Letter to Bill Moyer's on Iraq, Oil, & Democrats

Bill Moyers did a commentary on the oil motive for the Iraq War that hit most of the bases that the mainstream media and certainly the right wing avoid like a spider: the link between the Cheney Energy Task Force as soon as Bush came into office and the Iraq War, and the various statements of administration insiders that point to the oil motive.

He left a couple out, which I have included in the letter to him below. The one that I do not have an answer for myself is why Democrats are largely silent or complicit on this issue. I understand why the Republicans obey the oil companies; they are bought and paid for. The Democrats aren't as can be seen in various hearing when they nip at the heels of big oil for price fixing or wanting to drill in ANWR or off-shore.

But the Democrats criticisms of big oil are like kicking a pit bull instead of going for the jugular, their role in lobbying for the Iraq War and demanding an oil law that can only inflame Iraqi attacks on our troops. The dog gets mad, and the kicker gets bitten. or worse.

My letter to Moyers:

Dear Mr. Moyers,

Why are the Democrats silent on the oil motive for the Iraq War? In most cases, they talk in the same propaganda framework laid down by the Republicans, and either say they could do it better or that we should get out because we failed at those false goals. When someone does go after the oil motive like Dennis Kucinich and handful of others, they are either ignored or marginalized by the congressional leadership.

When Democratic leaders are asked in person about how the terms of Iraq's Bush-backed Hydrocarbon Law gives most of the country's oil wealth to big oil, they either feign ignorance or run away. It's on video:

Feinstein

Biden & Kennedy on video, text of Reid


The Iraqis who know what's in the law oppose it, and those who don't oppose the concept of privatizing their oil.

Scholars, oil workers, and oil bureaucrats

Poll of Iraqis on oil

Greg Palast, Antonia Juhasz, and Naomi Klein have all done good work on this, but no one has dug into why the Democrats have been silent or complicit.

I agree with your statement that the actions our government has taken on behalf of oil companies amount to crimes against humanity. The only way to stop more from happening is to have at least one party that opposes it, and openly calls it by it's right name.

If they did this correctly, they would not be standing alone, but could call all other businesses, large and small, to stand with them and against a corporate thug that demands a bigger and bigger taste of their business.

Given your high public profile, you would be the most likely to get access to those with power in the Democratic Party, and if you couldn't, if you publicly questioned their complicity, they would be more likely to respond.

Sincerely,

OIL THEFT MOTIVE FOR IRAQ WAR resources

Would Dem leaders work be OK from cop, lawyer, doctor or exterminator?

From impeachment, to ending the Iraq War, to prevent the Iran War, the Democratic leadership in Congress has made at best half-hearted efforts toward representing the public, without using every procedural and investigative option at their disposal, and at worst have fallen all over themselves to enable Bush as in the case of ramping up for the Iran War and funding the Iraq War.

Imagine someone in other professions applying the same kind of effort and getting the same results as Democratic leaders like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, and Rahm Emanuel.

How long would you continue to employ them?

What would happen to a cop if he applied the same level of effort to a murder investigation?

He tells the grieving family that the victim was in a dangerous neighborhood, which is why he was killed, but neither gives more details nor asks for them. He tells the family they are lucky he's the cop and not the murderer. When pressed, the cop reluctantly investigates some, but when a suspect starts to emerge, he apologizes to the suspect and suggests the law should be changed to make murder legal.

Or a lawyer.

A prosecutor never speaks during the trial for the murder of your loved one except to make lunch arrangements with the defense counsel and try to line up a job with the accused or at least get campaign donations from him. During a break, you stick your head in another trial and notice the prosecutor is objecting and even demanding a mistrial for lesser misconduct than you have seen from the defendant's counsel in your trial. You go back and talk to the prosecutor in your case, and he starts to object on peripheral issues but says a mistrial is "off the table" even though the defense is clearly winning over the jury.

or a judge.

You are a judge in the trial like the one above. The prosecution has put forward compelling evidence beyond a reasonable doubt and the jury has decided to convict the defendant. You rebuke the jury, set aside their verdict, release the defendant, and apologize to him because murder happens to be illegal at the moment, but you hope that will change soon.

or a doctor.

A doctor discovers a cancerous tumor in your abdomen. Instead of removing it, he redirects blood vessels to it. Doing some research on your own, you discover this ''treatment'' will lead to the tumor growing faster, and that removal, chemotherapy, and radiation are the usual treatments. When you confront your doctor with this, he gets offended and asks who has more experience in dealing with cancer, him or you. Meanwhile, the tumor grows to the size of a basketball.

Or an exterminator.

You notice cockroaches. You call the exterminator. When he arrives, he sprays insecticide on your children, leaving them coughing and rubbing their burning eyes, and then takes some food out of your fridge and puts it down where the cockroaches can find it. When they come out, he makes sure they all get enough to eat and sets up a little cockroach playground for them. You try to stomp on the cockroaches, and he grabs your foot to stop you.

and so on.

In any of these other professions, you would not only fire them, but sue them for malpractice.

POEM FOR DEM SURRENDER: Ballad of the Dry Powder

I wrote the poem below for some past democratic capitulation when they hadn't even bothered with the token resistance they put up this time.

It is no longer enough to email, write, or call your congressman and senators. You must GO to their LOCAL OFFICE.

Every congressman has an office in their district, and every senator has offices a spread around the state so constituents can go their to be patronized and ignored in person.

Don't make an appointment or dress up, just show up and ask a couple of questions:

• When will you end the war?

• When will you impeach Bush?

You don't have to yell or argue, but when the staffer finishes handing you a hatful of bullshit, simply say, "Do you believe that yourself?"

Our system is profoundly broken when we have to scream and stamp our feet to get our elected representatives to actually represent us. Before we can fix it, we need to make these steaming sacks of shit in neckties fear us more than Wall Street or the corporations whose boards they hope to sit on when they leave Congress.

Find their office and go.

FIND YOUR REPRESENTATIVE

FIND YOUR SENATOR

Ballad of the Dry Powder

When we fought King George, Colonel Harry Reid was sent to gaurd a mountain pass.
He had twenty men, the high ground, and a good view of all possible routes of attack,
but just one small keg of gunpowder for all their muskets blasts.

Each soldier would have powder to let just ten bullets fly.
General Washington gave thought to this when he bid them good-bye.
He said, "Take care boys, and keep your powder dry!"
He would soon regret those words for they led good men to die.

One night as Reid's boys were sitting around the campfire at their post up in the pass,
a grizzly bear got scent of them and into their camp crashed.
Johnny grabbed his musket and aimed at the bear's boulder of a head,
but before he squeezed the trigger, Col. Reid jumped up and said,
"Stand fast! Our bullets are for Redcoats, save our powder for them instead!"
Johnny held his fire and the bear tore out his throat.

As the bear began to eat him, the other soldiers grabbed their guns,
but Reid said, "Fight him if you must, but no bullets should let fly!
Washington has ordered we must keep our powder dry."

So they turned their muskets round and swatted with the butts,
they pulled their Bowie knives and they tried to slash his guts.
The bear just took the beating, but he would stand the cuts.
He turned on his attackers clawing flesh and chewing heads.
By the time that he was finished, half Reid's men were lying dead.

Reid thought it a victory for that keg was tight and dry.
Every bit of powder meant another Redcoat boy would die.

When the dead were buried, and the night lightened to day,
The watch saw Indians approaching with warpaint and sharpened blades.
Bob whispered to Reid, "They are fighting for the crown."
"That may be so," said Reid, "but when Redcoats come around,
we need every bit of powder to shoot each soldier down."

Bob was going to answer when a bullet hit his lung.
The Indians weren't as stingy with their own powder drum.
Harry took the powder and he began to run.
Half his men were killed again,
just five left from when he had begun.

"Now we can fight," he said.
"We have plenty for each gun."

As the day was fading and they lay up there in wait,
a half dozen Redcoats approached them, lined up perfect in their sights.

Tom pulled back his hammer and almost fired a shot,
but Harry grabbed his barrel and said this squad need not be fought.
"A bigger army's coming, and no powder can be lost."

"But if we all are dead, then who will fire the shot?"
Tom tried to wrest rifle, but in the struggle it went off.
The Redcoats were upon them, and then all five were caught.

While he tied their hands, the British sargeant asked why they hadn't fired a shot.
Harry Reid said nice and loudly, "I cannot tell a lie,
Gen. Washington himself told me to keep my powder dry."

"But if you shot the bear, your men would have lived to fight.
And if you shot the Indians, and put a bullet in my eye,
you could have stole our powder and have more to be kept dry."

The soldier took his bayonet, and Harry had to die.
Then he killed the others,but man he told to fly,
and take with him the powder keg
with Reid's head in it to keep the powder dry.

harry reid vichy dem oil president george w bush dlc democratic leadership council corruption occupation colonialism white mans burden professor smartass democratlies peak oil corporation fascism impeach impeachment withdrawal democracy worst president ever failure war criminal idiot iraq appropriation bill smartass comments resistance censored news

Sen. Reid & top Dems Dodges Iraq Oil Privatization Question

Reid said several true and good things--none of which answered the question. If Democrats allow big oil to screw the Iraqis, that will pretty much prove that no one in Washington believes in their War on Terror except as a boogey man to scare us into accepting what they are going to do anyway--serve the oil industry and any other corporate interests that through them scraps of donations, or jobs on boards or as lobbyists.

Democrats will likely curb the worst abuses of the Bush administration at home, but if they don't fundamentally change our foreign policy, including decoupling it from oil and driving a stake through neoliberalism, both of which lead to war, war debt, death, poverty in other countries, and a race to the bottom in wages that the average American does not want to win.

Democrats did some good things in the first hundred days, but those will be meaningless if they don't strike at the root of why we came so close to losing our democracy, and salt the earth to keep that fascist weed from growing up and strangling us again.

VIDEOS OF EVADING QUESTION:

Sen. Ted Kennedy

Sen. Joe Biden

Lee Hamilton,
Iraq Study Group Co-Chair

KEY EXCERPTS:

Sen. Reid Dodges Iraq Oil Privatization Question

This exchange took place at a news conference with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Harry Reid on Jan. 19 at the National Press Club.

Husseini: Hi. Sam Husseini from IPA Media. I have a question for each of our guests, if I could. First to Senator Reid: an article appeared in The Guardian -- "Iraqis will never appear -- will never accept this sellout to the oil corporations," in The Guardian last week by Kamil Mahdi, who's an Iraqi academic in the U.K. It paints a picture of the administration in the midst of all of the carnage pushing through a new oil law "The U.S. and the IMF and their allies are using fear to pursue their agenda of privatizing and selling off Iraqis resources" with pending Iraq oil law. Are you looking into this? You've spoken about the oil companies and so on, are you looking into this oil law that the administration is apparently trying to ram through.

Reid: Is that a morning or afternoon newspaper? No, I'm sorry I haven't read that article. Um, but that's what Speaker Pelosi and I are talking about we have to lessen our dependence on foreign oil whether it comes from private sources, or in some instances where the oil is owned by the government... We have to do that and that's why it doesn't matter what they do in Iraq as far as our consumption of oil. We, we, we are oil hogs here in America and we've got to lessen our dependence on foreign oil and that can only be done by recognizing that we can't produce our way out of our problems and we have to move towards alternative energy sources.

http://www.husseini.org/content/2007/01/sen_reid_dodges.html

OIL MOTIVE for Iraq War resources
http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2006/09/iraq-oil-war-resources.html


harry reid sam husseini ted kennedy joe biden lee hamilton democratic majority iraq war privatization jim mcdermott oil psa production sharing agreement president george w bush oil companies shell bpExxonMobil ChevronTexaco ConocoPhillips republican antonia juhasz greg palast GOP conservative corruption occupation colonialism hydrocarbon law grover norquist jay garner professor smartass iraq peak oil propaganda corporation democracy war on terror public relations worst president ever failure war criminal smartass comments resistance censored news