).
People and organizations involved: Lincoln Chafee, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz





August 22, 1995


Hussein Kamel, Iraq's former minister of military industry—who was Saddam Hussein's son-in-law and who had overseen Saddam's nuclear, chemical, biological and missile weapons programs for almost a decade—is interviewed shortly after defecting by UNMOVIC Executive Chairman Rolf Ekeus, Professor Maurizio Zifferero, deputy director of the Internal Atomic Energy Agency,and Nikita Smidovick of UNSCOM. During the interview, Kamel says that Iraq had destroyed all of its banned weapons after the First Gulf War. “I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons—biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed,” he tells his interviewers. With regard to Anthrax, which Kamel says had been the “main focus” of Iraq's biological program, Kamel says, “nothing remained.” Regarding the nerve gas, VX, Kamel says, “they put it in bombs during last days of the Iran-Iraq war. They were not used and the program was terminated.” When asked if the program had been reconstituted, Kamel replies, “We changed the factory into pesticide production. Part of the establishment started to produce medicine ... We gave instructions not to produce chemical weapons.” On the issue of prohibited missiles, Kamel states: “ot a single missile left but they had blueprints and molds for production. All missiles were destroyed.” Kamel also says that inspections worked in Iraq. “You have important role in Iraq with this. You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq,” he reveals. But this information is not made public. Newsweek reports in March 2003 that according to its sources, “Kamel's revelations about the destruction of Iraq's WMD stocks were hushed up by the UN inspectors ... for two reasons. Saddam did not know how much Kamel had revealed, and the inspectors hoped to bluff Saddam into disclosing still more.” Kamel also says that Khidhir Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear scientist who defected in 1994 and who will be a source for claims regarding Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, is “a professional liar.” “He worked with us, but he was useless and always looking for promotions,” he tells his interviewers. “He consulted with me but could not deliver anything. . . . He was even interrogated by a team before he left and was allowed to go.” At around the same time, Kamel is also interviewed by the CIA and Britain's MI6. According to sources interviewed by Newsweek, Kamel provides them with the same information. But after this is revealed on February 24, 2003 by Newsweek's John Barry, the CIA issues a strong denial. “It is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue,” CIA spokesman Bill Harlow will say.
People and organizations involved: Nikita Smidovick, Maurizio Zifferero, Rolf Ekeus, John Barry, Hussein Kamel, Bill Harlow





July 8, 1996


The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli think tank, publishes a paper titled, “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” The paper advises the new, right-wing Israeli leader Binyamin Netanyahu to make a complete break with the past by adopting a strategy “based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism ....” The document advocates the removal of Saddam Hussein and the weakening of Syria. Other suggestions for Israel include abandoning the Oslo Accords, developing a foreign policy based on a traditional balance of power strategy, reserving its right to invade the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of a strategy of “self-defense,” abandoning any notion of “land for peace,” reestablishing a policy of preemptive strikes, forging closer ties to the US while taking steps towards self-reliance, and seeking an alternative to Yasser Arafat as leader of the PLO. Some of the paper's authors will later be appointed to influential government and quasi-government positions during the administration of George W. Bush. The lead writer, Richard Perle, will serve on the Defense Policy Board (for the first year and a half he will serve as chairman). Douglas Feith will serve as undersecretary of defense for policy. He will oversee the activities of several controversial offices including the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group (see Shortly after September 11, 2001) and the Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). David Wurmser will help run the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group (see Shortly after September 11, 2001) through August 2002 and then will be transferred to the State Department to serve as a senior advisor to Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John R. Bolton (see September 2002).
People and organizations involved: Jeffrey T. Bergner, Richard Armitage, Richard V. Allen, Douglas Feith, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, Meyrav Wurmser, Jonathan Torop, Binyamin Netanyahu, Robert Loewenberg, James Colbert, David Wurmser, Charles Fairbanks, Jr.





June 3, 1997


The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neoconservative think tank formed in the spring of 1997, issues its statement of principles. PNAC states that its aims are “to shape a new century favorable to American principles and interests,” to achieve “a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad,” “to increase defense spending significantly,” to challenge “regimes hostile to US interests and values,” and to “accept America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.” The statement is significant because it is signed by a group who will become “a rollcall of today's Bush inner circle.” ABC's Ted Koppel will later say PNAC's ideas have “been called a secret blueprint for US global domination” (see January 26, 1998) (see also September 2000, August 21, 2001 (B)).
People and organizations involved: Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Rosen, Peter Rodman, Henry S. Rowen, Vin Weber, Midge Decter, George Weigel, Norman Podhoretz, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Elliott Abrams, Steve Forbes, Donald Rumsfeld, William J. Bennett, Dick Cheney, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Lewis Libby, Dan Quayle, Jeb Bush, Donald Kagan, Fred C. Ikle, Eliot A. Cohen, Paula J. Dobriansky, Hasam Amin, Frank Gaffney





November 12, 1997


David Wurmser, director of the Middle East program at the American Enterprise Institute, writes an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the US government should support Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress and work to foment “an Iraqi insurgency to depose the butcher of Baghdad.” Wurmser writes: “Washington has no choice now but to abandon the coup option and resurrect the INC. An insurgency may be able to defeat Saddam's weak and demoralized conventional army. But one thing is clear: There is no cost-free way to depose Saddam. He is more resolute, wily and brutal than we. His strength lies in his weapons of terror; that is why he is so attached to them.... Organizing an insurgency to liberate Iraq under the INC may provoke Saddam to use these weapons on the way down. Better that, though, than current policy, which will lead him to use them on his way back up.”
People and organizations involved: David Wurmser, Ahmed Chalabi





1998


The National Security Council (NSC) completes a review of Iraq and terrorism. In an interview with journalist Robert Dreyfuss four years later, Daniel Benjamin, then-director of counterterrorism at the NSC, summarizes the report's conclusions: “e went through every piece of intelligence we could find to see if there was a link al-Qaeda and Iraq, says Benjamin. We came to the conclusion that our intelligence agencies had it right: There was no noteworthy relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq. I know that for a fact. No other issue has been as closely scrutinized as this one.”
People and organizations involved: Daniel Benjamin





1998


Radio Free Europe, headquartered in Prague, begins transmitting anti-Saddam programs into Iraq. Late in the year, Iraqi diplomat Jabir Salim defects and tells Czech officials that before leaving Iraq he had been given $150,000 in cash to finance a plot to blow up Radio Free Europe's headquarters. This information is apparently passed on to Washington and US officials warn Tom Dine, program director of Radio Free Europe, about the plot. In response, Radio Free Europe begins 24-hour video surveillance of the building.
People and organizations involved: Radio Free Europe, Jabir Salim, Tom Dine





1998


Expert committees report that Iraq has failed to adequately account for 500 mustard-gas shells, 25 “special warheads,” 150 aerial bombs, 2 scud missiles, 520 kilograms of yeast extract growth medium specifically for anthrax, 15,000 122 mm artillery shells, 25,000 rockets and several hundred tons of chemicals for the nerve agent VX.
25 Special Warheads - Iraq failed to account for 25 “special warheads” . Former UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter will tell the Christian Science Monitor in mid-2002, “Even if he hid some warheads, they would have degenerated by now.”
Scud Missiles - Iraq has accounted for or destroyed 817 of its 819 Scud missiles. It is later suggested by experts, such as former UN inspector Scott Ritter and Charles Duelfer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that Iraq could possibly salvage and manufacture enough components to build up a store of between five and 25 missiles. But as the San Francisco Chronicle later notes, citing unspecified weapons experts, “there is no evidence that these have been tested or that Iraq has any functional launchers.”
8,5000 liters of anthrax - Iraq maintains that these remaining stores of Anthrax were unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991, however they offer no evidence of this. Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer and chief weapons inspector, will later say that evidence indicates that Iraq's liquid bulk anthrax has not been produced by Iraq since 1991. Furthermore, he adds, the factory where Iraq had produced the pathogen was destroyed in 1996. He says that any anthrax produced before then is no longer a threat to anyone because after three years liquid bulk anthrax becomes “useless sludge.”
Several hundred tons of chemicals for the nerve agent VX - UNSCOM is unable to account for several hundred tons of chemicals for the nerve agent VX. Iraq maintains that these remaining stocks were unilaterally destroyed in the summer of 1991. In March 2003, UNMOVIC, the successor to UNSCOM, will report “that Iraq's production method created nerve agent that lasted only six to eight weeks.” Critics believe that most of these stocks were destroyed during the First Gulf War. Scott Ritter, a former chief weapons inspector, speaking at the Suffolk Law School building in downtown Boston, will say on July of 2002: “The research and development factory is destroyed . The product of that factory is destroyed. The weapons they loaded up have been destroyed. More importantly, the equipment procured from Europe that was going to be used for their large-scale VX nerve agent factory was identified by the special commission—still packed in its crates in 1997—and destroyed. Is there a VX nerve agent factory in Iraq today? Not on your life.”
Additional Info
Statements


Scott Ritter
“... from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq has in fact been disarmed... The chemical, biological, nuclear and long-range ballistic missile programs that were a real threat in 1991 had, by 1998, been destroyed or rendered harmless.” — March 9, 2000
“Under the most stringent on-site inspection regime in the history of arms control, Iraq's biological weapons programs were dismantled, destroyed or rendered harmless during the course of hundreds of no-notice inspections. The major biological weapons production facility—al Hakum, which was responsible for producing Iraq's anthrax—was blown up by high explosive charges and all its equipment destroyed. Other biological facilities met the same fate if it was found that they had, at any time, been used for research and development of biological weapons...No evidence of anthrax or any other biological agent was discovered.” — October 19, 2001
“Every single one of ... facilities” bombed in 1998, had been “subjected to repeated inspections and never did we detect anything to remotely suggest that these were involved in producing anything prohibited. There's nothing there. Nothing.” — Summer 2002
“What Iraq had in 1991 wasn't a weapon, it was a large chunk of metal with some sludge in it. The only way it was going to kill you was if it landed on your head.” — Summer 2002
“While we were never able to provide 100 percent certainty regarding the disposition of Iraq's proscribed weaponry, we did ascertain a 90-95 percent level of verified disarmament. This figure takes into account the destruction or dismantling of every major factory associated with prohibited weapons manufacture, all significant items of production equipment, and the majority of the weapons and agent produced by Iraq.” — July 20, 2002
Richard Butler
“If Iraqi disarmament were a five-lap race, we would be three quarters of the way around the fifth and final lap.” — July 1998


Commentaries


Robin Cook
“Chemical and biological weapons have a limited shelf life. All the materials that Saddam had in 1991 (at the end of the gulf war) would have degraded to the point of being useless long before 2003, whether or not he had destroyed them.” — Late May 2003








January 26, 1998


The Project for the New American Century (PNAC), an influential neoconservative think tank, publishes a letter to President Clinton urging war against Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein because he is a “hazard” to “a significant portion of the world's supply of oil.” In a foretaste of what eventually happens, the letter calls for the US to go to war alone, attacks the United Nations, and says the US should not be “crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.” The letter is signed by many who will later lead the 2003 Iraq war. 10 of the 18 signatories later join the Bush Administration, including (future) Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Undersecretaries of State John Bolton and Paula Dobriansky, presidential adviser for the Middle East Elliott Abrams, and Bush's special Iraq envoy Zalmay Khalilzad. Clinton does heavily bomb Iraq in late 1998, but the bombing doesn't last long and its long-term effect is the break off of United Nations weapons inspections.
People and organizations involved: Richard Perle, William Schneider Jr., Elliott Abrams, Richard Armitage, Jeffrey T. Bergner, William Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Robert Kagan, Francis Fukuyama, Peter Rodman, Paula J. Dobriansky, John R. Bolton, Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, William J. Bennett, William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton, Robert B. Zoellick





February 19, 1998


The Committee for Peace and Security publishes an open letter to President Bill Clinton outlining a 9-point “comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime.” The letter is signed by a litany of former US government officials known for their neoconservative viewpoints. Several of the signatories are also involved with the Project for the New American Century and had endorsed a similar letter published by that organization the previous month.
People and organizations involved: William Kristol, Robert Kagan, Douglas Feith, Elliott Abrams, Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Donald Rumsfeld, Dov Zakheim, Paul Wolfowitz, Joshua Muravchik, Robert A. Pastor, Martin Peretz, Roger Robinson, Peter Rodman, Robert C. McFarlane, Jarvis Lynch, Frederick L. Lewis, Bernard Lewis, Paula J. Dobriansky, William B. Clark, Fred C. Ikle, Sven F. Kraemer, David Wurmser, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Frank Gaffney, Frank Carlucci, Max Singer, Richard Armitage, Richard V. Allen, Stephen Solarz, John R. Bolton, Gary Schmitt, Jeffrey T. Bergner, Stephen Bryen, Jeffrey Gedmin, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Caspar Weinberger, Peter Rosenblatt, Leon Wienseltier, Richard Burt





July 1998


UNSCOM weapons inspector Richard Butler states, “If Iraqi disarmament were a five-lap race, we would be three quarters of the way around the fifth and final lap.”
People and organizations involved: Robin Cook





Late December 1998


According to US intelligence sources, Farouk Hijazi, the Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, visits Afghanistan in late 1998 after US cruise missiles are fired on al Qaeda training camps following the bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Hijazi, who is also a longtime intelligence officer, meets Osama bin Laden in Kandahar and extends an offer from Baghdad to provide refuge for him and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. Bin Laden reportedly rejects the offer because he doesn't want his organization dominated by Saddam Hussein. After the 9/11 attacks, proponents of invading Iraq will claim the visit makes Hijazi a key link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Hijazi will be captured by US troops in late April 2003 after the US/British invasion of Iraq begins. When interrogated by US authorities, he will deny any Iraq-al-Qaeda ties.
People and organizations involved: Osama bin Laden, Mullah Mohammed Omar, Farouk Hijaz





1999


Iraqi diplomat and suspected intelligence officer Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani arrives in Prague to replace his predecessor, Jabir Salim, who had defected (see 1998). Fearing that Al-Ani had a similar mission to that of Salim, Czech intelligence closely monitors al-Ani's activities. Sometime in 1999, al-Ani is reportedly videotaped loitering around and photographing the Radio Free Europe building. Al-Ani is sometimes seen with a thinner, taller man wearing a Shell Oil jacket who is never identified. The pictures are passed onto the Czech intelligence agency .
People and organizations involved: Radio Free Europe, Jabir Salim, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani





(1999)


Joe T. begins working in the Winpac unit of the CIA, which analyzes intelligence related to dual-use technology and export controls.
People and organizations involved: Joe T.





February 1999


Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq's ambassador to the Vatican, sets off on a trip to several African countries, including Niger, where he meets with the country's president. Zahawie's visit is reported in the local newspaper as well as by a French news agency. The US and British governments are also aware of the trip but show no concern. At this time, Niger is “actively seeking economic assistance from the United States.” No one suggests that the trip's motives have anything to do with acquiring uranium. Soon after the September 11 attacks, the Italian intelligence service, SISMI, will provide the US with information it has about the trip and will suggest that the motive behind the visit was to discuss the future purchase of uranium oxide, also known as “yellowcake” (see Fall 2001).
People and organizations involved: Wissam al-Zahawie





(After February 1999)


Rocco Martino, an Italian security consultant, provides French officials with documents suggesting that Iraq intends to expand its “trade” with Niger. Martino was formerly a member of Italy's foreign intelligence service (SISMI). The French assume the trade being discussed would be in uranium, Niger's main export. At French intelligence's request, Martino continues supplying them with documents.
People and organizations involved: Rocco Martino





March 1999


A special panel of the UN Security Council reports that “the declared facilities of Iraq's biological weapons program have been destroyed and rendered harmless.”





December 17, 1999


With the passing of UN Resolution 1284, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) is created to assist in the disarming of Iraq. The new body replaces the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM). UNMOVIC is deliberately designed to prevent infiltration by spies of the UN Security Council member states, specifically the US and Britain. This had been a problem with its predecessor, UNSCOM. The UN diminishes the role of Americans in the new commission by abolishing the powerful office of deputy chairman, which had always been held by an American, and by appointing non-Americans to important positions. In the new inspections body, “The highest-ranking American in the agency now has a relatively lowly job, in charge of the training division.” A Chinese official holds the senior “activity evaluation” position and a Russian official is in charge of “liaising with foreign governments and companies.” Another reform is that the inspectors will use commercial satellite companies, instead of US spy satellites, to monitor Iraq's activities.





Early 2000


Rocco Martino, an Italian security consultant and information peddler, is approached by a former colleague at SISMI, Italy's foreign intelligence agency, who tips him off to a former SISMI source working at the Nigerien Embassy in Rome who can provide Martino with information in exchange for a monthly retainer fee. Martino pursues the lead, and agrees to pay her 500 euros/month. The source, however, remains on SISMI's payroll providing the agency with a way to distribute information to the public while concealing its role. Most of the documents he will receive from the lady will be related to immigration into Italy and Islamist activities in North and Central Africa.
People and organizations involved: SISMI, Rocco Martino





2000


US intelligence learns from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) that Iraq has made arrangements to purchase tubes, made of 7075-T6 aluminum, from China through Garry Cordukes, the director of the Australian company International Aluminum Supply. The company is associated with Kam Kiu Propriety Limited, a subsidiary of the Chinese company that will manufacture the aluminum tubes. Concerned that the tubes may be related to Iraqi efforts to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program, an Australian intelligence agent contacts Cordukes to obtain a sample of the tubes for examination. A CIA agent, Joe T., is said to have played a significant part in this discovery.
People and organizations involved: Joe T.





2000


Former CIA director James Woolsey serves as a corporate officer for the Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation which manages the Iraqi National Congress' US funding. Also during this time, Woolsey and his former law firm, Shea and Gardner, provide the INC and Iraqi exiles with pro bono work.
People and organizations involved: Iraqi National Congress (INC), Shea and Gardner, James Woolsey





2000


During the 2000 presidential campaign, the Republican Party calls for “a comprehensive plan for the removal of Saddam Hussein.” Similarly, the Democratic Party's platform supports using “America's military might against Iraq when and where it is necessary.”
People and organizations involved: Democratic National Committee, Republican National Committee





September 2000


The neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century writes a “blueprint” for the “creation of a ‘global Pax Americana’ ” (see also June 3, 1997). The document, titled, Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century, was written for the Bush team even before the 2000 Presidential election. It was written for future Vice President Cheney, future Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, future Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Florida Governor and President Bush's brother Jeb Bush, and future Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff Lewis Libby. The report calls itself a “blueprint for maintaining global US preeminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.” The plan shows that the Bush team intended to take military control of Persian Gulf oil whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power and should retain control of the region even if there is no threat. It says: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.” The report calls for the control of space through a new “US Space Forces,” the political control of the internet, the subversion of any growth in political power of even close allies, and advocates “regime change” in China, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iran and other countries. It also mentions that “advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.” (see also Spring 2001 and April 2001 (D)). However, the report complains that these changes are likely to take a long time, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor.” In an NBC interview at about the same time, Vice Presidential candidate Cheney defends Bush Jr.'s position of maintaining Clinton's policy not to attack Iraq because the US should not act as though “we were an imperialist power, willy-nilly moving into capitals in that part of the world, taking down governments.” This report and the Project for the New American Century generally are mostly ignored until a few weeks before the start of the Iraq war (see February-March 20, 2003).
People and organizations involved: Robert Killebrew, Dov Zakheim, Robert Kagan, Fred Kagan, Donald Kagan, William Kristol, David Fautua, Dan Goure, Mark Lagon, Barry Watts, Michael Vickers, Mackubin Owens, Abram Shulsky, Gary Schmitt, David Epstein, Phil Meilinger, Paul Wolfowitz, Robert Martinage, James Lasswell, Lewis Libby, Thomas Donnelly, Devon Gaffney Cross, Eliot A. Cohen, William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton, Roger Barnett, Alvin Bernstein, Stephen Cambone, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Rosen Additional Info
Commentaries


Tam Dalyel
“This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks—men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.... This is a blueprint for US world domination—a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.” — September 2000








Early 2001


Shortly after Bush is inaugurated into office, Greg Thielmann, an analyst for the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), is appointed to serve as the intelligence liaison to John Bolton. But Thielmann's intelligence briefings do not support Bolton's assumptions about Iraq, and Thielmann is soon barred from attending the meetings.
People and organizations involved: John R. Bolton, Greg Thielmann Additional Info
Statements


John R. Bolton
“I found that there was lots of stuff that I wasn't getting and that the INR analysts weren't including. I didn't want it filtered. I wanted to see everything—to be fully informed. If that puts someone's nose out of joint, sorry about that.” — October 2003
John Bolton claimed that Greg Thielmann had “invited himself” to his daily staff meetings, while Thielmann had told Seymour Hersh he had been assigned the duty. Bolton explained: “This was my meeting with the four assistant secretaries who report to me, in preparation for the Secretary's 8:30 a.m. staff meeting. This was within my family of bureaus. There was no place for INR or anyone else—the Human Resources Bureau or the Office of Foreign Buildings.” — October 2003
Greg Thielmann
“Bolton seemed to be troubled because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear. I was intercepted at the door of his office and told, ‘The Under-Secretary doesn't need you to attend this meeting anymore’ ,” he was told by one of Bolton's aides. “The Under-Secretary wants to keep this in the family.” To ensure that Bolton received the intelligence he wanted, explained Thielmann, “He surrounded himself with a hand-chosen group of loyalists, and found a way to get CIA information directly.” — October 2003








2001


Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi, a Jordanian Muslim militant later alleged by the Bush administration to have ties to Osama bin Laden, is arrested in Jordan sometime in 2001 for his involvement in a late 1999 plot to blow up the Radisson SAS Hotel in Amman, Jordan, whose customers are frequently Israeli and American tourists. Some time after his arrest, he is released. At some point he is convicted for his role in the plot and sentenced to death by a Jordanian court in absentia.
People and organizations involved: Abu Mussab Al Zarqawi





2001-2003


The US intelligence community—most notably the intelligence gatherers working in the Pentagon offices under Douglas Feith (see September 2002) —bases several of its intelligence assessments concerning Iraq on information offered by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and by Iraqi defectors provided by the INC, despite warnings from the State Department and some CIA analysts that the lobbying group cannot be trusted. Some of the INC's intelligence on Iraq's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's supposed ties to terrorists are reportedly funneled directly to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney by Francis Brooke, the DC lobbyist for the group. Brooke will later acknowedge that the information provided by the INC was driven by an agenda. “I told them , as their campaign manager, ‘Go get me a terrorist and some WMD, because that's what the Bush administration is interested in.’ ” Brooke had previously worked for the Rendon Group, “a shadowy CIA-connected public-relations firm.”
People and organizations involved: Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Dick Cheney, Francis Brooke Additional Info
Statements


Vince Cannistraro
“The Iraqi opposition, particularly the group led by Ahmed Chalabi, whose intelligence was underwritten by the Pentagon, played a crucial role in informing the Pentagon ... with information that looks, from this vantage point, like it was fraudulent, in many cases was fabricated, and the most benign interpretation was that it was just flat wrong.” — June 2003
Scott Ritter
“Our guys working this area for a living all believe Chalabi and all those guys in their Bond Street suits are charlatans. To take them for a source of anything except a fantasy trip would be a real stretch. But it's an article of faith among those with no military experience that the Iraqi military is low-hanging fruit.” — October 2002
“The UN stopped using Chalabi's information as a basis for conducting inspections once the tenuous nature of his sources and his dubious motivations became clear. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the mainstream US media, which give prominent coverage to sources of information that, had they not been related to Hussein's Iraq, would normally be immediately dismissed.” — January 28, 2002


Commentaries


Vince Cannistraro
“The intelligence isn't reliable at all. Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear. And much of it is used to support Chalabi's own presidential ambitions. They make no distinction between intelligence and propaganda, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches.” — Before March 19, 2003








(Mid-July 2001)-August 17, 2001


Almost immediately after Joe T.'s theory is circulated through US intelligence and science circles, a team of centrifuge physicists at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other similar institutions review the case. The team includes Dr. Jon A. Kreykes, head of Oak Ridge's national security advanced technology group; Dr. Duane F. Starr, an expert on nuclear proliferation threats; and Dr. Edward Von Halle, a retired Oak Ridge nuclear expert. They are advised by Dr. Houston G. Wood III, a retired Oak Ridge physicist considered to be “among the most eminent living experts” on centrifuges, and Dr. Gernot Zippe, one of the German scientists who developed an early uranium centrifuge in the 1950s (see 1950s). On August 17, the team publishes a classified Technical Intelligence Note which details why they believe the 7075-T6 aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were not intended for use in a gas centrifuge.
The tubes sought by Iraq are very different from tubes Iraq used previously in its centrifuge prototypes before the first Gulf War. The intercepted aluminum tubes are significantly longer and narrower.
Aluminum has not been used in gas centrifuges since the 1950s (see After the 1950s). Furthermore, Iraq is known to have had the blueprints for a more efficient centrifuge, which used maraging steel and carbon fiber, not aluminum (see (Late 1980s)). “Aluminum was a huge step backwards,” Dr. Houston Wood will later explain to the New York Times.
There are no known centrifuge machines “deployed in a production environment” that use tubes with such a small diameter.
The tubes' walls, measuring 3.3 millimeters, are three times too thick for “favorable use” in a “Zippe-type” centrifuge, which requires tubes with a thickness of no more than 1.1 millimeter.
The tubes are anodized, which is “not consistent” with a uranium centrifuge because the anodized coating can react with uranium gas. Houston G. Wood later tells The Washington Post in mid-2003 that “it would have been extremely difficult to make these tubes into centrifuges,” adding that it stretched “the imagination to come up with a way.” Though the scientists' report concludes that “rocket production is the much more likely end use for these tubes,” Joe T. sticks with his theory. His position is backed by CIA director George Tenet.
People and organizations involved: Duane F. Starr, Jon A. Kreykes, Houston G. Wood III, Gernot Zippe, George Tenet, Joe T., Edward Von Halle





January 2, 2001 %

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

May 2001


Vice President Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force releases its energy plan. The plan, titled, Reliable, Affordable and Environmentally Sound Energy for America?s Future, warns that the quantity of oil imported per day will need to rise more than fifty percent to 16.7 million barrels by 2020. “A significant disruption in world oil supplies could adversely affect our economy and our ability to promote key foreign and economic policy objectives, regardless of the level of US dependence on oil imports,” the report explains. One of these objectives is to open markets to US investors and promote free trade through new investment treaties. To meet the United States' rising demand for imported oil, the plan calls for “deep water offshore exploration and production in the Atlantic Basin, stretching from offshore Canada to the Caribbean, Brazil and West Africa.”
People and organizations involved: Dick Cheney





May 9, 2001


The Energy Department reports that the 7075-T6 aluminum tubes being sought by Iraq from China (see July 2001) have the same specifications as tubes previously used by Iraq to produce conventional rocket tubes. The findings are published in the department's classified Daily Intelligence Highlight, which is posted on an intranet network accessible by members of the intelligence community and the White House.
People and organizations involved: Department of Energy (DOE)





May 15, 2001


Powell says that Saddam Hussein has not been able to “build his military back up or to develop weapons of mass destruction” for “the last 10 years,” adding that the sanctions policy had successfully kept him “in a box.”
People and organizations involved: Colin Powell





May 23, 2001


A container shipment of 3,000 7075-T6 aluminum tubes manufactured in China leaves southern China for Hong Kong on a slow barge. From there the shipment will go to Jordan. The tubes' final destination is Iraq.





May 25, 2001


The Chinese government contacts a Chinese aluminum manufacturer that has just filled an order for 3,000 7075-T6 aluminum tubes, which is now on its way to Iraq. The company is told that the US government has a special interest in the order and is determined to prevent the shipment from reaching its destination.





July 2001


Following leads from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) (see 2000), a team of CIA agents and Jordanian secret police confiscate a shipment to 3,000 7075-T6 aluminum tubes in Jordan. The tubes had been purchased by a Jordanian front company, AT&C, on behalf of Iraq. It is later learned that Iraq's supply of rocket body casing tubes is depleted at about this time (see January 9, 2003) and that “housands of warheads, motors and fins ... crated at the assembly lines , awaiting the arrival of tubes.” It is also later determined that the shipment of tubes is meant to replenish Iraq's supply of rocket casing tubes; they are not for Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons program.





July 2001


The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) obtains a few samples of the 7075-T6 aluminum tubes that were seized by the CIA and Jordanian secret service. They examine the tubes and initially are quite skeptical that the Iraqis intended to use them as rotors in a gas centrifuge. Later this month, CIA agent Joe T. flies to Vienna and presents his case to the IAEA. But experts at the agency disagree with his conclusions and explain to him why the believe his analysis is wrong. “They pointed out errors in his calculations. They noted design discrepancies,” an unnamed senior US official will later tell the New York Times. David Albright, a physicist and former weapons inspector, who heads the Institute for Science and International Security, similarly explains to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “The view in Vienna in the summer of 2001 was ‘Maybe this guy has a clever idea, but he really is just grabbing at almost straws to prove his case, and when he's debunked in one model, he then shifts it and tries to make his information fit another centrifuge model.’ And yet whenever you confronted him with the facts or the weaknesses in argument, he always came back with the same answer— ‘It's only for centrifuges.’ ” When Joe T. returns to Washington, he tells his superiors at the CIA that the IAEA agrees with his theory. But according to an unnamed senior US official, scientists at the IAEA send a summary of their views on the tubes to the US government.
People and organizations involved: Joe T.





July 2001-2003


Joe T. maintains his claim that the 7075-T6 aluminum tubes imported by Iraq but intercepted by the US in Jordan (see July 2001) were meant to be used as rotors in centrifuges. Joe T.'s theory becomes one of the most important components of the Bush administration's argument that Saddam Hussein is pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. Despite significant criticisms of his theory from prominent experts in the field, Joe T. (see (Mid-July 2001)-August 17, 2001) (see September 23, 2002) (see December 2002) receives an award for exceptional performance from the CIA for his analysis of the intercepted aluminum tubes.
People and organizations involved: Joe T.





(July 2001-March 2003)


In meetings and telephone calls, CIA officials inform administration officials that experts at the Department of Energy do not believe that the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq are intended for use in a gas centrifuge.





(July 2001-March 2003)


During briefings, intelligence analysts at CIA Winpac inform senior National Security Council officials who deal with nuclear proliferation issues that experts at the Department of Energy do not believe that the aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were intended for use in a gas centrifuge.





July 2001


National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice says, “Saddam does not control the northern part of the country. We are able to keep his arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”
People and organizations involved: Condoleezza Rice





July 23, 2001-July 25, 2001


The twenty-fourth negotiating session convenes to negotiate a proposal to add an enforcement and verification protocol to the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. For three days, representatives from more than 50 member-states speak favorably of ending the negotiations and adopting the protocol. The mechanism would require member-states to annually declare their biodefense facilities and programs as well as any industrial facilities with capabilities to produce microbial cultures in quantity. Additionally, all member-states would be subject to random inspections of any plant where biological weapons could be made. Inspections would also be conducted if a facility is suspected of illegally producing bioweapons; there are allegations of bioweapons use; or in the event of a disease outbreak suspected to be the result of the activities of a bioweapons facility. But on July 25, US Ambassador Donald Mahley announces that the US will block any consensus on the proposed changes to the convention. “The United States has concluded that the current approach to a protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention . . . is not, in our view, capable of . . . strengthening confidence in compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention,” he says. “We will therefore be unable to support the current text, even with changes.” US opposition to the convention is based on fears that inspections of US facilities might harm the profits of US biotech companies and impede the United States' current “biodefense” program.
People and organizations involved: Donald Mahley





Early September 2001


At the behest of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former CIA director James Woolsey flies to London to look for evidence tying Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and evidence that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta had worked with Iraqi intelligence to plan the September 11 attacks. Woolsey is advised to meet with Iraqi exiles and others who may have useful intelligence. Secretary of State Colin Powell and CIA director George Tenet are not informed of the visit.
People and organizations involved: Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey





September 4, 2001


The New York Times reports: “Over the past several years, the United States has embarked on a program of secret research on biological weapons that, some officials say, tests the limits of the global treaty banning such weapons. ... The projects, which have not been previously disclosed, were begun under President Clinton and have been embraced by the Bush administration, which intends to expand them.” The US claims that this research is needed to protect Americans from the threat posed by rogue nations or terrorist groups who may be developing such weapons.





September 11, 2001-March 17, 2003


In the months leading up to the war with Iraq, Bush administration officials manipulate the intelligence provided to them by analysts in order to drum up support for the invasion. Some analysts complain that they are under pressure to write assessments that support the administration's case for invading Iraq. On March 7, 2002, Knight Ridder reports that various military officials, intelligence employees, and diplomats in the Bush administration have charged “that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Hussein poses such an immediate threat to the United States that preemptive military action is necessary.”
Additional Info
Statements


Unnamed Unnamed US/British military officials, intelligence professionals, and diplomats
“Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books.” — October 2002
John Prados
“What is clear from intelligence reporting is that until about 1998 the CIA was fairly comfortable with its assessments on Iraq. But from that time on the agency gradually buckled under the weight of pressure to adopt alarmist views. After mid-2001, the rush to judgment on Iraq became a stampede.” — June 2003
Stansfield Turner
“There is no question in my mind (policymakers) distorted the situation, either because they had bad intelligence or because they misinterpreted it.” — mid June 2003
Unnamed US official
“They take a fact that you could draw several different conclusions from, and in every case they draw the conclusion that supports the policy, without any particular evidence that would meet the normal bar that analytic tradecraft would require for you to make that conclusion.” — July 2003
Unnamed senior Central Intelligence Agency official
Visits to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia by Dick Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, “sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here.” — June 4, 2003
Richard Clarke
“I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.” — 2004
“The crisis was manufactured, and Bush political adviser Karl Rove was telling Republicans to ‘run on the war.’ ” — 2004
“The White House carefully manipulated public opinion, never quite lied, but gave the very strong impression that Iraq did it. They did know better. We told them. The CIA told them. The FBI told them. They did know better. And the tragedy here is that Americans went to their death in Iraq thinking that they were avenging Sept. 11, when Iraq had nothing to do with Sept. 11. I think for a commander in chief and a vice president to allow that to happen is unconscionable.” — March 2004
Unnamed Senior CIA analyst
“Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was was not seriously scrutinized.” — summer 2003
Patrick Lang
The Pentagon “started picking out things that supported their thesis and stringing them into arguments that they could use with the President. It's not intelligence. It's political propaganda.” — May 2003
The Cabal had “cherry-picked the intelligence stream” so that its conclusions would support the case for war. The Defense Intelligence Agency had been “exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD.” — May 2003
“In some cases, they managed to push the intel guys back. In other cases, where they couldn't do that, they simply ignored them.” — June 2003
Ray McGovern
“y no stretch of the imagination was it an honest mistake. We were able to tell by last fall that there was very little substance to the main charges with respect to weapons of mass destruction. Even the sanitized version of the National Intelligence Estimate that was put on the CIA Web site—if you have any experience in intelligence, you could see what a thin reed they were relying on, and that there was little possibility of substantiating Dick Cheney's claim that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. That, of course, is the mushroom cloud that scared Congress into ceding its power to wage war.” — July 2003
“The Agency analysts that we are in touch with are disheartened, dispirited, angry. They are outraged.” — July 2003
Vince Cannistraro
“The Iraqi opposition, particularly the group led by Ahmed Chalabi, whose intelligence was underwritten by the Pentagon, played a crucial role in informing the Pentagon ... with information that looks, from this vantage point, like it was fraudulent, in many cases was fabricated, and the most benign interpretation was that it was just flat wrong.” — June 2003
“Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA.” — late 2002
“All I can tell you is there is a general feeling among CIA analysts that intelligence was politicized and that the CIA and (Defense Intelligence Agency) was not given full consideration because the Pentagon, the policymakers, including the vice-president's office, did not want to hear that message. They wanted to hear a hardline message supporting a policy they already adopted.” — mid 2003
“They are politicizing intelligence, no question about it. And they are undertaking a campaign to get George Tenet fired because they can't get him to say what they want on Iraq.” — October 25, 2002
He told Reuters that “he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up ‘fraudulent’ intelligence” that had been acquired through the notorious Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. — May 30, 2003
Unnamed British intelligence officer
“You cannot just cherry-pick evidence that suits your case and ignore the rest. It is a cardinal rule of intelligence. Yet that is what the PM is doing. What we have is a few strands of highly circumstantial evidence, and to justify an attack on Iraq it is being presented as a cast-iron case. That really is not good enough” — April 2003
David Albright
“The normal processing of establishing accurate intelligence was sidestepped.” — May 2003
“I don't know why there is not more debate. I have heard that a lot of people are expected to remain silent. has certainly scared people. I met one government scientist who said his phone was being monitored.” — September 2003
“I don't know why there is not more debate. I have heard that a lot of people are expected to remain silent. has certainly scared people. I met one government scientist who said his phone was being monitored.” — September 2003
“I saw that the administration was picking evidence quite carefully to support that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program. For example, there were defectors, credible defectors that said, ‘Iraq has no nuclear weapons programs.’ I never heard the administration talk about them.” — June 2003
Melvin A. Goodman
“I get into the issue of politicization. They don't say much during the question period, but afterwards people come up to me, DIA and CIA analysts who have had this pressure. I've gotten stories from DIA people being called into a supervisor's office and told they might lose their job if they didn't revise a paper. ‘This is not what the administration is looking for. You've got to find WMD's, which are out there.’ ” — January 2004
Max Cleland
“The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaeda) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war. There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of bin Laden's terrorist followers ... What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends.” — July 23, 2003
“The reason this report was delayed for so long—deliberately opposed at first, then slow-walked after it was created—is that the administration wanted to get the war in Iraq in and over ... before (it) came out. Had this report come out in January like it should have done, we would have known these things before the war in Iraq, which would not have suited the administration.” — July 23, 2003
Unnamed US Intelligence Officials
“Intelligence officials said that several CIA analysts had quietly complained that senior Defense Department officials and other Bush administration officials sought to press them to produce reports that supported the administration's positions on Iraq.” — May 2003
Bob Graham
“Several analysts have told colleagues they have become so frustrated that they have considered leaving the agency, according to government officials who have talked with the analysts.” — March 23, 2003
Frank Anderson
“Everybody in the community was intensely aware that they didn't have the intelligence. They knew they didn't have it .... The operational side was beating its head against the wall, saying, ‘We don't have it. We have to figure out a way to get it.’ The analytical side was understandably frustrated, and doing its best to provide analysis when there is limited, and bad information.... Because of the lack of humanity, we didn't have enough countervailing intelligence to dismiss what they were selling ... So in the end of the day, there was a strong bias to buy the intelligence that fit what the policy makers wanted. And it looks like that's what happened.” — Early 2004
Andrew Wilkie
In London, there was an “over-reliance” on “garbage grade human intelligence” by individuals he said were “desperate to encourage intervention.” — June 19, 2003
“The British and Australian governments were deliberately intent on using WMD to exaggerate the Iraq threat so as to stay in step with the US.... The apparent direct political interference with intelligence agencies in the United States and the more subtle political pressure applied in London and Canberra, meant that the rules were different with Iraq. Intelligence that once would have been discarded was now useable, with qualification. The problem was that the juicy bits of intelligence most in accord with governments position were being latched on to and the qualifications were being dropped.” — June 19, 2003
“In the assessments on the US, it was being made very clear to government all the things which were driving the US on Iraq. WMD wasn't the most important issue. In fact, it was seen as a secondary issue. .... It was also about the credibility of the US military. The US sees its military and threat of force as one of its most important foreign policy tools. They had threatened to use force and would lose credibility if they didn't.” — June 9, 2003
“ ‘Intelligence’ was how the Americans described the material accumulating on Iraq from their super-sophisticated spy systems. But two analysts at the Office of National Assessments in Canberra, a decent chunk of the growing pile looked like rubbish. In their offices on the top floor of the drab ASIO building, ONA experts found much of the US material worthy only of the delete button or the classified waste chute to the truck-sized shredder in the basement. ... Report after report from the bureaucracy made it abundantly clear that the US impatience to go for Iraq had very little to do with WMDs and an awful lot to do with US strategic and domestic interests.” — June 19, 2003
The Australian government portrayed Iraq as a country where “every factory was up to no good and weaponization was continuing apace.” — August 22, 2003
The Australian government misrepresented intelligence by concealing from the public ambiguities that had been present in intelligence assessments. Words like “probably,” “could” and “uncorroborated evidence suggests” were often left out of reports and “Words like ‘massive’ and ‘mammoth’ were included .” — August 22, 2003
The Australian government “skewed, misrepresented, used selectively and fabricated” intelligence in order to build its case for invading Iraq. — August 22, 2003
The Australian government sometimes exaggerated the Iraqi threat as a result of the “fairytales” coming out of the US. — August 22, 2003
John Howard's government was “prepared to deliberately exaggerate the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and terrorism threat so as to stay in step” with the US. — August 22, 2003
When Andrew Wilkie was asked if he thought Howard's office had sexed up the intelligence, he responded, “Yes, it was sexed up.” — August 22, 2003
“I will go so far as to say the material was going straight from ONA to the prime minister's office and the exaggeration was occurring in there, or the dishonesty was occurring somewhere in there .” — August 22, 2003
“The Government lied every time. ... It skewed, misrepresented, used selectively, and fabricated the Iraq story. ... The Government lied when the Prime Minister's office told the media I was mentally unstable. ... The Government lied when it associated Iraq with the Bali bombing and the Government lied every time that it associated Iraq with the war on terror. ... I think it would be far more valuable, far more useful for this country if instead of attacking those who criticize it, the Government sought to explain in a sensible and honest way why there is such a gap between their justification for the war and what we all now know for sure. speaking at a conference in Sydney today.” — August 23, 2003
“Sometimes the exaggeration was so great it was clear dishonesty.” — August 22, 2003
Greg Thielmann
“This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude ... ‘We know the answers—give us the intelligence to support those answers.’ ” Iraq “posed no imminent threat to either its neighbors or to the United States” when the invasion was launched in March 2003. — July 2003
Most of the blame “lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided.” — July 2003
“... the American public was seriously misled. The administration twisted, distorted, and simplified intelligence in a way that led Americans to seriously misunderstand the nature of the Iraq threat. I'm not sure I can think of a worse act against the people in a democracy than the president distorting critical classified information.” — (Spring 2004)
“...The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence. They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show. They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. I would assign some blame to the intelligence community and most of the blame to the senior administration officials.” — October 2003
“I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq.” — July 2003
“During the time that I was office director, 2000 to 2002, we never assessed that there was good evidence that Iraq was reconstituting or getting really serious about its nuclear weapons program.” — early June 2003
“Suspicions were presented as fact, contrary arguments ignored. When the administration did talk about specific evidence—it was basically declassified, sensitive information—it did it in a way that was also not entirely honest.” — early June 2003
“Evidence was lacking” for the administration's claims that Iraq was close to developing nuclear weapons and that it had ties with the terrorist organization, al-Qaeda. — early June 2003
There was “a lot of sorrow and anger at the way intelligence was misused.” It seemed as though “the administration didn't think the public would be enthusiastic about the idea of war” if they knew that much of the intelligence on Iraq was uncertain. — summer 2003
“What disturbs me deeply is what I think are the disingenuous statements made from the very top about what the intelligence did say. The area of distortion was greatest in the nuclear field.” — early June 2003
Unnamed US Army intelligence officer
“Rumsfeld was deeply, almost pathologically distorting the intelligence.” — May 2003
Unnamed CIA Analysts and Officials
“Analysts at the agency said they had felt pressured to make their intelligence reports on Iraq conform to Bush administration policies.” — early 2003
Karen Kwiatkowski
“Much has been written about the role of the founding members of the Project for a New American Century, the Center for Security Policy and the American Enterprise Institute and their new positions in the Bush administration. Certainly, appointees sharing particular viewpoints are expected to congregate, and that an overwhelming number of these appointees have such organizational ties is neither conspiratorial nor unusual. What is unusual is the way this network operates solely with its membership across the various agencies—in particular the State Department, the National Security Council and the Office of the Vice President. ... I personally witnessed several cases of staff officers being told not to contact their counterparts at State or the National Security Council because that particular decision would be processed through a different channel.” — July 2003
“...groupthink was, and probably remains, the predominant characteristic of Pentagon Middle East policy development. The result of groupthink is the elevation of opinion into a kind of accepted ‘fact,’ and uncritical acceptance of extremely narrow and isolated points of view. ... Groupthink, in this most recent case leading to invasion and occupation of Iraq, will be found, I believe, to have caused a subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-opting through deceit of a large segment of the Congress. Shortly before my retirement I read a secretary of state cable answering a long list of questions from a Middle Eastern country regarding US planning for the aftermath in Iraq. The answers had been heavily crafted by the Pentagon, and to me, they were remarkably inadequate, given the late stage of the game. I suggested to my boss that if this was as good as it got, some folks in the Pentagon might be sitting beside Saddam in the war crimes tribunals.” — July 2003
“I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.” — March 10, 2004
“I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.” — March 10, 2004
“War is generally crafted and pursued for political reasons, but the reasons given to the Congress and to the American people for this one were inaccurate and so misleading as to be false. Moreover, they were false by design. Certainly, the neoconservatives never bothered to sell the rest of the country on the real reasons for occupation of Iraq—- more bases from which to flex US muscle with Syria and Iran, and better positioning for the inevitable fall of the regional ruling sheikdoms. Maintaining OPEC on a dollar track and not a euro and fulfilling a half-baked imperial vision also played a role. These more accurate reasons for invading and occupying could have been argued on their merits—- an angry and aggressive US population might indeed have supported the war and occupation for those reasons. But Americans didn't get the chance for an honest debate.” — March 10, 2004
Unnamed US intelligence official
“It is impossible to support the bald conclusions being made by the White House and the Pentagon given the poor quantity and quality of the intelligence available. There is uproar within the intelligence community on all of these points, but the Bush White House has quashed dissent.” — Early 2003
“Analysts feel more politicized and more pushed than many of them can ever remember. ... The guys at the Pentagon shriek on issues such as the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. There has been a lot of pressure to write on this constantly, and to not let it drop.” — October 2002
“It is impossible to support the bald conclusions being made by the White House and the Pentagon given the poor quantity and quality of the intelligence available. There is uproar within the intelligence community on all of these points, but the Bush White House has quashed dissent.” — Early 2003
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
“While there have been occasions in the past when intelligence has been deliberately warped for political purposes, never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorize launching a war. You may not realize the extent of the current ferment within the intelligence community and particularly the CIA. In intelligence, there is one unpardonable sin—cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy. There is ample indication that this has been done in Iraq.” They called the skewing of intelligence “a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions.” — May 1, 2003
Unnamed US veteran intelligence officer
“The policy decisions weren't matching the reports we were reading every day.” — May 2003
Robin Cook
“When they looked at intelligence, they weren't looking at intelligence to try to get a balanced judgment, a guide to policy, out of it, they were looking to intelligence to support a conclusion they had already come to—which is that they were going to go to war.” — June 2003
Unnamed high-level UK source
“They ignored intelligence assessments which said Iraq was not a threat.” — April 2003
John Brady Kiesling
“The intelligence information we had was crap. We didn't know whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” — May 2003
Kenneth Pollack
“Throughout the spring and fall of 2002 and well into 2003 I received numerous complaints from friends and colleagues in the intelligence community, and from people in the policy community ... many Administration officials reacted strongly, negatively, and aggressively when presented with information or analysis that contradicted what they already believed about Iraq. Many of these officials believed that Saddam Hussein was the source of virtually all the problems in the Middle East and was an imminent danger to the United States because of his perceived possession of weapons of mass destruction and support of terrorism.... Intelligence officers who presented analyses that were at odds with the pre-existing views of senior Administration officials were subjected to barrages of questions and requests for additional information. They were asked to justify their work sentence by sentence: ‘Why did you rely on this source and not this other piece of information?’ ‘How does this conclusion square with this other point?’ ‘Please explain the history of Iraq's association with the organization you mention in this sentence.’ Reportedly, the worst fights were those over sources. The Administration gave greatest credence to accounts that presented the most lurid picture of Iraqi activities. In many cases intelligence analysts were distrustful of those sources, or knew unequivocally that they were wrong. But when they said so, they were not heeded; instead they were beset with further questions about their own sources.” — January 2004
Demetrius Perricos
“What we're getting and what President Bush may be getting is very different, to put it mildly.” — December 5, 2003
Unnamed senior military official
“Some people higher up the food chain made the leap from suspicion to conviction. I think they honestly believed that, based on how the Iraqis had always behaved in the past and not just because they wanted to scare the public into supporting the war.” — summer 2003


Commentaries


Karen Kwiatkowski
“Civil service and active-duty military professionals were noticeably uninvolved in key areas of interest to Under Secretary for Policy Douglas Feith, Deputy Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. In terms of Israel and Iraq, all primary staff work was conducted by political appointees. These personnel may be exceptionally qualified. But the human resource depth made possible through broad-based teamwork with the professional policy and intelligence corps was never established and apparently never wanted.” — July 2003
“If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of ‘intelligence’ found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam occupation has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the office of the secretary of defense.” — July 2003
Seymour Hersh
“It turns out that the intelligence community is really very much dominated by a small group of people in the Pentagon. Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, has more or less muscled his way into day-to-day intelligence operations. I wrote about an ad-hoc analytical group that began working in the Pentagon in the aftermath of September 11th, and which became formally known as the Office of Special Plans last August. The office is the responsibility of William Luti, the Under-Secretary of Defense, and its director is Abram Shulsky. They argued that the CIA and other agencies, including the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department, weren't able to understand the connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and the extent to which Iraq was involved in the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. They felt that these agencies didn't get it right because they didn't have the right point of view. The Pentagon group's idea was, essentially: Let's just assume that there is a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq, and let's assume that they have made weapons of mass destruction, and that they're still actively pursuing nuclear weapons and have generated thousands of tons of chemical and biological weapons and not destroyed them. Having made that leap of faith, let's then look at the intelligence the CIA has assembled with fresh eyes and see what we can see. As one person I spoke to told me, they wanted to believe it was there and, by God, they found it.... If it is true that this Administration deliberately, from the very beginning, understood that the best way to mobilize the American people was to present Saddam as a direct national-security threat to us, without having the evidence beforehand that he was, that's, well, frankly, lying. That's the worst kind of deceit a President can practice. We don't elect our President to not tell us the real situation of the world, particularly when he sends kids to kill and be killed.... My view as a journalist is simple: you have to hold public officials to the highest possible standard. What's happened in America is very disturbing. All of us, as parents, don't want our children to lie to us, and, earlier, as children, don't want to be lied to by our parents. We all understand that integrity in a relationship is the core issue. The tragedy in America today is that we don't begin to impose on our national leaders the same standard which we hold so dear in our personal life. In other words, if we were to say, ‘Well, that's always happened,’ we'd almost be officially saying that there is a double standard—that what we can't tolerate in our personal life is O.K. in the most important officials we have, those officials with power not only over us but over our young men and women who go to fight, and over the people they kill. If we start saying that anything less than the highest standard is tolerable, we're really destroying democracy. Democracy exists on the basis of truth.” — May 12, 2003
Edward Kennedy
“There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud.” — September 15, 2003
Joseph Cirincione
“The intelligence officials are responding to the political leadership, not the other way around, which is how it should be. The politics are driving our intelligence assessments at this point.” — October 2002
David MacMichael
“The use of deception to frighten Congress and secure its consent for the October resolution reflects the way our government has been functioning in the area of war and peace for more than half a century. Congress has effectively resigned its power in these areas to the executive. This has been done over and over again, mostly notably in the case of Vietnam, and the response of Congress has been nearly always to pass what is, by my definition, a plainly unconstitutional act, the War Powers Act.” — July 2003
Jonathan Dean
“There's more and more evidence that public opinion in our three countries was manipulated by the Bush Administration with the fragments of intelligence that they had.” — June 2003
Knight Ridder Newspapers
“... the inclusion of the uranium story in Bush's speech appears to support charges that some pro-invasion officials ignored intelligence that could hurt the administration's case that Saddam was pursuing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.” — June 13, 2003
Joseph C. Wilson
“It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war. It begs the question, what else are they lying about?” He added that he did not believe the war was about the alleged threat posed by Saddam Hussein, instead suggesting that the real motive behind the war was to “redraw the map of the Middle East.” — Early July 2003
“I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” — Early July 2003
Richard Durbin
“It's troubling to have classified information that contradicts statements made by the administration. There's more they should share with the public.” — October 2002
Patrick Lang
“What we have here is advocacy, not intelligence work. I don't think were lying; I just think they did a poor job. It's not the intelligence community. It's these guys in the Office of the Secretary of Defense who were playing the intelligence community.” — June 2003
The CIA did little to resist pressure from above. The agency had “no guts at all.” — May 2003
Ray McGovern
“It's the first time that I've seen such a long-term, orchestrated plan of deception by which one branch of our government deliberately misled the other on a matter of war and peace. Here was a very calculated plan, proceeding from a ‘Mein Kampf’ type of document. All one need do is consult the Project for the New American Century on the Web to see the ideological and strategic underpinnings of this campaign. The first objective was to deceive Congress into approving the plans. They succeeded masterfully. They had their war, and they thought that in the wake of the war, with Iraqis opening their arms to us, no one would really care whether there were, in fact, weapons of mass destruction. They were absolutely wrong on that.” — July 2003
“The Gulf of Tonkin was a spur-of-the-moment thing, and Lyndon Johnson seized on that. That's very different from the very calculated, 18-month, orchestrated, incredibly cynical campaign of lies that we've seen to justify a war. This is an order of magnitude different. It's so blatant.” — Late 2003
“Now we know that no other President of the United States has ever lied so baldly and so often and so demonstrably ... The presumption now has to be that he's lying any time that he's saying anything.” — Late 2003
The neoconservatives who had led the drive for invading Iraq were referred in top policy and intelligence circles as “the crazies” and that their case for war had been “95 per cent charade.” — September 2003
The neoconservatives who had led the drive for invading Iraq were referred in top policy and intelligence circles as “the crazies” and that their case for war had been “95 per cent charade.” — September 2003
“Never before in my 40 years of experience in this town has intelligence been used in so cynical and so orchestrated a way.” — July 2003
Politicization of intelligence is “a problem whenever a US administration sets its heart on a policy that cannot be supported by intelligence.” — April 2003
Larry Johnson
“We've entered the world of George Orwell. I'm disgusted. The truth has to be told. We can't allow our leaders to use bogus information to justify war.” — early June 2003
Vince Cannistraro
“The intelligence isn't reliable at all. Much of it is propaganda. Much of it is telling the Defense Department what they want to hear. And much of it is used to support Chalabi's own presidential ambitions. They make no distinction between intelligence and propaganda, using alleged informants and defectors who say what Chalabi wants them to say, cooked information that goes right into presidential and vice-presidential speeches.” — Before March 19, 2003
David Albright
“I became dismayed when a knowledgeable government scientist told me that the administration could say anything it wanted about the tubes while government scientists who disagreed were expected to remain quiet.” — June 2003
Ivan Eland
“I think that they're not getting the intelligence outcome that they want from the CIA, that is, that the CIA is skeptical of ties between Al-Qaeda and Iraq—justifiably so. The CIA run around trying to corroborate this stuff, and it hasn't had too much luck. And the ties that they have claimed seem very thin and on closer inspection don't seem to go anywhere.” — October 2002
Bob Kerrey
“ understood that to get the American people on their side they needed to come up with something more to say than ‘We've liberated Iraq and got rid of a tyrant.’ So they had to find some ties to weapons of mass destruction and were willing to allow a majority of Americans to incorrectly conclude that the invasion of Iraq had something to do with the World Trade Center. Overemphasizing the national-security threat made it more difficult to get the rest of the world on our side. It was the weakest and most misleading argument we could use. ... It appears that they have the intelligence. The problem is, they didn't like the conclusions.” — spring 2003
Mel Goodman
“To deny that there was any pressure on the intelligence community is just absurd.” — June 2003
US government official
“I'm suggesting that either the intelligence was so bad and flawed—and if that's the case, then somebody's head ought to roll for that—or the intelligence was exaggerated or twisted in a way to make a more convenient case to the American people. ... If there's a strategic decision for taking down Iraq, if it's the so-called neoconservative idea that taking apart Iraq and creating a democracy, or whatever it is, will change the equation in the Middle East, then make the case based on this.” — September 23, 2003
Kenneth Pollack
The Bush administration dismantled “the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them. ... They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information. They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn't have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.” — October 2003
“It's looking like in truth the Iraqi (weapons) program was gray. The Bush administration was trying to say it was black.” — June 2003
Bob Filippone
“Senator Graham felt that they declassified only things that supported their position and left classified what did not support that policy.” — June 2003
Scott Ritter
“The entire case the Bush administration made against Iraq is a lie. ... What was the basis of the affirmation by (US Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld? He said there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—nobody asked him to prove it. The press just printed it. We have now to demand the proof.” — mid-July 2003
Menzies Campbell
“There's no doubt that the intelligence services have been concerned about what they see as the misuse of information ? in the sense that they believe the Government is inclined to use what supports the Government's political case without taking full account of the qualifications attached to such information. ... The security services are unhappy at the way some of their products are being used. It's certainly the case that they feel there has been selective use of material.” — early 2003
Patrick G. Eddington
“We've heard from multiple sources inside the agency about the pressure to conform. They say they feel pressure to shape estimates to support the administration's positions—or at least not contradict the administration's positions.” — April 2003








Shortly after September 11, 2001


According to White House counterterrorism advisor, Richard Clarke, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, asks during a meeting, “Why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden?” Clarke responds with an explaination that only al-Qaeda “poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States.” Wolfowitz then claims that Iraqi terrorism poses “at least as much” a danger. According to Clarke, FBI and CIA representatives who are present at the meeting agree that there is no evidence to support Wolfowitz's assertion.
People and organizations involved: Richard Clarke, Paul Wolfowitz





September 11, 2001


Seven members of Donald Rumsfeld's so-called neocon “brain trust,” including Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and William Luti, head of the Pentagon's Near Eastern and South Asian desk, are “busy on unrelated missions in Europe and the Middle East.” They return to Washington the next day (see September 12, 2001).
People and organizations involved: Douglas Feith, William Luti





Soon after September 11, 2001


Soon after September 11, a concerted effort begins to pin the blame for the attacks on Saddam Hussein. Retired General Wesley Clark will later say on NBC's “Meet the Press” in June 2003 and in a letter published by the New York Times that “immediately after 9/11” there was a “concerted effort ... to pin 9/11 and the terrorism problem on Saddam Hussein” and use the attacks as an excuse to go after the Iraqi dictator. When asked by NBC's Tim Russert, who was behind the concerted effort, Clark will respond: “Well, it came from the White House, it came from people around the White House. It came from all over.” Clark also says, “I got a call on 9/11. I was on CNN, and I got a call at my home saying, ‘You got to say this is connected. This is state-sponsored terrorism. This has to be connected to Saddam Hussein.’ I said, ‘But—I'm willing to say it, but what's your evidence?’ And I never got any evidence.” He says the phone call came from a Middle Eastern think tank outside of the country.
People and organizations involved: Wesley Clark





Shortly after September 11, 2001


Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and Middle East specialist Harold Rhode recruit David Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for the American Enterprise Institute, to serve as a Pentagon consultant. Wurmser is a known advocate of regime change in Iraq, having expressed his views in a 1997 op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal (see November 12, 1997) and having participated in the drafting of a 1996 policy paper for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” (see July 8, 1996). Wurmser works at Feith's office, where he and another neocon, F. Michael Maloof, a former aide to Richard Perle, head a secret intelligence unit, named the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, or the “Wurmser-Maloof” project. The four- to five-person unit, a “B Team” commissioned by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, uses powerful computers and software to scan and sort already-analyzed documents and reports from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and other agencies in an effort to consider possible interpretations and angles of analysis that these agencies may have missed due to deeply ingrained biases and out-of-date worldviews. The Pentagon unit's activities cause tension within the traditional intelligence community. Critics claim that its members manipulate and distort intelligence, “cherry-picking” bits of information that fit their preconceived conclusions. “There is a complete breakdown in the relationship between the Defense Department and the intelligence community, to include its own Defense Intelligence Agency,” a defense official will tell the New York Times. “Wolfowitz and company disbelieve any analysis that doesn't support their own preconceived conclusions. The CIA is enemy territory, as far are they're concerned.” Defending the project, Paul Wolfowitz will tell the New York Times that the team's purpose is to circumvent the problem “in intelligence work, that people who are pursuing a certain hypothesis will see certain facts that others won't, and not see other facts that others will.” He insists that the special Pentagon unit is “not making independent intelligence assessments.” One of the cell's projects includes sorting through existing intelligence to create a map of relationships demonstrating links between terrorist groups and state powers. This chart of links, which they name the “matrix,” leads the intelligence unit to conclude that Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and other groups with conflicting ideologies and objectives are allowing these differences to fall to the wayside as they discover their shared hatred of the US. The group's research also leads them to believe that al-Qaeda has a presence in such places as Latin American. For weeks, the unit will attempt to uncover evidence tying Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, a theory advocated by both Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. David Wurmser will later be relocated to the State Department where he will be the senior advisor to Undersecretary Of State for Arms Control John Bolton.(see September 2002).
People and organizations involved: Douglas Feith, David Wurmser, F. Michael Maloof, Harold Rhode, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle





2:40PM (EST), September 11, 2001


About five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld learns that three of the names on the airplane passenger manifests are suspected al-Qaeda operatives. Notes taken by one of the aides, read: “ best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S.H. at same time. Not only UBL . ... Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” However, at this time, there is no intelligence indicating that Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks.
People and organizations involved: Donald Rumsfeld Additional Info
Commentaries


CBS News
“arely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq—even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks... . With the intelligence all pointing toward bin Laden, Rumsfeld ordered the military to begin working on strike plans..... Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld.” — September 4, 2002








September 12, 2001


Seven members of Donald Rumsfeld's so-called neocon “brain trust,” meet at an airport in Frankf

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

We can use much of this information as a basis for dialouge. If someone wants to call information sketchy, or fabricated, I think we can pull together plenty of info from what as already been assembled here, if ya'll got another prospective from a reliable source please feel free to post it here.

Discuss.

Of course the underlying reason for America and her impedning wars in Central Asia, Russia, North Korea, and the Middle East are based on oil and the economics of oil, but what SOLUTIONS can be brought forth to counter such an initiative?

Clearly the US and Britain have a great deal at stake. What do you think?


******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

>Of course the underlying reason for America and her
>impedning wars in Central Asia, Russia, North Korea, and the
>Middle East are based on oil and the economics of oil, but
>what SOLUTIONS can be brought forth to counter such an
>initiative?

... and what impending war is there with Russia?

I'm with you on the other stuff though. Haven't read through the stuff you posted here, but I read Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard (at least significant chunks of it) as you did too I think, so I know where you're coming from with this.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If your music was any good it would've been stolen by the white man by now."

- Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

___________________

Mar-A-Lago delenda est

And Out of control.

Here is a link to congressional thoughts on the matter back in '93.

http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/crs/93-612f.htm



But to answer your question, well it has EVERY thing to do with Energy policy more specifically. We had a deal with N. Korea to give them oil and supply them energy at a discount. I don't remember the particulars but it's somewhere on the net if u want I can search for a link.

Basically we knew they had hard times with the famine, and without Soviet help. So we told 'em, hey if ya'll go 'head and cease making Nuclear Energy to meet your energy concerns we'll give ya'll all the energy you need.

We lied.

We aint gave them not near 25% of what we promised. Now, they got a FAMINE on they hands already so ole Kimmy aint trying to hear that folk have to go without power AND food.

All they really got going for them over there is a good sized standing army, and a not TOO shabby military complex.

so, he said eff it. If ya'll won't help us with Oil then we making some Nuclear Energy. It's cheap and we need it.

We told them NO. Clinton said: NO!

Bush said: Hell NO!

Kimmy said eff u.
1.) you don't keep your promises.
2.) you donp't like us and we don't like you.
3.) you more worried about China's economy than us.

China is backing off cus they busy buying IBM and buying up City debt here in the states. If they rock the boat they will face tariffs that they can't afford to mess with in this stage of their economic "growth".

So, N. Korea is on it's own. It figures it has no choice, so it not only makes Nuclear Energy but starts a weopons program to defend their right to make Nuclear Energy.

SO...now we got an issue. Are we gonna let China in on the Energy game? of course not. We are fighting with Russia right now to make sure only Western Europe and the US has control over the world's energy.

Hell, Russia lost out when we went into Bahgdad. They lost ALOT of doe, and when we stopped Iraq from all that Euro talk Britain needed us more than ever cus all of that infrastructure and stuff in the region after we go to war with Jordan, Syria, Iran, etc will be based on US dollars.

Which frankly, the US Dollar NEEDS right now, cus the dollar is falling quite rapidly to the Euro, and China is Coming UP.

If Japan ever gets over that contagion issue from back in '98 we can be in some real trouble economically- like the US will be in SERIOUS trouble. The type of trouble that changes world status.

So, we over there in the Middle East, we shipping folk off to N. Korea (if you know specialist in the Military they'll tell ya they gearing up for N. korea). It's weird to watch it all go down.

Cus they layed it all out for the entire country to see. It's in every library, it's on the net. There was a strategy for this energy policy since Nixon and it has never changed no matter who the pres was.

Only alternative is to beat it in the marketplace.

but how?


******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

>Basically we knew they had hard times with the famine, and
>without Soviet help. So we told 'em, hey if ya'll go 'head
>and cease making Nuclear Energy to meet your energy concerns
>we'll give ya'll all the energy you need.

The policy really had to do with nuclear weapons rather than energy per se. Basically we wanted them to shut down their nuclear reactors, which they were using to produce weapons-grade plutonium, and in exchange we agreed to supply them with their energy needs. In addition to giving them oil we agreed to build two light-water nuclear reactors, which are much more difficult to use to produce weapons-grade nuclear material than the reactors they have.

>We lied.

They lied too - they agreed to stop developing nuclear weapons, when they were secretly developing enriched uranium the whole time. No honor among theives I guess.

>We aint gave them not near 25% of what we promised. Now,
>they got a FAMINE on they hands already so ole Kimmy aint
>trying to hear that folk have to go without power AND food.

I think we gave them the oil we promised, but we stalled on the reactors after they started bugging out with test-firing missiles over Japan and shit. As for the famine, ole Kimmy was pouring money into his military, developing missiles and nukes and whatnot, while his people starved - he don't give a damn about his people going without food or power as long as his army remains strong.

>All they really got going for them over there is a good
>sized standing army, and a not TOO shabby military complex.
>
>so, he said eff it. If ya'll won't help us with Oil then we
>making some Nuclear Energy. It's cheap and we need it.
>
>We told them NO. Clinton said: NO!

That's not what Clinton said no to; Clinton said no when they started processing spent fuel rods into weapons-grade plutonium.

>Bush said: Hell NO!

And Bush said hell no to the enriched uranium, which they were developing for weapons, not energy production.

>Kimmy said eff u.
>1.) you don't keep your promises.
>2.) you donp't like us and we don't like you.
>3.) you more worried about China's economy than us.

Kimmy didn't care about promises cuz he was breaking them himself from jump. What he really said eff u to was us telling him that he couldn't have nukes: when we confronted them with evidence that they were secretly developing enriched uranium, they basically said yeah so what u gonna do about it? And we started sabre-rattling, and they said eff it, kicked out the international nuclear inspectors from their reactors/enrichment facilities and started processing plutonium again. He was intent on getting nukes one way or the other.

>China is backing off cus they busy buying IBM and buying up
>City debt here in the states. If they rock the boat they
>will face tariffs that they can't afford to mess with in
>this stage of their economic "growth".

Yeah China's not trying to fight N. Korea's battles at this point, they got bigger fish to fry.

>So, N. Korea is on it's own. It figures it has no choice,
>so it not only makes Nuclear Energy but starts a weopons
>program to defend their right to make Nuclear Energy.

No, their weapons program is to defend their right to remain a crazy Stalinist dystopia.

>SO...now we got an issue. Are we gonna let China in on the
>Energy game? of course not.

?

I'm not following.

>We are fighting with Russia
>right now to make sure only Western Europe and the US has
>control over the world's energy.

Yeah, but we ain't actually going to war with them.

>Hell, Russia lost out when we went into Bahgdad. They lost
>ALOT of doe,

That's true.

>and when we stopped Iraq from all that Euro
>talk Britain needed us more than ever cus all of that
>infrastructure and stuff in the region after we go to war
>with Jordan, Syria, Iran, etc will be based on US dollars.

So why does Britain need us for that? They're not on the Euro.

And we're not going to war with Jordan. Iran and maybe Syria we might bomb though.

>Which frankly, the US Dollar NEEDS right now, cus the dollar
>is falling quite rapidly to the Euro, and China is Coming
>UP.

That's true.

>If Japan ever gets over that contagion issue from back in
>'98 we can be in some real trouble economically- like the US
>will be in SERIOUS trouble. The type of trouble that
>changes world status.

?

Japan's economy had serious problems already, the contagion shit wasn't what caused that.

>So, we over there in the Middle East, we shipping folk off
>to N. Korea (if you know specialist in the Military they'll
>tell ya they gearing up for N. korea). It's weird to watch
>it all go down.

We ain't doing jack to North Korea.

>Only alternative is to beat it in the marketplace.
>
>but how?

?

You mean alternative energy and stuff like that?

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If your music was any good it would've been stolen by the white man by now."

- Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

___________________

Mar-A-Lago delenda est

>>Basically we knew they had hard times with the famine, and
>>without Soviet help. So we told 'em, hey if ya'll go 'head
>>and cease making Nuclear Energy to meet your energy concerns
>>we'll give ya'll all the energy you need.
>
>The policy really had to do with nuclear weapons rather than
>energy per se.

agreed.

Basically we wanted them to shut down their
>nuclear reactors, which they were using to produce
>weapons-grade plutonium, and in exchange we agreed to supply
>them with their energy needs. In addition to giving them oil
>we agreed to build two light-water nuclear reactors, which
>are much more difficult to use to produce weapons-grade
>nuclear material than the reactors they have.
>
>>We lied.
>
>They lied too - they agreed to stop developing nuclear
>weapons, when they were secretly developing enriched uranium
>the whole time. No honor among theives I guess.
>
>>We aint gave them not near 25% of what we promised. Now,
>>they got a FAMINE on they hands already so ole Kimmy aint
>>trying to hear that folk have to go without power AND food.
>
>I think we gave them the oil we promised,

no we didn't. I read that we did for a number of years, and then stopped.

but we stalled on
>the reactors after they started bugging out with test-firing
>missiles over Japan and shit.

that was after we balked on the oil.


As for the famine, ole Kimmy
>was pouring money into his military, developing missiles and
>nukes and whatnot, while his people starved - he don't give
>a damn about his people going without food or power as long
>as his army remains strong.

Now that I can agree with. He got all of them trained with that compulsary BS. He's really crazy. But he has a right to defend his country. If he didn't have that complex he's got we woulda been marched that 40 thousand across that border since China don't care right now.

>
>>All they really got going for them over there is a good
>>sized standing army, and a not TOO shabby military complex.
>>
>>so, he said eff it. If ya'll won't help us with Oil then we
>>making some Nuclear Energy. It's cheap and we need it.
>>
>>We told them NO. Clinton said: NO!
>
>That's not what Clinton said no to; Clinton said no when
>they started processing spent fuel rods into weapons-grade
>plutonium.

I was under the impression they did this AFTER we said that they couldn't make Nuclear Energy. Where did you get that from?
>
>>Bush said: Hell NO!
>
>And Bush said hell no to the enriched uranium, which they
>were developing for weapons, not energy production.

Bush also said he wasn't giving them oil either. At that point, what do you do if you are Ill?


>>Kimmy said eff u.
>>1.) you don't keep your promises.
>>2.) you donp't like us and we don't like you.
>>3.) you more worried about China's economy than us.
>
>Kimmy didn't care about promises cuz he was breaking them
>himself from jump. What he really said eff u to was us
>telling him that he couldn't have nukes: when we confronted
>them with evidence that they were secretly developing
>enriched uranium, they basically said yeah so what u gonna
>do about it?

I remember that. It was bold. I laffed. But that's after we lied about the oil. I mean, he has every right to be mad. Who are we to tell another sovereign what to do? We thumb our noses at the UN. Should Israel and the US alone be allowed to do that?


And we started sabre-rattling, and they said
>eff it, kicked out the international nuclear inspectors from
>their reactors/enrichment facilities and started processing
>plutonium again. He was intent on getting nukes one way or
>the other.
>

Yeah, and so was Pakistan n India. Where was the angst on that?


>>China is backing off cus they busy buying IBM and buying up
>>City debt here in the states. If they rock the boat they
>>will face tariffs that they can't afford to mess with in
>>this stage of their economic "growth".
>
>Yeah China's not trying to fight N. Korea's battles at this
>point, they got bigger fish to fry.
>
>>So, N. Korea is on it's own. It figures it has no choice,
>>so it not only makes Nuclear Energy but starts a weopons
>>program to defend their right to make Nuclear Energy.
>
>No, their weapons program is to defend their right to remain
>a crazy Stalinist dystopia.

true.
>
>>SO...now we got an issue. Are we gonna let China in on the
>>Energy game? of course not.
>
>?
>
>I'm not following.

I think they'll deal with China. And since we aint letting China in the game cus we trying to Banana Republic them outta a position- u can hang that up.
>
>>We are fighting with Russia
>>right now to make sure only Western Europe and the US has
>>control over the world's energy.
>
>Yeah, but we ain't actually going to war with them.
>
>>Hell, Russia lost out when we went into Bahgdad. They lost
>>ALOT of doe,
>
>That's true.
>
>>and when we stopped Iraq from all that Euro
>>talk Britain needed us more than ever cus all of that
>>infrastructure and stuff in the region after we go to war
>>with Jordan, Syria, Iran, etc will be based on US dollars.
>
>So why does Britain need us for that? They're not on the
>Euro.

Well at the time, the Dutch were about to corner them. Prices were type ridiculous in Britain and I still think they are kinda high if I'm not mistaken. If the Euro was the currency of choice in the OPEC nations both the Dollar and the Pound would suffer. So would the Mark. which is prolly why the Germans were quick to show them bunkers. When we invaded Iraq, the euro question was no longer a question.


>
>And we're not going to war with Jordan. Iran and maybe Syria
>we might bomb though.

We fittna mess with the lot of 'em. Watch. Egypt gets a pass as usual of course. They signed that treaty back in the day so they get cash and love.

>
>>Which frankly, the US Dollar NEEDS right now, cus the dollar
>>is falling quite rapidly to the Euro, and China is Coming
>>UP.
>
>That's true.
>
>>If Japan ever gets over that contagion issue from back in
>>'98 we can be in some real trouble economically- like the US
>>will be in SERIOUS trouble. The type of trouble that
>>changes world status.
>
>?
>
>Japan's economy had serious problems already, the contagion
>shit wasn't what caused that. Yeah. I mean any time you try that artificial controll ish in a capitalist economy u effin up. There was no way they were gonna protect their domestic market forever, and it fell apart, didn't it. But contagion was certainly the knockout blow.


>
>>So, we over there in the Middle East, we shipping folk off
>>to N. Korea (if you know specialist in the Military they'll
>>tell ya they gearing up for N. korea). It's weird to watch
>>it all go down.
>
>We ain't doing jack to North Korea.

I wish that were true. I'm hearing an awful lot about folk heading that way. Why would we be bolstering troops? especially non combatant groups (are we that short in numbers)?

That aint exactly rattling sabers.

>
>>Only alternative is to beat it in the marketplace.
>>
>>but how?
>
>?
>
>You mean alternative energy and stuff like that?

Yeah. I mean. I dunno. I just hope I guess, cus I got no idea how you'd get that off the ground.

I hope the younger cats like Zewari and Fredrisco got some answers. That's really gonna be their job in the final analysis- I think.

>
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>"If your music was any good it would've been stolen by the
>white man by now."
>
>- Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

>>I think we gave them the oil we promised,
>
>no we didn't. I read that we did for a number of years, and
>then stopped.

I thought we only stopped after the enriched uranium thing came to light? Or maybe we weren't giving them as much as we promised? I dunno.

> but we stalled on
>>the reactors after they started bugging out with test-firing
>>missiles over Japan and shit.
>
>that was after we balked on the oil.

Really? I didn't know about that.

>Now that I can agree with. He got all of them trained with
>that compulsary BS. He's really crazy. But he has a right
>to defend his country. If he didn't have that complex he's
>got we woulda been marched that 40 thousand across that
>border since China don't care right now.

There's still like 10 million land mines in the DMZ, and they could still flatten Seoul with their old conventional artillery alone, so it's not like we could just waltz right in there unless Kim beefed up his military & weapons programs.

>I was under the impression they did this AFTER we said that
>they couldn't make Nuclear Energy. Where did you get that
>from?

Nah, they already had the nuclear reactors going for power generation, shit hit the fan when they started removing the spent fuel rods from the reactor and reprocessing them into weapons-grade plutonium. Here's a timeline of what went down:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/kim/etc/cron.html

>Bush also said he wasn't giving them oil either. At that
>point, what do you do if you are Ill?

Exactly, Bush totally bungled the whole situation. But that's why I thought we were still giving them oil up until that point, otherwise how was Bush threatening to stop giving them oil if we had already cut them off?

Anyway here's a good article detailing how Bush screwed that whole thing up:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0405.kaplan.html

>I remember that. It was bold. I laffed. But that's after
>we lied about the oil.

But they were lying about the enriched uranium from jump. Reminds me of Midnight Run when DeNero and Grodin were like:

Grodin: "You lied to me!"

DeNiro: "What the - -YOU LIED TO ME FIRST!"

Grodin: "Yes! Yes. But you didn't know I was lying to you when you lied to me... So as far as you knew, you lied to me first!"

>I mean, he has every right to be
>mad. Who are we to tell another sovereign what to do?

True, but then they have no complaint about the oil and whatnot.

>thumb our noses at the UN. Should Israel and the US alone
>be allowed to do that?

Well technically they're not even doing that I don't think - the NPT treaty is strictly voluntary, so if they want to withdraw from it they're free to do so, they just lose the perks offered under the agreement. The US has threatened sanctions, but NKorea threatened back that that they would take that as a declaration of war and respond accordingly, so it pretty much boils down to a Mexican standoff situation.

And the US and Israel aren't the only ones who thumb their noses at the UN - the most blatant maybe, but certainly not the only ones.

>Yeah, and so was Pakistan n India. Where was the angst on
>that?

There was angst over that too, but we're not technically in a state of war with Pakistan & India.

>I think they'll deal with China. And since we aint letting
>China in the game cus we trying to Banana Republic them
>outta a position- u can hang that up.

?

Maybe I'm slow, but I's still not following. I don't know much about China's energy situation.

> Well at the time, the Dutch were about to corner them.
>Prices were type ridiculous in Britain and I still think
>they are kinda high if I'm not mistaken. If the Euro was
>the currency of choice in the OPEC nations both the Dollar
>and the Pound would suffer. So would the Mark. which is
>prolly why the Germans were quick to show them bunkers.
>When we invaded Iraq, the euro question was no longer a
>question.

Oh OK, yeah I see what you're saying.

>We fittna mess with the lot of 'em. Watch. Egypt gets a
>pass as usual of course. They signed that treaty back in
>the day so they get cash and love.

Well we've got Jordan in our pocket too for the most part. Iran and Syria are really the only ones in the region I see us messing with like that.

>I wish that were true. I'm hearing an awful lot about folk
>heading that way. Why would we be bolstering troops?
>especially non combatant groups (are we that short in
>numbers)?
>
>That aint exactly rattling sabers.

I dunno, could just be a show of force to remind them that even though our focus is on Iraq & the Middle East we can still flex in East Asia. But there is really no way we're invading NKorea, especially now that they most likely have several nukes. They've done war game simulations and even without the nukes it would be a total bloodbath, for all their tough talk they really ain't trying to get into it like that.

>Yeah. I mean. I dunno. I just hope I guess, cus I got no
>idea how you'd get that off the ground.
>
>I hope the younger cats like Zewari and Fredrisco got some
>answers. That's really gonna be their job in the final
>analysis- I think.

There's lots of ideas out there, the problem is getting them off the ground and implementing them. Zewari is right about the oil industry, they are intent on keeping hold of their monopoly on energy and will fight tooth and nail anyone who threatens that. So it's not just a matter of ideas and innovation, it's a matter of fighting that power structure. How to do that? I have no idea.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If your music was any good it would've been stolen by the white man by now."

- Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

___________________

Mar-A-Lago delenda est

I got no idea either. I think you gotta beat them in the Marketplace. And I got no idea how you even get some ish to market without them trying to stop you. I think it's gonna have to be some shit where one builds some sort of infrastructure and goes strait to countries that need it. If the Developing countries can get a boost it might work.

*shrugs*

good ass convo tho, and thanks for the information.

******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

but that's not gonna happen in the US, at least not initially, cuz of the stranglehold the oil industry has on this country.

So there's gotta be a successful model in place somewhere else to look to first. Denmark currently generates 15% of their electricity by wind power, and they're planning to up that to 50% by 2020. Ireland recently completed the world's largest wind farm offshore south of Dublin, it's projected to generate 10% of Ireland's electricity.

Once renewable energy gets a proven track record for beating conventional energy sources in those markets, people might wise up and see that it can succeed in the marketplace over here.

As for the developing world, I dunno... Denmark and Ireland are pretty small countries, but Germany is also getting into wind power & they have the industrial power to build significant infrastructure. But as for the economics of how exporting it to developing countries would work, I don't know. I'm sure there's gotta be a way to make it work though.

>good ass convo tho, and thanks for the information.

Likewise. And good shit on your new moderatorhood (if that's even a word) - chase those crazy baldheads out of town, yo!

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If your music was any good it would've been stolen by the white man by now."

- Triumph the Insult Comic Dog

___________________

Mar-A-Lago delenda est

_________________________

*TWINNING*

_________________________

*TWINNING*

'Round bout '97 when Clinton had a decision to make on what he was going to do with Iraq. Then he decided to start bombing 2 years later.



******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

_________________________

*TWINNING*

_________________________

*TWINNING*

A series of years and administrations. Like I said before- I don't put this on one administration. The Euro was a threat from it's inception. The only thing that made it look weak at first was countries like Italy's economy etc...

Hussein was thinking of going to the Euro to kill US control of the oil money for a minute.

Germans joined late if I recall correctly.

It's all broken down here:

well I was fittna give you a link, but the site won't come up. On PBS.org they talk about the situation under Clinton's administration concerning NAFTA, the Euro, Asia's dominoe effect of contagion effecting the US's Southern neighbors and how we had to bail them out.

You combine this with the situation in the Gulf and the OPEC countries thinking of converting to the Euro (once again I beilve this is B4 the Germans converted) It was some ugly stuff about to go down.

I believe it's all broken down even further in the archives on the rabbit hole post. There are timelines there. It shuold be on page 13 of the archives.

There is a timeline

******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

i may be slow or have misunderstood what you said

but

i think you implied the german mark would suffer from the euro take over.

and it's impossible since the mark is part of the euro
and the mark stopped existing at the moment the Euro started existing (1999)
_________________________

*TWINNING*

_________________________

*TWINNING*

I thought they converted later. I remember they had talks of the Euro for some years, and many countries that trade with the US and Europe felt it would be beneficial to change over to the euro.

That's my bad.

I wonder how I got that in my head?

here is the PBS link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/

I see now. they weren't one of the 3 EU countries NOT using the Euro.

I always thought they were. Damn I wonder how I got that impression. I musta read it somewhere. Damn. That ruins alot of my little theories.

Thanks for that.


******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

The Euro would have not existed without them.
Hell the whole EU is based around the Germany-France axis...


_________________________

*TWINNING*

_________________________

*TWINNING*

At the time tho, there were alotta countries scramgling to make the cut for the Euro, and some folk were thinking that if some of the coutries with high debt didnt make it that the Euro would be stronger than the dollar very quickly.

You then look at that with the timing of the asian crises- right about the same time about '97. At this same time there was no fly zone issues with Iraq.

It was all coming together at the same time.

ex the Germans I guess.

But the French, and Russians to be sure had vested interests in Saddam's government cus he owed them ALOT of money.



******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

>At the time tho, there were alotta countries scramgling to
>make the cut for the Euro, and some folk were thinking that
>if some of the coutries with high debt didnt make it that
>the Euro would be stronger than the dollar very quickly.

The problem is:
Germany and France couldn't meet the requirement either.
So I doubt Luxembourg, Holland and Belgium could have a currency that could compete with the Dollar.


>You then look at that with the timing of the asian crises-
>right about the same time about '97. At this same time
>there was no fly zone issues with Iraq.
>It was all coming together at the same time.
>ex the Germans I guess.
>But the French, and Russians to be sure had vested interests
>in Saddam's government cus he owed them ALOT of money.

i'm lost again.
but i'm easily get lost in conspiracy thoeries.s
so don't mind me.
_________________________

*TWINNING*

_________________________

*TWINNING*

>>At the time tho, there were alotta countries scramgling to
>>make the cut for the Euro, and some folk were thinking that
>>if some of the coutries with high debt didnt make it that
>>the Euro would be stronger than the dollar very quickly.
>
>The problem is:
>Germany and France couldn't meet the requirement either.
>So I doubt Luxembourg, Holland and Belgium could have a
>currency that could compete with the Dollar.


You kidding me? I never heard that. Wow. Everything I came across was talking about Italy and Greece. Interesting. are you from Europe?


>
>>You then look at that with the timing of the asian crises-
>>right about the same time about '97. At this same time
>>there was no fly zone issues with Iraq.
>>It was all coming together at the same time.
>>ex the Germans I guess.
>>But the French, and Russians to be sure had vested interests
>>in Saddam's government cus he owed them ALOT of money.
>
>i'm lost again.
>but i'm easily get lost in conspiracy thoeries.s
>so don't mind me.

It isn't a conspiracy theory. It's the plain truth. Saddam and other OPEC countries had been considering the EURO and later Saddam made the decision to make the switch for Iraq. It's documented. This was going down as it looked like the US was in REAL trouble when we had to bail out Mexico, and the IMF was talking about I think it was Brazil or Argentina going down.

With all this in consideration, the Dollar looked like it was in some real trouble. I didn't try to make a connection with the Contagion issue, the Euro qualification issues and the no fly zone. I just stated that they happened all at the same time.
>_________________________
>
>*TWINNING*

******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

>You kidding me? I never heard that. Wow. Everything I
>came across was talking about Italy and Greece.
>Interesting. are you from Europe?

Italy and Greece were FAR behind.
Shit Greece joined later because they were that far from the requirements.
That they haven't matched yet.
But Ireland and the Benelux countries were the only ones to achieve all the requirements.

Oh i'm Afrobongo.
And yeah i used to be smart and to study economics


>>>You then look at that with the timing of the asian crises-
>>>right about the same time about '97. At this same time
>>>there was no fly zone issues with Iraq.
>>>It was all coming together at the same time.
>>>ex the Germans I guess.
>>>But the French, and Russians to be sure had vested interests
>>>in Saddam's government cus he owed them ALOT of money.
>>
>>i'm lost again.
>>but i'm easily get lost in conspiracy thoeries.s
>>so don't mind me.
>
>It isn't a conspiracy theory. It's the plain truth. Saddam
>and other OPEC countries had been considering the EURO and
>later Saddam made the decision to make the switch for Iraq.
>It's documented.

I know it. and they were vocal about it.

>This was going down as it looked like the US was in REAL trouble >when we had to bail out Mexico, and the IMF was talking about I >think it was Brazil or Argentina going down.

both.
except that Brazil made better choices thna Argentina.
(just like Malaysia and their neighbourgs)

>With all this in consideration, the Dollar looked like it
>was in some real trouble.

hmmm..
2005: The Dollar is in its worse shape since... forever:

Dollar: 63.8% of worldwide savings
Euro: 19.7 of worlwide savings

i dunno..

>I didn't try to make a connection
>with the Contagion issue, the Euro qualification issues and
>the no fly zone. I just stated that they happened all at
>the same time.

oh.ok.
97-99
yeah
_________________________

*TWINNING*

_________________________

*TWINNING*

HA!

yeah. '97-'99

that period was VERY interesting.

I know the Dollar is BAD OFF right now, but it was fittna be worth NOTHIN if Clinton had not made some deft moves at the right time.

See, he was LISTENING to his advisors. Bush aint. He just fittna secure ALL the Oil. It's obvious that he's hedging all his bets on the US and Britain controlling the world's energy.

aint it?

u don't agree?

******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

>HA!
>
>yeah. '97-'99
>
>that period was VERY interesting.
>
>I know the Dollar is BAD OFF right now, but it was fittna be
>worth NOTHIN if Clinton had not made some deft moves at the
>right time.
>
>See, he was LISTENING to his advisors. Bush aint. He just
>fittna secure ALL the Oil. It's obvious that he's hedging
>all his bets on the US and Britain controlling the world's
>energy.
>
>aint it?
>
>u don't agree?

yeah.. and i think we agree on who the USA may be doing it against.
Plus Bush is Bush and represents some private interests too.

but he can't.
he can't secure Russian Oil
and he can't secure half of African oil.

Funny fact:
there was a weird economical phenomenon in September.
The Oil production has never been that High, the consumption was average, the Prices were beating records.
Now who was orchastrating THAT ?
and why ?


_________________________

*TWINNING*

_________________________

*TWINNING*

for future losses or some such nonsense I was so confused. I was like- but we are entering Winter. They should be making MORE money.

Dude, I am convinced we are going to war with every country Bush named in that presidential address in that "axis of evil". Including Oil rich African countries.

Either folk banana republic it up, or we are coming.

Putin gotta see it too. He's acting a fool right now.


******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

>for future losses or some such nonsense I was so confused.
>I was like- but we are entering Winter. They should be
>making MORE money.

yeah

>Dude, I am convinced we are going to war with every country
>Bush named in that presidential address in that "axis of
>evil". Including Oil rich African countries.
>Either folk banana republic it up, or we are coming.

lol nah
Nigeria ? well the USA owns half of it.
Gabon, Congo and Angola are untouchable.
Sudan, Chad and them ? may be.

>Putin gotta see it too. He's acting a fool right now.

You're wishing our death, son ?
(and the we = the humanity)


_________________________

*TWINNING*

_________________________

*TWINNING*

Somebody gotta do SUMIN! And folk gotta start by trying to learn about this stuff so they can make informed decisions.

I work at a bank, and I asked my superiors what they thought about the dollar losing value and what that meant for us politically. These folk all got family IN Iraq as we speak.

None of them had an answer.

they just don't know.


******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

That France and Germany had problems qualifying. It's just hilarious to me. Either I didn't read as much as I thought I did about it a/t/t or they just aint bring it up.

either way is just re-damn-diculous.

how could I have missed that?


******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

>That France and Germany had problems qualifying. It's just
>hilarious to me. Either I didn't read as much as I thought
>I did about it a/t/t or they just aint bring it up.

it's not like anybody though they wouldn't qualify ...

and oh yeah

that 3% criteria of public deficit ?

They both blown it for the last years.
(even if they're far from being as crazy as yours)

_________________________

*TWINNING*

_________________________

*TWINNING*

M2 pointed this out to me a few years ago, but I aint think Bush would be this STUPID- I thought he was just trying to get an economic stimulus package...

He's increased spending at record pace.
and he's cut taxes.

So, he cut income, and spent more.

And folk are wondering why IBM gotta sell to China. And why our cities are being bought up by Foriegn countries.

lol.

this thing is getting ugly over here. It's NEVER been this bad. the US might not recover from this.

******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

we're watching/participating in the collapse as we speak (and type).

******************************
www.okayplayer.com/guidelines
_____________________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

www.ummah1421.com/boards
www.northernarc.net

I'll state first that I am at work right now so I haven't had a chance to read everything that you've posted.


My question is this: Why are the powers that be so afraid or trying to suppress alternative fuels that are better for the environment?

I know that the easy answer is $$$$$, but it seems that for all the wars they are fighting over oil and resources, that someone would try to corner the market early on future fuels like Hydrogen.

From what I've read, hydrogen run cars could be a reality soon if there were significant investment in it. Some analysts I've read said that if the infrastructure was set up (gas stations being equipped to fuel & service said vehicles) that they could be out in like 10-15 years.

So why not try to corner that market early? Where do the current political powers warring over oil stand on 'newer' fuels?


************************************************

<<<<<<<<Don't Drool On The Avy>>>>>>>>

"There's a fine line between persistence and foolishness..."
-unknown

"To Each His Reach"
-George Clinton

**************** OKP Free Agent*****************

______________________________________________________________________________

"To Each His Reach"

but.....

Fuck aliens.

It would cost billions for the world to change over from fossil fuels to alternative methods. Before that change can be facillitated, the folk tryin to make the most money are gonna have to corner the market on alternative crossover and materials.

Another issue about renewable sources of energy is that it just don't fit into our economic system. If it aint scarce, how can you price it? If every tom dick and moe can charge up his ride in the back yard, service his own solar cells- how can you make income past the initial sale?

you can't.

Besides. with China growing at the rate it is, and with all that Natural gas in the Central asian republics?

shoot. YOu can be rich off of China alone.

when you look at Emerging markets in Africa, and South America? There is a lot of money to be made. If u are a business man rubbing elbows with heads of state u went to grad school with of course u fittna try and work that network.


******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

They are still looking to conventional measures. It's really kinda stupid. I don't get it. This world is being held back so someone can profit off of it.


http://www.energycommission.org/news/

For Immediate Release
Contact: Paul Bledsoe or Christopher Cashman

Bipartisan Commission Issues Strategy to Address Long-Term U.S. Energy Challenges

Detailed Recommendations on Oil Security, Climate Change, Natural Gas, Nuclear Energy, and Other Key Topics the Result of 2 Years of Research and Consultation

Consensus Plan; Group to Spend 2005 Advocating Package

(Washington, D.C.) -- A bipartisan group of top energy experts from industry, government, labor, academia, and environmental and consumer groups today released a consensus strategy, more than two years in the making, to address major long-term U.S. energy challenges. The report, “Ending the Energy Stalemate: A Bipartisan Strategy to Meet America’s Energy Challenges,” contains detailed policy recommendations for addressing oil security, climate change, natural gas supply, the future of nuclear energy, and other long-term challenges, and is backed by more than 30 original research studies.

“Political and regional polarization has produced an energy stalemate, preventing America from adopting sensible approaches to some of our biggest energy problems,” said John W. Rowe, Commission co-chair and Chairman and CEO of Exelon Corp. “Our Commission reached consensus on effective policies because of a willingness to take on cherished myths from both right and left. We believe that this package of recommendations can be of value to Congress and the Administration in energy legislation next year and beyond.”

“Taken together, the Commission’s recommendations aim to achieve a gradual but decisive shift in the nation’s energy policy, toward one that directly addresses our long-term oil, climate, electricity supply, and technology challenges,” said William K. Reilly, former EPA Administrator and Commission co-chair. “Oil reliance is a fact we will face for some time. So we recommend incentives to spur global oil production, to increase domestic vehicle fuel economy, and to increase investment in alternative fuels. Our climate change plan would both limit greenhouse gas emissions and cap the costs of doing so. At the same time, it provides incentives for low- and non-carbon sources like natural gas, renewable energy, nuclear energy, and advanced coal technologies with carbon capture and sequestration, as well as for increased efficiency of energy end use. We are proposing programs that can work in the real world.”

“It's essential to take some prudent steps now to avoid intolerable costs and impacts later,” said John Holdren, Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at Harvard University and Commission co-chair. “The task of energy policy is to ensure the reliable and affordable energy services that a prosperous economy requires while simultaneously limiting the risks and impacts from overdependence on oil, from global climate change, and from other environmental and political liabilities of the available energy-supply options. Meeting this challenge requires measures to encourage increased use of the best available technologies for energy supply and energy end-use efficiency in the years immediately ahead, as well as increased investments in energy research and development to improve the options available to us in the future."

To enhance US oil security, the Commission recommends:

- Increasing and diversifying world oil production while expanding the global network of strategic petroleum reserves.

- Significantly strengthening federal fuel economy standards beginning no later than 2010 for cars and light trucks, giving due consideration to vehicle performance, safety, job impacts and competitiveness concerns.

- Reforming the 30-year-old Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) program to allow more flexibility and limit compliance costs.

- Providing $3 billion over ten years in manufacturer and consumer incentives to encourage domestic production and boost sales of efficient hybrid and advanced diesel vehicles.

- Developing non-petroleum transportation fuel alternatives, particularly ethanol and clean bio-diesel from waste products and biomass.


The Commission estimates its recommendations could reduce U.S. oil consumption in 2025 by 10–15 percent or 3–5 million barrels per day.

“Raising CAFE standards and reforming the program go hand in hand,” said Holdren. “The $3 billion package of consumer and manufacturer incentives, together with important program reforms, will enable domestic manufacturers to significantly raise fuel economy by the end of the decade while protecting U.S. jobs.”



Regarding oil supply, the Commission believes the U.S. government should apply diplomatic pressure to encourage nations with significant but underdeveloped oil reserves to allow foreign investment in their energy sectors to increase and diversify global oil production. To the extent that unilaterally imposed U.S. economic sanctions may be limiting investment in foreign energy markets and constraining world oil supply, the oil security implications of these sanctions should be carefully considered. In focusing on world oil supply, the Commission report notes that “reducing vulnerability to high oil prices and supply disruptions are more meaningful and ultimately achievable policy goals than a misplaced focus on energy independence.”



“The near-term key to reducing oil price shocks is curbing U.S. demand and increasing world supply,” said Reilly. “We have to do both. We also have to make big investments in alternatives like bio-fuels made from domestic crops and agricultural waste.”





To reduce risks from climate change, the Commission recommends:



- Implementing in 2010 a mandatory, economy-wide tradable-permits system designed to curb future growth in the nation’s emissions of greenhouse gases while capping initial costs to the U.S. economy at $7 per metric ton of carbon dioxide-equivalent.



- Linking subsequent action to reduce U.S. emissions with efforts by other developed and developing nations to achieve comparable emissions reductions via a review of program efficacy and international progress in 2015.





“The Commission believes the United States must take responsibility for addressing its contribution to the risks of climate change,” said Rowe. “But we must do so in a manner that recognizes the global nature of the challenge and does not harm the competitive position of U.S. businesses internationally. Our plan meets those goals.”



Under the Commission’s proposal, the U.S. government in 2010 would begin issuing permits for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions based on an annual emissions target that reflects a 2.4 percent per year reduction in the average GHG intensity of the economy (where intensity is measured in tons of emissions per dollar of GDP). An emissions intensity metric is also the basis of President Bush’s plan, which calls for voluntary GHG intensity reductions of 1.8 percent per year from 2002-2012.



Under the Commission’s proposal, most GHG permits would be issued at no cost to existing emitters, but a small pool — 5 percent at the outset, increasing gradually thereafter to a maximum of 10 percent —would be auctioned to accommodate new entrants, stimulate the market in emission permits, and fund research and development of new technologies.



The Commission’s proposal also includes a “safety valve” or cost-capping mechanism to limit the total cost of the program to the U.S. economy. The cost cap allows additional permits to be purchased from the government at an initial price of $7 per metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2)-equivalent. The safety valve price would increase by 5 percent per year in nominal terms to generate a gradually stronger market signal for reducing emissions without prematurely displacing existing energy infrastructure.



“The Commission's climate change proposal is designed to be a logical next step for the nation, building upon many of the themes and features of the current Administration's program," Reilly said. "Such a program is entirely compatible with separate legislative efforts by the Bush Administration and the Congress to address nitrogen, mercury and sulfur emissions from electric power generation. The Commission did not study specific legislation, but supports multi-pollutant approaches as a means of improving public health, providing business certainty and accelerating investments in cleaner burning technologies, such as IGCC."



“The Commission’s climate plan explicitly caps the total cost to the economy while reducing emissions. Even in 2020, the estimated cost of the plan per household will only be $30-100 a year.” said Reilly. “This is no Kyoto.”



In 2015, and every five years thereafter, Congress would review the program and evaluate whether emissions control progress by major trading partners and competitors (including developing countries such as China and India) supports its continuation.



Conservative modeling analyses suggest that the Commission’s proposal would reduce total emissions in 2020 by approximately 540 million metric tons. Emission reductions could be much higher —as much as 1 billion metric tons in 2020 — if the investments in technology innovation and efficiency proposed elsewhere in this report further reduce abatement costs.




To improve the energy efficiency of the U.S. economy, the Commission recommends:



- Updating and expanding efficiency standards for new appliances, equipment, and buildings to capture additional cost-effective energy-saving opportunities.



- Integrating improvements in efficiency standards with targeted technology incentives, R&D, consumer information, and programs sponsored by electric and gas utilities.



- Pursuing cost-effective efficiency improvements in the industrial sector.





Efficiency improvements in buildings and industry are important complements to the Commission’s efficiency recommendations for the transportation sector, which include fuel-saving opportunities in the heavy-duty truck fleet, which is responsible for roughly 20 percent of transportation energy consumption, but is not subject to fuel economy regulation, and in the existing vehicle fleet where a substantial opportunity exists to improve efficiency by, for example, mandating that replacement tires have rolling-resistance characteristics equivalent to the original equipment tires used on new vehicles.



“Absent substantial gains in the energy efficiency of motor vehicles, buildings, appliances, and equipment, it becomes difficult to imagine how energy supplies, and especially clean energy supplies, can keep pace with increased U.S. and global demand,” said Holdren.





To increase U.S. energy supply, the Commission recommends:



Natural Gas: To diversify and expand the nation’s access to natural gas supplies, the Commission recommends:



- Adopting effective public incentives for the construction of an Alaska natural gas pipeline.

- Addressing obstacles to the siting and construction of infrastructure needed to support increased imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG).



“Natural gas is the key bridge fuel for electricity over the next several decades,” said Rowe. “We simply must find ways to increase supply to U.S. markets.”





Advanced Coal Technologies: To enable the nation to continue to rely upon secure, domestic supplies of coal to meet future energy needs while addressing the climate risks associated with greenhouse gas emissions, the Commission recommends:



- Providing $4 billion over ten years in early deployment incentives for integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal technology.



- Providing $3 billion over ten years in public incentives to demonstrate commercial-scale carbon capture and geologic sequestration at a variety of sites.



- Coal gasification holds promise for economically capturing carbon emissions while also reducing emissions of pollutants like mercury and sulfur dioxide. The process is commonly used in the manufacture of chemicals, but — with the exception of a handful of demonstration facilities — has not yet been widely applied to producing power on a commercial scale.





“Coal’s abundance in the United States, and in major developing countries like China and India, makes finding clean ways to use it among our highest priorities,” said Reilly. “Coal gasification, when combined with carbon sequestration, has the potential to revolutionize energy production.”





Nuclear Power: To help enable nuclear power to continue to play a meaningful role in meeting future energy needs, the Commission recommends:



- Fulfilling existing federal commitments on nuclear waste management



- Providing $2 billion over ten years from federal research, development, demonstration, and deployment budgets for the demonstration of one to two new advanced nuclear power plants.



- Significantly strengthening the international non-proliferation regime.





“The contribution of nuclear energy to meeting the nation’s electricity needs will decline absent concerted efforts to address concerns about cost, susceptibility to accidents and terrorist attacks, management of radioactive wastes, and proliferation risks,” said Holdren. “Given the risks from climate change and the challenges that face all of the low-carbon and no-carbon supply options, it would be imprudent in the extreme not to try to keep the nuclear option open.”





Renewable Energy: To expand the contribution of clean, renewable energy, the Commission recommends:



- Increasing federal support for renewable technology research and development by $360 million annually, targeted at overcoming key hurdles in cost competitiveness and early deployment.



- Extending the federal production tax credit for a further four years (i.e., from 2006 through 2009), and expanding eligibility to all non-carbon energy sources, including solar, geothermal, new hydropower generation, next generation nuclear, and advanced fossil fuel generation with carbon capture and sequestration.



- Supporting ongoing efforts by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to promote market-based approaches to integrating intermittent resources into the interstate grid system.



- Establishing a $1.5 billion program over ten years to increase domestic production of advanced non-petroleum transportation fuels from biomass (including waste).





“The Commission’s renewable energy proposals are aimed at finding ways to reduce costs and bring competitive sources to market,” said Reilly. “Any scenario for tackling climate change and developing clean domestic energy resources must involve expanded use of renewable power.”





To strengthen energy supply infrastructure, the Commission recommends:



- Reducing barriers to the siting of critical energy infrastructure.



- Protecting critical infrastructure from accidental failure and terrorist threats.



- Supporting a variety of generation resources — including both large scale power plants and small scale "distributed" and/or renewable generation — and demand reduction (for both electricity and natural gas), to ensure affordable and reliable energy service for consumers.



- Encouraging increased transmission investment and deployment of new technologies to enhance the availability and reliability of the grid, in part by clarifying rules for cost-recovery.



- Enhancing consumer protections in the electricity sector and establishing an integrated, multi-pollutant program to reduce power plant emissions.





“There is a national imperative to strengthen the systems that deliver energy,” said Rowe. “Priorities include siting reforms to enable the expansion and construction of needed energy facilities, greater efforts to protect the nation’s energy systems from terrorist attack, and reforms to improve the reliability and performance of the electricity sector.”



To promote the development of improved energy technologies for the future, the Commission recommends:

- Doubling of federal government funding for energy research and development, while improving the management of these efforts and promoting effective public-private partnerships.



- Increasing incentives for private sector energy research, development, demonstration, and early deployment (ERD3).



- Expanding investment in cooperative international ERD3initiatives and improving coordination among relevant federal agencies.



- Providing early deployment incentives for coal gasification and carbon sequestration; domestically produced efficient vehicles; domestically produced alternative transportation fuels; and advanced nuclear reactors.





“Overcoming the energy challenges faced by the United States and the rest of the world requires technologies superior to those available today,” said Holdren. “To accelerate the development and deployment of these technologies, the federal government must increase its own investments in energy-technology innovation as well as its collaboration in this domain with the private sector, with states, and with other nations.”



The Commission notes that investments by both the private and public sectors in energy research, development, demonstration, and early deployment have been falling short of what is likely to be needed to meet the energy challenges confronting the nation and the world in the 21st century.





Revenue Neutrality

The Commission proposes that the nation devote the resources generated by the sale of greenhouse gas emissions permits to enhance the development and deployment of improved energy technologies. The approximately $36 billion that Commission analysis indicates will be generated over ten years by the proposed greenhouse gas tradable-permits program — most of which will come from auctioning a small portion of the overall permit pool — offsets the specific additional public investments it recommends overall.



The Commission’s recommendations were developed in more than a dozen two-day meetings over two years and are informed by over 30 original, Commission-sponsored studies on major energy topics. The group also met with hundreds of leading stakeholders, including industry; environmental groups; state, local, and federal governmental officials; labor and consumer groups; agricultural interests; and many others. A full list of consulted organizations, copies of the Commission’s report, supporting research studies, and other information can be found on the Commission’s website at: www.energycommission.org



The Commission will spend 2005 advocating for the ideas in its strategy to Congress, the Administration, the States, industry, and other key stakeholders.



“For more than 30 years, Energy has been the graveyard of many a brave policy titan,” said Reilly. “But our analysis shows that these recommended policies can curb U.S. oil use, begin to address greenhouse gas emissions, develop viable new technologies, and put the U.S. in a much stronger energy posture. We intend to carry that message to the highest levels throughout 2005.”







More NCEP News



NCEP to Release Strategy to Address Long-Term U.S. Energy Challenges
(Washington, D.C.) 12/02/04 -- Strategy to include Detailed Recommendations on Energy Supply, Oil Security, Climate Change, Technology Policy and Other Key Topics. Recommendations the result of 2 Years of Research and Consultation; Consensus Plan; Group to Spend 2005 Advocating Package
Read More

Conference 'Global Challenges for U.S. Energy Policy: Economic, Environmental, and Security Risks'

(Washington, D.C.) 03/05/04 -- In an effort to build a national consensus on addressing the global dimensions of U.S. energy policy, the National Commission on Energy Policy, Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, and the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies sponsored a conference entitled "Global Challenges for U.S. Energy Policy: Economic, Environmental, and Security Risks." This bi-partisan conference, broadcast live via webcast, brought together national political leaders, business executives, and foreign policy experts.
Read More

NCEP Releases Paper On Two Promising Natural Gas Supply Options

(Washington, D.C.) 10/21/03 -- A bipartisan group of leading energy experts today released a study of two key U.S. natural gas supply issues, finding that an Alaska natural gas pipeline likely would provide significant economic benefits to the U.S. economy due to lower natural gas prices. The report by the National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP), “Increasing U.S. Natural Gas Supplies,” identified and analyzed the market and regulatory conditions currently facing pipeline developers, and concluded that market barriers to the project and the substantial benefits likely to accrue from construction of the Alaska natural gas pipeline warrant limited government intervention —in the form of a tax credit—to help spur pipeline construction.
Read More

Bipartisan Commission Offers Recommendations to Aid Troubled U.S. Electricity Sector

(Washington, D.C.) 08/22/03 -- The bipartisan National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP) has released a series of specific regulatory and legislative recommendations that would enable electricity market competition to progress, while also calling for regulations and incentive provisions that enhance the security and reliability of the power system, assure affordable service to small consumers and provide flexibility for states and regions.
Read More

NCEP holds forum on 'The Future of Biomass and Transportation Fuels'

(Washington, D.C.) 06/13/03 -- While the prospect of using our farm, forest and waste products to produce transportation fuels enjoys widespread political support in Congress, the Administration, and among many interest groups, key questions remain regarding the realistic scale of domestically-produced fuels, costs, and environmental impacts. In response to these questions and uncertainties, the National Commission on Energy Policy sponsored a forum, "The Future of Biomass and Transportation Fuels" on Friday, June 13, 2003 at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. The forum featured addresses by Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), Congressman Mark Udall (D-CO), Assistant Secretary of Energy David Garman and Under Secretary of Agriculture Mark Rey, in addition to presentations and debate among other notable participants.
Read More

NCEP Executive Director Address RFF Audience

(Washington, D.C.) 06/11/03 -- On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, the National Commission on Energy Policy's Executive Director, Jason Grumet, was invited to speak at Resources for the Future (RFF), a Washington, D.C. think tank that specializes in environment and natural resource issues. Mr. Grumet spoke about the origins, aspirations, and progress to date of the NCEP.
Read More

NCEP sponsors a forum on 'The Future of Electricity Restructuring'

(Washington, D.C.) 04/01/103 -- With the 108th Congress debating the possibility of including an electricity provision in this year's comprehensive energy bill and FERC continuing to evaluate its Standard Market Design (SMD), the National Commission on Energy Policy held a forum, "The Future of Electricity Restructuring" on Tuesday, April 1, 2003 at the Chamber of Commerce Building in Washington, D.C.
Read More

NCEP conducts workshop on 'The Potential Role of Diesel in Improving Fuel Economy'

(Washington, D.C.) 02/04/03 -- Amidst persisting debates about increasing passenger fleet fuel economy, assessing climate change impacts, and lessening our country's oil dependence, the NCEP sponsored a workshop to explore the impacts that a diesel vehicle strategy could have on these issues.
Read More







******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

the solution is to cut back... but the public won't vote for politicians that convey that message....and Corporations won't sponsor them either.

Corporate greed is only part of the problem... there's still the basic biological issues involved.

any organism is programmed to populate ... we've used oil to develope medicines and cultivate and transport large quantities of food...as a result the world popualtion in the last 100 years has gone from 1 billion to 6.5 as a result of our energy consumption.....now we have nuclear weapons and the power to destroy everything on earth at any second.


we're going to crash - the only questions anyone should be concerned with is how to adapt.goverment "policy" is taking place independent of public virtue - they do what they want.

You are on a rock spinning around the sun. It is a very oppressive system.

decisions, how do we cut back? How do we use our dollars as a tool for healing this situation?

what would you suggest? Stop using energy in the manner that we do? Boycott oil?

what of alternative energy like zewari and bongo suggested?

do you think this would be practical?

where are our alternative energy souces here in this country? surely there is a market for that, no?

******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

there are no catch-all explanations (as to why alternative energy sources aren't used)... but there are lots of conveniently overlapping reasons. a significant portion of energy demand could easily be addressed through wind energy. wind energy is actually at par with natural gas in terms of harvesting expenses, even though there are no mass production facilities manufacturing wind turbines to drive the production cost down. despite the relatively marginal research efforts, wind energy technology has progressed to such efficiency that it requires nearly just about the same amount of land and financial input as natural gas to exploit its energy potential. the last time i checked the price of natural gas averaged somewhat around 5 cents per kilowatt hour. during the 2000 price spike, it jumped up to 10 or 11 cents per kilowatt hour. contrast this with the estimated figure of 4.7 cents per kilowatt hour for harvesting wind energy. these non-replenishable solutions aren't as far fetched as most people think. the state of Texas could readily satisfy its energy grid's demands by appropriating wind farms in west texas and along the coastal regions. all you really need is a minimum of 15 mile per hour winds at an altitude of 50 meters or so.

then you have this "myth" of U.S. dependence on middle east oil. the US currently gets about 14% of their oil from the middle east... whereas Europe gets about 70% and Japan gets about 90%. the oil rights themselves are owned largely by multi-national corporations. the Arab countries really exercise very little control over the resource production on their land.

regardless of such realities, it's certain there is an energy grab in progress. i believe the oil-dominated global energy infrastructure is intentionally and artificially maintained as the dominant source of energy in the post-industrial world to create a superficially sustained hierarchial global wealth structure. the finite nature of oil makes this possible because its limited supply assures that only those with the most capital have access to it, since the price of its acquisition and manufacturing increases with its scarcity. the more wealthier countries have the greatest access to this resource as a result, and the poorer nations have the least access to it. this is important because energy is the primary determinant of any and every form of economic development. oil then becomes a de facto mechanism of geopolitical control that subjugates poor nations into subservient dependence on more developed ones. many people make the mistake of under-estimating the significance of energy supply in stabilizing national economies. it would be a mistake to assume the third world is where its at simply because of a lack of money or human resources. the energy required to develop or maintain industries is simply not there.

as it stands now, most of the energy resources are extracted from poor, developing or "third world" countries... and manufactured in the west, then re-sold back to their countries of origin at significantly higher prices. industries in the city of Houston manufactures something to the tune of 20% of the world's petroleum resources. its not uncommon to find that the efforts of nations producing the raw materials to actually develop their own refineries often end-up being frustrated, stifled or disrupted by various external forces... but imagine the scenario that would result if renewable energy supplies become the global norm.

the existing energy hierarchy would be almost instantly destabilized. human capital would have no problem flocking to so-called developing countries once the opportunity to maintain stable industries presents itself.

but lets ignore alternative resources for a minute and examine oil. we've had the technological capacity to develop far more efficient mechanisms to utilize it. there was this scientists whose name i can't remember right now that invented a carburator engine for a vehicle capable of transporting 11 people back in the 1920s or early 1930s. this engine was able to provide something like 200+ miles per gallon... and other examples of how we could easily transform into a more efficient energy consuming society clearly demonstrate how the status quo we are dealing with today is being artificially imposed by the powers that be.

when you go deeper into the root causes of WHY this is the case, i believe it becomes a myriad of issues circulating around ideological motivations.

the present energy standard makes no fiscal sense, makes no environmental sense, and makes no social sense. its as if the global society is intentionally being driven to a destabilizing point of conflict. i'm not sure how much longer the politicians and business elite could keep using that "cost-effective" argument against renewable energy, but its pretty much baseless, IMO.

_¸»¬æ¤º²°¯¯°²º¤æ¬«SiG»¬æ¤º²°¯¯°²º¤æ¬«¸_



“Stand out firmly for Justice as witness before God, even against yourselves, against your kin and against your parents, against people who are rich or poor. Do not follow your inclinations or desires lest you deviate from Justice. Remember, God is the best of Protectors and well acquainted with all that you do.”
-Qur’an 4:135

"Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces."
--Jean Paul Marat, 18th Century French Visionary (and revolutionary), murdered in his bathtub by Royalist Charlotte Corday

__________________________

www.supportblackowned.org

like 3 years ago it seems. Had to have been at least 2 on AIM, and you were telling me of the possibilities in Ethiopia alone if there was a alternative energy use.

We talked about power outages, etc and how that can't be condusive for business.

Look at India. They are outsourcing out there like crazy, and the only areas of the country with a stable, sturdy energy grid is where multi national countries have set up shop.

it's very transparent, very ugly and it makes 0 sense.

If I was rich, I'd gather the best engineers in the world and go county by county, parish by parish in a developing country experiencing brain drain and just watch as that country pulls of a Japan or an Isreal.

You got countries doing nothing but intellectual capital because they got a stable economy- what of Afrika and her resources?

man it's crazy.


******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

Thanks for the insight. This gives me a few directions to go in for information.



************************************************

<<<<<<<<Don't Drool On The Avy>>>>>>>>

"There's a fine line between persistence and foolishness..."
-unknown

"To Each His Reach"
-George Clinton

**************** OKP Free Agent*****************

______________________________________________________________________________

"To Each His Reach"

but.....

Fuck aliens.

. This talks about the poor shape this country is in energy wise, and it's subsequent effect on international energy policy.





******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

unless your ready to completley reform the monitary system - which basically means revolution - none of this shit about "policy" or "alternatives" or "limiting demand" will make the least bit of difference.....your just prolonging the inevitable....and the longer the wait the bigger the crash.


you can't limit your use of energy when your economic system requires an increasing consumption of it.

You are on a rock spinning around the sun. It is a very oppressive system.

******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

If sombody threatend to kill you would you sit there and ask me "what do I do" ???


you do what you see fit for your well-being and survival.

human beings have been on earth for all long time - we didn't get this far by being oblivious morons - the instructions are in your brain.


eat a cookie.

You are on a rock spinning around the sun. It is a very oppressive system.

I don't understand. be explicit. your answer might help someone else. You feel the answer is in cookies?

fortune cookies?

******************************

______________________________
"...I'm telling ya these walls are
funny. First you hate 'em, then
you get used to 'em. Enough,
time passes, you get so you
depend on 'em. That's
"institutionalized."

Red, The Shawshank Redemption.







_________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

"Slaves got options...cowards aint got shit." --PS
"Once upon a time, little need existed for making the distinction between a nigga and a black—at least not in this country, the place where niggas were invented" -- Donnell A

you do what you see fit for your well-being and survival.

You are on a rock spinning around the sun. It is a very oppressive system.

1. People should do what they do.
2. Eat a cookie?

Really? I mean you have no further thoughts on the matter? Questions bother you?

wsup?


******************************

_____________________________
Inaug'ral Member of the OkaySports Hall of Fame.

www.ummah1421.com/boards
www.northernarc.net

well , no...

I answered the question.... I said people do whatever they need to do under the circumstances they're in ...
there is no "clear cut answer" - it depends on people values , circumstances etc.

You are on a rock spinning around the sun. It is a very oppressive system.

btw...

you might want to look in the mirror - your not exactly providing "answers" - just assesment of whats happening in the world...

You are on a rock spinning around the sun. It is a very oppressive system.