archived: 4 - 10 Dec, 2005 Back Next
UPDATED: December 5, 2005
TUMBLING TUMBLE WEED
Bush visited North Carolina, TPJ’s home state, this week. Bush’s appearance is another in his continuing road tour touting the economy. The President:
“The economy is strong, business is booming and the people in this country are working,'' Bush told workers today at Deere-Hitachi Construction Machinery Corp. in Kernersville, North Carolina.
“Fortunately, I didn't listen to the pessimists about tax cuts; the tax cuts are working.''
It was the third time in a week Bush has touted the strength of the economy at a time when his job approval rating is hovering near record lows and concern is growing in Congress about the war in Iraq. -- Bloomberg
Bush’s “happy warrior” rhetoric belies a harsh reality for North Carolina:
North Carolina has lost 173,000, or 23 percent, of its factory jobs since Bush took office in 2001. The state's unemployment rate is 5.3 percent, compared with the national average of 5 percent.
North Carolina manufacturing continues to bleed jobs, some losses directly related to Bush’s successful drive to enact the CAFTA trade agreement. The story (emphasis added):
More than 200 employees will lose their jobs at an Edenton manufacturing plant when the company moves most of its operations to Central America in the coming year.
Edenton Town Manager Anne-Marie Knighton said the decision by George C. Moore Co. is the result of the recently adopted Central American Free Trade Agreement. . . .
Edenton held onto its textile-producing history longer than most North Carolina counties, but the layoffs are a huge blow, she said.
''They were one of our largest employers, in certainly one of our oldest industries,'' Knighton said. ''They came to Edenton in the early 60s and have been a good, good, corporate citizen.''
The Moore announcement follows last week's decision by the Weyerhaeuser Co. to shut down its plant in nearby Plymouth after 57 years. That move is expected to displace another 200 workers.
Jerry Meek, Chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, adroitly painted the national picture:
Today, eight million people are out of work, one million private sector jobs have been lost since the beginning of the Bush Administration, and long-term unemployment is at the highest level in ten years. Another 4.5 million people work part-time because they can't find a full-time job. Those who have jobs are working harder and harder for less money. Consumer confidence is the lowest in 15 years. And over 60% of Americans think our country is headed in the wrong direction.
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OILY DOUBLESPEAK
Oil executives met with members of VP Cheney’s energy task force, but not with his energy task force?
Five oil industry executives appearing before the US Senate denied that they met with VP Cheney’s energy task force in 2001 as Cheney was drafting America’s energy policy. The Washington Post subsequently exposed the truth:
A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.
The document, obtained . . . by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.
Democrats in the Senate, including Democrat Senate Minority Leader Reid, called for the oil executives to appear before Congress again to explain the apparent deception. Instead the Chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, Republican Pete Domenici of New Mexico, and the panel's top Democrat, Jeff Bingaman, also from New Mexico, sent a letter to the oil executives asking them to explain in writing the "apparent inconsistencies" in their testimony.
The response is incredible and incredulous:
John Hofmeister,
chairman of Shell Oil Co., said Shell representatives did not meet with the task
force but added, ''Shell representatives did meet with the administration --
including the vice president and his staff -- on a broad range of energy policy
issues."
Exxon Mobil Corp. said its chairman, Lee Raymond, responded accurately when he
said no one at the company participated in a task force meeting -- as the
question was phrased by Senator Frank Lautenberg, a New Jersey Democrat.
In its letter, however, Exxon Mobil confirmed that company officials met with a
Bush administration official for 45 minutes on Feb. 14, 2001, to discuss the
''global energy supply and demand situation." On the same day, the company said,
the same information was given to members of Congress and others. The Cheney
task force issued its report on energy priorities in May 2001. –
Boston Globe
Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg correctly sums up the answers provided:
Lautenberg called the executives' clarifications ''corporate doublespeak that only further demonstrates the need for a criminal investigation" of their Nov. 9 testimony. He said he planned to discuss the issue further with Justice Department officials today. – Boston Globe
The “revised” answers provided by oil executives demonstrate why the Bush administration sued to keep the task force’s proceedings from being made public. It is now obvious that energy conglomerates largely wrote policy for America.
Every Congressional Democrat should support Sen. Lautenberg’s call for a criminal investigation.
STAYING THE COURSE
Bush’s national address to garner support for continuing the war in Iraq has apparently failed. Op ed columnist Thomas Oliphant cogently observes that Bush:
was not being candid or honest about the situation in a place where he insists on an open-ended military commitment.
It was Senator Clinton, in an e-mail to New York supporters this week, who framed the issue in exactly the manner that caught Bush in his latest deception. ''Given years of assurances that the war was nearly over and that the insurgents were in their 'last throes,' this administration was either not being honest with the American people or did not know what was going on in Iraq," she wrote.
Looking ahead, Clinton offered her own version of Murtha's recommendation that differs from his in its absence of a timetable and its intentional vagueness about whether a residual force should be inside or just beyond Iraq's border.
Her key words: ''I believe we are at a critical point with the Dec. 15 elections that should, if successful, allow us to start bringing home our troops in the coming year, while leaving behind a small contingent in safer areas with greater intelligence and quick strike capabilities."
The question Bush was unable to confront, much less answer yesterday, is what requires the presence of 160,000 US troops in Iraq. – Boston Globe
Even more national figures are calling for an end to Bush’s war:
The U.S. general who used to head the National Security Agency says the only way to stabilize the Middle East is to leave Iraq.
Retired three stars Lt. Gen. William Odom, writing for NiemanWatchdog.org, wrote that while President George W. Bush wants to bring democracy and stability to the Middle East, the only way to achieve that goal is for the U.S. armed forces to get out of Iraq now.
Odom, one of the most respected U.S. military analysts and a prominent figure at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, wrote, "We have seen most of our allies stand aside and engage in Schadenfreude over our painful bog-down in Iraq. Winston Churchill's glib observation, 'the only thing worse that having allies is having none,' was once again vindicated.
"There is no chance that our allies will join us in Iraq," he wrote. "... Iraq is the worst place to fight a battle for regional stability. Whose interests were best served by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place? It turns out that Iran and al-Qaida benefited the most, and that continues to be true every day U.S. forces remain there." – United Press International
Bush’s vision of “democracy” in Iraq appears to be vanishing even before American troops are withdrawn. The Kurds, who largely supported the American invasion, have long coveted the idea of having an independent Kurdish state. Their vision of Iraq has been, if not out right sovereignty for a Kurdish state, a weak central Iraqi government, leaving the Kurds to run their affairs regionally. The Kurds sit on massive known oil reserves.
The Kurds have, independently of the “interim” central government, negotiated oil drilling contracts without “interim” government approval:
A controversial oil exploration deal between Iraq's autonomy-minded Kurds and a Norwegian company got under way this week without the approval of the central government here, raising a potentially explosive issue at a time of heightened ethnic and sectarian tensions.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party, which controls a portion of the semi-autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq, last year quietly signed a deal with Norway's DNO to drill for oil near the border city of Zakho. Iraqi and company officials describe the agreement as the first involving new exploration in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Drilling began after a ceremony Tuesday during which Nechirwan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdish northern region, vowed "there is no way Kurdistan would accept that the central government will control our resources," according to news agency reports.
In Baghdad, political leaders on Wednesday reacted to the deal with astonishment. – ContraCosta Times
The Kurdish move is a clear indication that Bush’s war in Iraq may lead to the disintegration of the Iraqi state or ethnic civil war.
As Bush rallied Americans to stay the course, Bulgaria and Ukraine announced they will withdraw their combined 1,250 troops by mid-December. Australia, Britain, Italy, Japan, Poland and South Korea are considering reducing or recalling their personnel. More than half of the non-American forces could be out of Iraq by next summer.
And, on the ground in Iraq, 18 US servicemen were killed within 72 hours from Wednesday through Friday.
Last Update: 03/27/2006