this may be from october, 2001, but look at how downright believable this appears in light of Enron, et. al..... there's some horse trading going on ..... and it looks like the public is getting stuck paying for the hay.
MISSING THE OIL STORY
AUDIO and TEXT
Nina Burleigh has written for The Washington Post, The
Chicago Tribune, and
New York magazine. As a reporter for TIME, she was among
the first American
journalists to enter Iraq after the Gulf War.
AUDIO: Click here to listen to Ms. Burleigh's commentary.
Recently I attended one of those legendary Washington
dinner parties,
attended by British cosmopolites and Americans in the know.
A few courses in,
people were gossiping about the Bush family's close and
enduring friendship
with the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, dean of the
diplomatic corps in
Washington. By the end of the evening, everyone was talking
about how the
unfolding events were going to affect the flow of oil out
of Central Asia.
I left wondering whether 6,000 Americans might prove to
have died in New York
for the royal family of Saud, or oil, or both. But I didn't
have much more
than insider dinner gossip to go on. I get my analysis from
the standard
all-American news outlets. And they've been too focused on
a) anthrax and
smallpox, or b) the intricacies of Muslim fanaticism, to
throw any reporters
at the murky ways in which international oil politics and
its big players
have a stake in what's unfolding.
A quick Nexis search brought up a raft of interesting leads
that would keep
me busy for 10 years if the economics of this war was my
beat. But only two
articles in the American media since September 11 have
tried to describe how
Big Oil might benefit from a cleanup of terrorists and
other anti-American
elements in the Central Asia region. One was by James
Ridgeway of the Village
Voice. The other was by a Hearst writer based in Paris and
it was picked up
only in the San Francisco Chronicle.
In other words, only the Left is connecting the dots of
what the Russians
have called "The Great Game" -- how oil underneath the
'stans' fits into the
new world order. Here's just a small slice of what ought to
provoke deeper
research by American reporters with resources and talent.
Start with father Bush. The former president and ex-CIA
director is not
unemployed these days. He's been globetrotting as a member
of Washington's
Carlyle Group, a billion private equity firm which
employs a motorcade of
former ranking Republicans, including Frank Carlucci, Jim
Baker and Richard
Darman. George Bush senior and colleagues open doors
overseas for The Carlyle
Group's "access capitalists."
Bush specializes in Asia and has been in and out of Saudi
Arabia and Kuwait
(countries that revere him thanks to the Gulf War) often on
business since
his presidency. Baker, the pin-striped midwife of 'Election
2000' was working
his network in the 'stans' before the ink was dry on
Clinton's first
inaugural address. The Bin Laden family (presumably the
friendly wing) is
also invested in Carlyle. Carlyle's portfolio is heavy in
defense and
telecommunications firms, although it has other holdings
including food and
bottling companies.
The Carlyle connection means that George Bush Senior is on
the payroll from
private interests that have defense business before the
government, while his
son is president. Hmmm. As Charles Lewis of the
Washington-based Center for
Public Integrity, has put it, "in a really peculiar way,
George W. Bush
could, some day, benefit financially from his own
administration's decisions,
through his father's investments. And that to me is a
jaw-dropper."
Why can we assume that global businessmen like Bush Senior
and Jim Baker care
about who runs Afghanistan and NOT just because it's home
base for lethal
anti-Americans? Because it also happens to be situated in
the middle of that
perennial vital national interest -- a region with abundant
oil. By 2050,
Central Asia will account for more than 80 percent of our
oil. On September
10, an industry publication, Oil and Gas Journal, reported
that Central Asia
represents one of the world's last great frontiers for
geological survey and
analysis, "offering opportunities for investment in the
discovery,
production, transportation, and refining of enormous
quantities of oil and
gas resources."
It's assumed we need unimpeded access in the 'stans' for
our geologists,
construction workers and pipelines if we are going to
realize the
conservation-free, fossil-fueled future outlined recently
by Vice President
Cheney. A number of pipeline projects to carry Central
Asia's resources west
are already under way or have been proposed. They would go
through Russia,
through the Caucasus or via Turkey and Iran. Each route
will be within easy
reach of the Taliban's thugs and could be made much safer
by an American
vanquishment of Muslim terrorism.
There's also lots of oil beneath the turf of our
politically precarious
newest best friend, Pakistan. "Massive untapped gas
reserves are believed to
be lying beneath Pakistan's remotest deserts, but they are
being held hostage
by armed tribal groups demanding a better deal from the
central government,"
reported Agence France Presse just days before September
11.
So many business deals, so much oil, all those big players
with powerful
connections to the Bush administration. It doesn't add up
to a conspiracy
theory. But it does mean there is a significant MONEY
subtext that the
American public ought to know about as "Operation Enduring
Freedom" blasts
new holes where pipelines might someday be buried.
This is Nina Burleigh for TomPaine.com.
Originally published at:
http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/10/11/index.html
http://www.tompaine.com/print.php3?id=2460
Original: an oldie on OIL