Democracy for Vancouver

From Michael Schwartz care of Jon at ATR:

As the Bush administration was entering office in 2000, Donald Rumsfeld exuberantly expressed its grandiose ambitions for Middle East domination, telling a National Security Council meeting: “Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that’s aligned with U.S. interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond.”

Remember when the war was going to take less than 6 months, oil revenues would pay for the reconstruction, and it would be raining candy-coated unicorns from Tel Aviv to Tehran?

WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - More oil is needed on the market, not less, the White House said on Wednesday, disagreeing with a surprise decision by OPEC to cut production by about half a million barrels a day.

“We need more supplies on the market, not less,” White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said. “Energy prices are still very high, despite their recent decline.”

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries had been expected to keep existing output allocations though some members had voiced concern about a growing surplus of oil on the market as high prices have affected demand.

In the immortal words of Otter in Animal House: “You fucked up. You trusted us.” I would not be in the least surprised if this - taking Iraq’s oil off the market rather than getting the Iraqi taps turned on full blast - was all part of the evil Cheney plan: start a war that puts oil prices through the roof while eventually gaining control of the Iraqi oil fields, and at the same time ramping up political pressure to open up coastal reserves and ANWR to drilling. After all, in 2003 we were almost a quarter century past the Exxon Valdez disaster, which was just about buried in the vast U.S. memory hole.

We “certainly disagree” with [the OPEC] decision, said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, who also urged lawmakers in the U.S. Congress to complete legislation aimed at fostering the production of more energy resources.
…
The House of Representatives is expected to vote on an energy package this week that would open the coasts of at least four Southeastern states to offshore drilling: Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

Notice that the two states with the most coastline outside of Alaska - and with Republican governors to boot - aren’t included; though both Ahnold and Charlie Crist have offered tepid support for offshore drilling, both know that a single accident could torpedo their states’ respective tourist industries.

So if the Dems were smart they’d throw in Florida and California as a poison pill to kill the legislation. But poison pills are the GOP’s specialty - Reid and Pelosi are too high minded for such underhanded duplicity. And look where it’s gotten us.

Meanwhile, back in the Green Zone, General Petraeus is busy burnishing his legacy, and stoking the Iraq-al Qaeda connection for McCain’s benefit:

Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the departing commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, said that the country remains “the central front” for al-Qaeda and other extremist groups but acknowledged that violence is rising in Afghanistan and Pakistan — battlegrounds he will soon oversee as the next head of the U.S. military’s Central Command.

Of course, as soon as he takes over in Waziristan, that will become “the central front.” Because he’s The Man.

In an interview Tuesday, hours before President Bush spoke about the need to send more troops to Afghanistan, Petraeus said, “Iraq is still viewed as the central front, if you will, for al-Qaeda and extremism of that flavor.”

Would that be Terrorist Crunch?

Petraeus oversaw the dramatic drop in violence in Iraq that began last summer as the Bush administration deployed 30,000 additional troops here. “We have gone from being on the brink to being on the mend,” he said at his office in Baghdad’s Green Zone.

But what happens when we stop paying the Iraqis not to shoot at us? Nice of the WaPo to neglect pointing that out. Wouldn’t want to question The Man.

But Petraeus said the gains in Iraq are not irreversible. “There are a number of what we call storm clouds in the horizon,” he said.

If there weren’t, then we might be able to withdraw our troops all together. And we can’t have that.

Petraeus said recent intelligence reports suggest that Iranian-backed Shiite fighters who left the country in recent months to avoid a military confrontation with U.S. and Iraqi forces are considering returning to Iraq.

Political tension, particularly over disputed internal boundaries in northern Iraq, had the potential of “erupting into something more significant,” the general said.

Like a casus belli? (Latin for “October surprise.”

The Iraqi parliament, which reconvened Tuesday after its summer break, failed to pass a law this year to provide a framework for provincial elections that were scheduled to take place next month.

But isn’t that what your oh-so-successful surge was for? To provide “room” for a political solution to Iraq’s ethnic and territorial issues? Where’s the success, Senator McCain?

But as with everything BushCo does, it’s the ends that count. The reason - and the means - are as meaningless as the hundreds of thousands of lives they’ve destroyed to get what they want.