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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (63798)	4/24/2006 11:42:43 AM
From: PartyTime	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

Al Qaeda didn't control the pipeline--the Taliban did! news.bbc.co.uk From the above link: >>>A spokesman for the company, Unocal, said the Taleban were expected to spend several days at the company's headquarters in Sugarland, Texas.<<< Sugarland, eh? Now whose political district would that be? OK, let's read some more on what really happened: alternet.org From the above link: >>>The U.S. looked for other options, and the Trade and Development Agency commissioned a feasibility study for an improbable east- to- west route that would cross the Caspian Mountains and end at a Mediterranean seaport in Turkey. The company hired for that study was Enron. If that pipeline were to be constructed, Turkmenistan signed an agreement that it would be built by Bechtel and GE Capital Services -- the same American companies that were Enron's business partners in the Dabhol power plant. No matter which direction the Central Asia natural gas would eventually flow, Enron would profit. Should it go south towards ships waiting on the Pakistan coast, it would be still only a few hundred miles at sea to Dabhol. The trip from the Mediterranean would be farther (and thus more expensive for Enron to buy gas), but it was also the least likely route to be constructed. Estimated costs were almost $1 billion more than the route through Afghanistan, and engineering plans had not even started. No, the only practical route for the Caspian Sea gas was through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the border of India. All that was lacking was the political will to make it happen. How Deeply Were Bush and Cheney Involved? Was the Bush White House negotiating with the Taliban to help Kenneth Lay and Enron? Were Cabinet members and the National Security Council running a "war room" to save the company that was the closest friend of the president and vice president? As of this writing in February 2002, little is really known. But if the White House, Enron, and Dabhol timelines are combined, curious details appear. Read the timeline here. Enter George W. Bush. Bush's long and personal relationship with Enron's former CEO Kenneth Lay is now well known, as is his generous contribution of over $600,000 to advance the political career of the man who now holds the White House. Not so well known is how Bush has helped Enron.<<< Here's yet another excerpt: >>>Enter Dick Cheney. Scarcely a month after Bush moves into the White House, Vice President Cheney has his first secret meeting with Ken Lay and other Enron executives on February 22, 2001. Other meetings follow on March 7 and April 17. It is the details of these meetings that the Bush Administration is seeking to keep private. It's clear the Cheney had his own conflicts of interest with Enron. A chief benefactor in the trans-Caspian pipeline deal would have been Halliburton, the huge oil pipeline construction firm which was previously headed by Cheney. After Cheney's selection as Bush's Vice Presidential candidate, Halliburton also contributed a huge amount of cash into the Bush-Cheney campaign coffers. So the obvious question: Did Enron lobby Cheney for help in India? It has already been documented that the Vice President's energy task force changed a draft energy proposal to include a provision to boost oil and natural gas production in India in February of last year. The amendment was so narrow that it apparently was targeted only to help Enron's Dabhol plant in India. Later, Cheney stepped in to try to help Enron collect its $64 million debt during a June 27 meeting with India's opposition leader Sonia Gandhi. But behind the scenes, much more was cooking. A series of e-mail memos obtained by the Washington Post and NY Daily News in January revealed that the National Security Council led a "Dabhol Working Group" composed of officials from various Cabinet departments during the summer of 2001. The memos suggest that the Bush Administration was running exactly the sort of "war room" that was a favorite subject of ridicule by Republicans during the Clinton years. The Working Group prepared "talking points" for both Cheney and Bush and recommended that the need to "broaden the advocacy" of settling the Enron debt. Every development was closely monitored: "Good news" a NSC staff member wrote in a e-mail memo: "The Veep mentioned Enron in his meeting with Sonia Gandhi." The Post commented that the NSC went so far that it "acted as a sort of concierge service for Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay and India's national security adviser, Brajesh Mishra" in trying to arrange a dinner meeting between the Indian official and Lay. While lobbying India, it appears that the Bush Administration was also raising the heat on the Taliban to allow the pipeline. The book "Bin Laden: the Forbidden Truth" by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasique claims that the U.S. tried to negotiate the pipeline deal with the Taliban as late as August, 2001. According to the authors, the Bush Administration attempted to get the Taliban on board and believed they could depend upon the regime to stabilize the country while the pipeline construction was underway. Bush had already indirectly given the Taliban $43 million for their supposed efforts to stamp out opium-poppy cultivation. Was this an award -- or a bribe? The circumstances make this a valid question.<<< There's much, much more in the reporting. And there's much, much more to discover but such discoveries will not be forthcoming so long as congressional Republicans are in charge of oversight of the executive branch. Keep in mind the notion of GOPwinger oversight means swearing in under oath baseball players for a steriods investigation, but not the top five oil company CEOs (even though Americans are being gouged at the pump!).