Dots... Conecting The

From The Washington Post this morning:

"There is no single conspiracy theory about why the Bush administration allegedly waged this "war for oil." Here are two.

Version one: Bush, former Texas oilman, and Vice President Cheney, former chief executive of the contracting and oil-services firm Halliburton, wanted to help their friends in the oil world. They sought to install a pro-Western government that would invite the major oil companies back into Iraq. "Exxon was in the kitchen with Dick Cheney when the Iraq war was being cooked up," says the Web site of a group called Consumers for Peace.

Version two: As laid out in an April 2003 article in Le Monde Diplomatique, "The war against Saddam is about guaranteeing American hegemony rather than about increasing the profits of Exxon." Yahya Sadowski, an associate professor at the American University of Beirut, argues that "the neo-conservative cabal" had a "grand plan" to ramp up Iraqi production, "flood the world market with Iraqi oil" and drive the price down to $15 a barrel. That would stimulate the U.S. economy, "finally destroy" OPEC, wreck the economies of "rogue states" such as Iran and Venezuela, and "create more opportunities for 'regime change.' ""

That article prints the following images from this website:





(in the interest of full disclosure, unrelated and unbeknown to me, one of the images from this site, "iRaq" not shown here, will appear in the next issue of Tuesday; An Art Project."

Another image on the site was this:



This Image from the NYTimes a few weeks ago, under the headline "Struggling but Grateful, Liberia Welcomes Bush."


photo by Lawrence Jackson, AP

“It’s easier to tear a country down than it is to rebuild a country,” Mr. Bush said in a speech at the Barclay Training Center, where the United States is helping to train soldiers so Liberia can replace United Nations peacekeepers with its own army. “And the people of this good country must understand the United States will stand with you as you rebuild your country.”

The last time I wrote about Africa Elisa, who works for Care, sent me to a website called "Pambazuka News, a weekly forum for social justice in Africa." I was writing about the praise for Bush in Africa, and how it concerned me. Them too.

"The Bush Administration's fixation on security and the "war on terror" is already escalating the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa in 2008. In his last year in office, President George W. Bush will no doubt duplicitously continue to promote economic policies that exacerbate inequalities while seeking to salvage his legacy as a compassionate conservative with rhetorical support for addressing human rights challenges including conflict in Sudan and continued promotion of his unilateral HIV/AIDS initiative. The third prong of U.S.-Africa policy in 2008 will be the contin- ued and relentless pursuit of African resources, especially oil, with clear implications for U.S. mili- tary and economic policy."

Just a connect the dots project today. What more is there to say...