WAR TO ENHANCE THEIR INHERITANCE

(April 21, 2003)

For love of extra-marital vagina – and especially for lying about it – Republicans in congress impeached Clinton. Their persecution of him embarrassed only his family and him. The rest of the world wondered why Americans were so hypocritical. We all know how big business people take comfort in prostitutes and prostitution when away “on business.”

Orianna Fallaci is perhaps the greatest political interviewer of all times. In November 1974 in New York, she took on Archbishop Makarios, President of Cyprus. Here are some excerpts:

“Isn’t it true you’re very fond of women?”

Makarios kept silent, so Fallaci changed the subject.

“Do you think a head of state should be permitted to tell lies?”

Makarios: “I’m so incapable of telling lies, any lie, that when I can’t tell the truth, I prefer to keep silent.”

Fallaci: “I’m beginning to like you, Beatitude.”

Dominican politician Mr. what’s-his-name was more direct. AIDS, if invented was not known. The then Labour Party alleged that he had gone to Trinidad on duty and ended up with a prostitute. At a well-attended political meeting in Roseau, the gentleman did not take Makarios’ neither-confirm-nor deny approach. He asked in patios:

Which man in this crowd will go abroad on business and find a little thing on the side and not take it? He got an overwhelming ovation.

The world’s best calypsonian, The Mighty Sparrow, responded in song to the harassment meted out to Clinton: “Don’t touch me President!”

From Orianna, to Sparrow, to the Dominica crowd, it seems the reaction to love is the same: where a couple of adult people tryst and thoroughly enjoy themselves to no one else’s detriment, let us leave their punishment or impeachment to God.

But for those who were so massively virtuous as to vote for Clinton’s impeachment, why that silent thunder when a President orders bombing that kills innocent people? And what about the situation when the killing is ordered for greater increase of the wealth of the President and his friends?

For those of us who are determined to cut out our ignorance about these things, a lot of literature is available. I thank Mr. Donald Boyd who brought this book to my notice – “GORE VIDAL, DEAMING WAR…BLOOD FOR OIL AND THE CHENEY-BUSH JUNTA, Thunders Mouth Press/Nation Books, New York, 2002.”

I find a number of matters cited by Vidal are at once interesting and very disturbing:

1. As early as March 1996, the Government of Sudan offered to extradite Osama bin Laden to the US. Clinton administration officials turned down that offer. With their blessing Osama bin Laden and 3000 of his followers were expelled to Afghanistan.

2. Despite these facts, in 1998, Clinton missile-attacked Sudan’s Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory on grounds that Sudan was harbouring bin Laden terrorists who were making chemical and biological weapons. The factory was simply making vaccines for the United Nations.

3. Judicial Watch, in September 2001, reported that George Bush, father of President Bush, works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through the Carlisle Group, an international consulting firm. The senior Bush had met with the bin Laden family at least twice.

4. Agence France Press, November 7, 2001 wrote, “FBI agents in the United States probing relatives of Saudi-born terror suspect Osama…were told to back off soon after George W. Bush became president…”

5. Above the Law, Green Press, February 2002, declares “…we had what looked like the biggest failure of the intelligence community since Pearl Harbour but what we are learning now is it wasn’t a failure. It was a directive.”

6. Vidal concludes that “Osama has enjoyed bipartisan American support since his enlistment in the CIA’s war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan.” He predicts that George Bush will be impeached.

** **

I have always thought that there was something unsound, even asinine about the “policy” of giving money to rich people while expressing high hopes that those millionaires will use that money to create employment for poor people. I was unaware that since November 3, 1963, Vidal had addressed and accurately diagnosed the problem:

“In public services, we lag behind all the industrialized nations of the West, preferring that the public money go not to the people but to big business. The result is a unique society in which we have free enterprise for the poor and socialism for the rich.”

Vidal is an American veteran of World War II, a heavy-weight historian, novelist, writer, and other good things. This is how he dealt with the notion that war avoids economic depression:

“Depression did not end with the New Deal of 1933-40. In fact, it flared up again, worse than ever, in 1939 and 1940. Then, when FDR spent some $20 billion on defense (1941), the Depression was over and Lord Keynes was a hero. This relatively small injection of public money into the system reduced unemployment to 8 per cent and, not unnaturally, impressed the country’s postwar managers: If you want to avoid depression, spend money on war. No one told them that the same money spent on the country’s infrastructure would have saved us debt, grief, blood.”

Vidal contends that the Soviet Union stabbed the United States in the back when the former ended its empire business a dozen years ago. For the US government to continue building the only empire left on earth it has also to continue to convince Americans that there exists “a massive and direct external threat.”

It is that “perceived” threat that is used to justify American bases and/or American military presence in Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Australia, Canada, Cuba, Bermuda, Egypt, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Panama, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Columbia, and Britain where there are seven air force bases and three naval bases. The list is not exhaustive. The US now occupy Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is unassailable evidence that the United States had plans for the attack and conquest of Afghanistan before 9/11. We will not discuss that evidence now. Just note how quickly bin Laden was forgotten after the occupation of Afghanistan and how Iraq oil became the target.

Vidal makes reference to a 1997 Council on Foreign Relations Study captioned “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geo-strategic Imperatives.” The author is Zbigniew Brzezinski (ZB), National Security Adviser to President Carter. ZB’s thesis recommends the militarization of US foreign policy and the manufacture of domestic support and consensus on this militarization campaign.

Eurasia is all that territory east of Germany, i.e., Russia, the Middle East, China, and parts of India. 75% of the world’s population is Eurasian. “Eurasia accounts for 60% of the world’s GNP and three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” ZB notes how the world’s energy consumption keeps increasing; hence, who controls Caspian oil and gas will control the world-economy. His master plan for world domination has been accepted by the Cheney-Bush junta. “Corporate America long overexcited by Eurasian mineral wealth has been aboard from the beginning.” (Vidal).

Afghanistan is the gateway to all those riches. Afghanistan itself is rich in oil and natural gas and numerous other mineral and precious stone deposits. So Bush bombed the country not merely to make it “safe for democracy.” He bombed it for Union Oil of California (UNOCAL), “whose proposed pipeline, from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean port of Karachi, had been abandoned under the Taliban’s chaotic regime. Currently, the pipeline is a go-project thanks to the junta’s installation of a UNOCAL employee as American envoy to (Afghanistan) whose president is also a UNOCAL employee.”

We need not just accept Vidal’s word. On internet, “BBC Monitoring” documents that Hamed Karzai has close ties with the CIA. He is head of the Afghan government, effective December 22, 2001, with full US support. To be fair, sources say his is a true patriot; but this does not invalidate the oil connection: he was an employee of Union Oil of California.

Vidal makes some connection between Rumsfeld and Occidental. Rumsfeld is Bush’s Defense Secretary. More accurately, he is secretary for war. Who is Occidental?

Occidental Petroleum Corporation (OXY) is one of the world’s largest oil and natural gas exploration and production companies with assets concentrated in the USA, Middle East and Latin America. OXY ranks first in the oil and gas industry based on profitability per barrel. This is what OXY says about itself. Yet on February 25, 2002 Arianna Huffington wrote, “The Bush OIL-IGARCHY’s Pipeline Projection Package”:

“In a shameless hand out to… a corporate mendicant, the President wants to spend $100 million to help Occidental Petroleum protect an oil pipeline unwisely built in war-torn Colombia…The reckless decision to elevate corporate interests above the public good in Colombia risks dragging American troops into a military quagmire.”

Vidal makes some connection between Gale Norton and BP-AMOCO. Even for us in the Caribbean British Petroleum and American Oil Company need no introduction. Gale Norton is the Interior Secretary in the Bush government.

Black girl Dr. Condoleezza Rice is Bush’s National Security Advisor. She was a member of the board of directors for the CHEVRON Corporation, now Chevron-Texaco, one of the largest oil companies in the world.

Dick Cheney is Vice-President of the United States. He is former chairman and CEO of Halliburton, one of the world’s largest providers of products and services to the oil and gas industries. Halliburton employs 85,000 people in 100 countries, and has already been mentioned as being contracted in Iraq.

George Bush (Junior) himself started his own oil and gas company in 1978. He did poorly. A couple of acquisitions later his company became absorbed in Harken Energy Corporation. Bush became a director and “consultant” to Harken. On June 22, 1990 he sold two-thirds of his Harken stock for US$848,560 – a cool 200 percent profit. It is alleged that Bush, as a member of Harken’s audit committee, was aware the company was about to report large losses and dumped his stock on what would have clearly been insider information.

For the time being it is sufficient to establish simply his oil connection. Stop playing naïve. Please go internet and read News From Reality:

“How will President George W. Bush personally make millions (if not billions) from the Wars on Terror and Iraq? The old fashioned way. He will inherit it.”

Then the CARLYLE GROUP is introduced: “Former World Leaders And Washington Insiders Making Billions In The War on Terrorism.”

Carlyle Senior Advisor is former US President and Vice President, former CIA Director George Bush. Chairman and CEO is Frank Carlucci – Ronald Regan’s defense secretary and a former deputy director of the CIA. Carlyle Senior Counselor is James Baker, former Secretary of State to Bush senior. Carlyle Managing Director is Richard G. Darman, White House Budget Advisor under administrations of Senior Bush and Bill Clinton. Former Philippines President Fidel Ramos is on Carlyle Asia Advisory Board. Former Prime Minister of England John Major is Carlyle Europe Chairman. Partners such as Baker own an average of US$180 million each in Carlyle.

Burkeman and Borger (The Guardian Oct. 31, 2001) says that John Major is paid one hundred five thousand pounds for 28 days’ work a year for an unrelated non-executive directorship. When Bush Senior makes a speech for Carlyle he is believed to get US$80,000.

“For 14 years now the company has been signing up an impressive list of former politicians…using their contacts and influence to promote the group. Among the companies Carlyle own are those which make equipment, vehicles and munitions for the US military, and its celebrity employees have long served…helping encourage investments from the very wealthy while also smoothing the path for Carlyle’s defense firms.”

But since the start of the “war on terrorism”, the firm – unofficially valued at US $3.5 billion – has taken on an added significance. Carlyle has become the thread which indirectly link American military policy in Afghanistan to the personal fortunes of its celebrity employees, not least the current president’s father. And, until earlier this month, Carlyle provided another curious link to the Afghan crisis: among the firm’s multi-million-dollar investors were members of the family of Osama bin Laden.”

“In September 2000, Carlyle hired speakers including Colin Powel and AOL Time Warner Chair Steve Case…” AOL Time Warner is the parent company of CNN. Colin Powell is Secretary of State in the Bush Administration.”

“Among the defense firms which benefit from Carlyle’s success is United Defense, a Virginia-based contractor which makes vertical missile launch systems currently on board US navy ships in the Arabian Sea, as well as a range of other weapons delivery systems and combat vehicles. Carlyle’s other holdings span an improbable range, taking in the French newspaper Le Figaro and the company which bottles Dr Pepper.”

Peter Eisner, managing director of the Center for Public Integrity is quoted as saying, “The problem comes when private business and public policy blend together.”

Meanwhile, people like Tony Blair must be thinking: What am I doing in the House of Commons if former Prime Minister John Major is making all that money!! Given my role in Iraq there should be room for me at Carlyle.