TheMillerCircle.org

In  Juan Cole’s posting for today, he takes Cheney to task for criticizing U.S. withdrawal from major Iraqi cities. Cheyney stated: “I would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.” As Juan Cole points out, Cheyney didn’t do any sacrificing, but he had no problem sending several thousand American soldiers to their death along with more than a million Iraqis, with 4-5 million displaced Iraqis afraid to come back to their homes.  Cheney’s own military career is a long list of deferrals. But there is also new evidence that comes from Jason Leopold who points out, how, just a few weeks into GW Bush’s first term, in the famous but secret meeting of oil executives (including such notable figures as Ken Lay from Enron), Cheney enlisted oil executive input, plus input from former Secretary of State (under H.W. Bush) James Baker, to draft a strategic oil policy for the United States, which included taking control of the oil fields in Iraq after ousting Saddam Hussein. This is something that has always been hinted at, but Cheney was able to keep the details of that famous meeting with oil executives secret, aided as I recall, by a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court.

From Leopold’s article:

“It was believed then that Cheney’s secretive task force was focusing on ways to reduce environmental regulations and fend off the Kyoto protocol on global warming.

But Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, later described a White House interest in invading Iraq and controlling its vast oil reserves, dating back to the first days of the Bush presidency.

In Ron Suskind’s 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty, O’Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council. There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq’s oil fields would be carved up. [I read this book--it seems very clear on this subject]

O’Neill said even at that early date, the message from Bush was “find a way to do this,” according to O’Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.”

It might be added that once O’Neill was ousted as Secretary of the Treasury, he was prepared to give more information on Bush’s plan to topple Hussein and take over the Iraqi oil fields, but the White House accused him of stealing documents from his computer and, in exchange for not prosecuting him, O’Neill kept quiet and has remained so.

Continuing from Lepold’s article: “The New Yorker ‘s Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated Feb. 3, 2001 – only two weeks after Bush took office – instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney’s task force, which was “melding” two previously unrelated areas of policy: “the review of operational policies towards rogue states” and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”
In light of this not so new evidence, it is more than disingenuous for Cheyney to bemoan the loss of American lives as we withdrawal our troops from the major cities of Iraq. Cheney’s history with our invasion of Iraq is a series of lies, distortions and selective quotations of misleading information, all of which he continued to promote long after they had been discredited. Is Cheney not the modern pariah of war-mongering in America? Is there any other leader you can think of, whose statements on Iraq have been so thoroughly disproven, yet he continues to speak as if they were all true, or if not true, the invasion was still justified. Both Bush and Rumsfeld seem to be keeping their mouth shut, but not Cheney. He will haunt us forever, with the blessings of our mainstream press and other television venues.

One day Cheney needs to stand in a courtroom in The Hague and see if he can convince a panel of judges that his promoted invasion of a sovereign country was justified, or whether it was, under international agreements and our own constitution, an illegal act demanding a serious term of incarceration. Think of the many Americans and Iraqis who could testify to the horrors of their experiences and the loss of family and friends, all to satisfy the whimsical nature of Cheney’s “Global Strategy” for oil, while avoiding restrictions on environmental destruction. And, while we’re at it, what about the culpability of oil executives advising and promoting invasion of another sovereign country while serving as White House advisers? Are American armed forces under the whimsical dictates of oil executives? Despite the overwhelming nature of the tragedy in Iraq,  Cheney remains a darling of the Republican Party and is always welcome at the American Enterprise Institute and the Sunday talk show circuit. So, if you want to rape and pillage another country, just do it as an American elected official and you not only get a free pass, but you retain celebrity status as a statesman and you also get to continuously haunt the American people as if they too are in a state of eternal damnation!  It’s not hot in here, but it doesn’t have to be because we have Dick Cheney. Go figure!
RFM