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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (64769)	4/20/2006 8:32:23 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 363150

Well, he may be an SOB, but he's our SOB with oil. Wasn't SH our SOB once? Get ready to invade. Got oil? Rice meets with brutal African dictator, calls him 'good friend' of U.S. The Progress Report, American Progress Action Fund Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema is a "somewhat unsavory and corrupt character who seized power in a 1979 coup" and "runs a regime regularly condemned by the State Department for human rights violations, including torture, beatings, abuse and deaths of prisoners and suspects." According to one human rights official, he is "one of the most brutal, most corrupt and unreconstructed dictators in the world." He's also a "good friend" of the United States, according to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who met with Nguema on Wednesday. The meeting was a reminder of the Bush administration position on reform in Africa: you have to be democratic, fight corruption, and promote market liberalization and transparency -- unless you have oil. Equatorial Guinea is Africa's third-largest oil exporter, though the crude has "done little to help Equatorial Guinea's 540,000 people, some 400,000 of whom suffer from malnutrition," the Washington Post editorializes. "The meeting with Mr. Obiang was presumably a reward for his hospitable treatment of U.S. oil firms, though we cannot be sure since the State Department declined our invitation to comment." (18 April 2006) energybulletin.net