What started out as a blitzkrieg, the Bush agenda for the invasion of Iraq is now producing a world picture that can only be described with one word -- confusing. It is becoming apparent that outraged world opinion, guided by shrewd public relations efforts of foreign governments (including Iraq), has thrown a curve ball to the Bush military plan for a pre-election invasion and occupation .

But one curve ball is not a strikeout. The continuing military build up, more frequent air strikes, and the risky covert deployment of combat troops in supposedly neutral regions shows the degree of Washington's commitment to war. These troops are going to be used.

Russia, France and China are only stalling for time, hoping to cut the best backroom deals possible. They're perhaps also hoping that the American Empire will make a fatal mistake or a delay will break Bush's political, popular, and economic support.

Wall Street's 500-plus point rally on the two days of shameless congressional votes authorizing the use of force last week clearly signaled what world leaders have known for some time, and what the American public is seriously beginning to grasp -- the whole thing is about Iraqi oil.

The Associated Press ran a story yesterday indicating that the U.S. had been overwhelmed by global opposition to the invasion of a country second only to Saudi Arabia for its known oil reserves. Iraq is capable of quick production increases even if Saddam tries to destroy his oil fields, as former CIA director James Woolsey recently acknowledged. The story's lead sentence read, "Facing strong opposition from dozens of nations, the United States has backed down from its demand that a new U.N. resolution must authorize military force if Baghdad fails to cooperate with weapons inspectors, diplomats told The Associated Press on Thursday."

However, a Reuters story released hours later clearly indicated that the U.S. was playing hardball behind the scenes. "Iraq's main opposition group says a post-Saddam government would review existing oilfield development deals with French and Russian companies and could favour U.S. firms instead.

"Sharif Ali Bin Al Hussein, spokesman for the main Iraqi opposition group the Iraqi National Congress (INC), told Reuters in an interview that his group would open the oil sector to all companies, including the U.S. majors.

"'We would have to review all contracts which have been signed by this regime to make sure it is in the interest of the Iraqi people and not just for Saddam Hussein,' Hussein said."

Nobody is asking who controls the INC. It's a given.

The stakes are incredibly high for Russia. Major press organizations are now acknowledging what FTW has been saying for months. The Bush objective is to drive the price of oil down and simultaneously drive a stake through OPEC, forestalling a further and perhaps catastrophic crash in the U.S. economy. News analyses from Pravda to Fox News have foreseen that a successful U.S. invasion will result in crude oil prices of between $12 and $16 per barrel. Oil currently consts $30 per barrel.

That would destroy Russia's economic recovery as it sells hand over fist its own diminishing reserves -- oil that is more expensive to produce and of a lesser quality than Mideast crude, while prices are at $30. Iraq owes Russia $7 billion in debt from the Soviet era.

And on Aug. 19, Russia and Iraq signed a $40 billion infrastructure development deal, which, as reported in the Tehran Times, saw a team of Russian engineers on their way to what may soon be targets of U.S. bombing raids.

Both Russia and France have development interests in major Iraqi oil fields. The Reuters story reported, "Although [France's] TotalFinaElf has no contract, it has been earmarked by Saddam's government to develop the Majnoon and Bin Umar fields with reserves totaling 26 billion barrels. [Russia's] Lukoil has signed a contract for the 15 billion-barrel West Qurna field."

The back room deals and implied threats are getting hot and heavy. On Sept. 5, the Asia Times reported that Russia was considering an expensive trans-Siberian pipeline to service China. This would compete with post-9-11 pipeline deals that have been negotiated to send Caspian and Central Asian oil through Afghanistan for the Chinese market under U.S. control.

As FTW noted last month, the World Bank has opened offices in Kabul to facilitate the financing of the U.S.-backed projects. Russia's move may not be much of a threat because Russian oil is inferior to Caspian oil. Also, Russia has long passed its peak of production, which means that as time passes it will be increasingly expensive to produce. The message is clear, however, and a coalition of nations opposed to U.S. Imperial behavior could pull it off.

In the meantime Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis firm, reported that the U.S. is quietly offering a quid pro quo to Russia in the form of a trade off. If Russia will sanction the U.S. invasion, the U.S. will allow Russia a free hand in Georgia to deal with Chechen and Islamic rebels and presumably a piece of the profits from the new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline project that just broke ground. It seems like a very little quid for a lot of pro quo.

And in Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal made a second about face on Monday and once again categorically withdrew any Saudi support for the U.S. war. The timing was possibly influenced by a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) report released today that was exceptionally critical of the Bush Administration for not cracking down on Saudi Arabia's extensive financial ties to al Qaeda. The CFR investigation, directed by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, CEO of American International Group (AIG), was chartered by the CFR to be an intelligence analysis of terrorist financing. Greenberg, a staunch Israeli supporter, is well qualified for this task. In 1996 Bill Clinton floated his name to replace John Deutch as the director of central intelligence.

Greenberg and AIG have been connected by FTW in previous investigations to suspected money laundering through the Arkansas Development Financial Authority and to the drug trade. AIG's San Francisco legal office recently employed the wife of convicted Medellin Cartel co-founder Carlos Lehder.

The CFR criticism of Bush is significant for many reasons. First, it signals that the CFR is anxious to pursue an agenda that will likely result in the demise of the Saudi kingdom and the division of that country, with the U.S. simultaneously occupying both Iraq and the oil producing regions of Saudi Arabia. FTW predicted this scenario last month. The significance of a move that would give the U.S. military control of 36 percent of the world's oil is not lost on the rest of the world and it suggests the presence of a much deeper reality.

So flimsy are the Bush Administration's frequently changing justifications for war that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay Bookman wrote a Sept. 29 editorial called "Pax Americana," in which he openly called the U.S. an empire.

"The official story on Iraq has never made sense," Bookman wrote. "The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence."

He continued to make the point that the administration had no Iraqi exit strategy because it didn't intend to leave. Period. His premise seemed to be, 'Hey, let's stop kidding ourselves. We are an empire and we should go out and act like it.'

But perhaps the most critical element of the post-9-11 landscape, which is made clear by the CFR report, is a sense of urgency held by major financial players. As FTW has been saying for a year now, the only way both the urgency and the frenzy and the near desperation of these moves to carve up the world's oil can be explained is with one simple concept: the world is starting to run out of oil.

Coming cataclysmic global oil and natural gas shortages are about to become very real, certainly within the next two years, to everyone on the planet. Those countries that have access to what oil remains will survive and dominate and those that do not will atrophy and disintegrate. This is a deadly game of musical chairs. It is the kind of unspoken crisis that would compel the U.S. Congress to worship Caligula's horse, forget the Constitution and international law, and sell out completely.

Many have almost worshipped the progressive, seemingly unassailable credentials and leadership of Sen. John Kerry from Massachusetts, who is a possible 2004 Democratic nominee for the White House. However, many have charged him with being a privileged member of an elite ruling class. He was educated at Yale and belonged to the secretive Skull and Bones Society, of which both Bush presidents are members.

What one believes about Kerry's background is not significant. What is significant is that he voted for the use of force resolution last week without even a whimper. That vote was noticed and so were many others.

These are strange times.

Yesterday's announcement by the State Department that North Korea has a nuclear weapons program is troubling for two reasons. First, it raises all of the obvious questions about whether, if the U.S. isn't really concerned about oil, it will now drop all Iraqi plans and go invade Korea instead. They seem to be closer to building a bomb than Iraq is. But secondly and perhaps most importantly is the fact that, as reported by Stratfor, Pyongyang told the Bush Administration about the nuclear program two weeks ago. Why didn't we hear about it then?

Stratfor suggests that reason is a pending summit between the U.S. and China where one country might be traded for another. But instead it is likely the announcements earlier this year that the two Korea's might unite scares the White House infinitely more. What, then, would be the need for massive U.S. troop deployments in the former South Korea, right next to China? And isn't it also strange that a number of pipeline plans involving both U.S. and Russian companies that might go around China and make oil marketable to Japan and South Korea seem to pass through North Korea?

Go figure.

We are already being prepared for the Bush Administration's fallback position if it cannot get the war it wants, when it wants it. Yesterday, CIA director George Tenet sounded the clarion call in the last public hearing of the Joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee examining the 9-11 attacks. "Al Qaeda has reconstituted itself--It is capable of multi-theater operations." Tenet made no bones about the fact that another major attack -- one that will be very convenient for the White House -- is on the way.

The Oct. 12 bombing of a nightclub in Bali that killed many Australians has not seemed to impact widespread anti-war sentiment among the people down under. That might well be an omen for the outcome of the next terrorist attack in the U.S.

We now know that Bush et al knew enough about the last one to prevent it but did not. It has already been shown that CIA-linked members of the Pakistani intelligence service helped to fund it; that five of the hijackers received flight training at U.S. military installations; that no fighters were scrambled in time to do anything; and that President Bush lied when he said he had no idea that planes could be used as weapons. We know that it is a state secret as to whether the intelligence agencies told Bush what we now know that they knew.

I hope that this government fully understands how numerous, well-informed, now-seasoned and capable citizens will be watching an attack this time, and how quickly the worldwide networks that have formed in the last year will expose the first scintilla of untruth in the government's actions. I hope this government understands that the "sleeping giant" of the American people is beginning to stir and unite with peoples all around the world who are already awake.

But, as my dear friend Catherine Austin Fitts loves to say, "Those who win in a rigged game get stupid." And that is perhaps the most frightening thing of all.

Ok I figure the use of AP reports from last March is an attempt ignore the bluff Saddam played to past the deadline to let in UN Inspectors.

I fugure that you will use as many words as you can to ignore a Middle-Eastern dictator with messianic dreams and state:
“…the whole thing is about Iraqi oil.”

I figure your tactic is If you can't dazzle them with logic, baffle them with bullsh*t.

If it not was for the oil way have US not begin to overthrow the dictatorships in Q8 and suadia...

I read the previous posts in this thread, and well, it has been very interesting. As to our foreign friends posting here and their beliefs, I would tell us American posters here to remember that that is many, if not most people think of us around the world. The best example I that comes to mind is a football one, remember in the late 80's-early 90's, everyone either loved or hated the San Fransisco 49ers and the Dallas Cowboys because they won consistently, (I am a NY Jets fan so, I hate the Miami Dolphins). We're the Dallas Cowboys/ 49ers of the world, and the rest of the world feels like the Arizona Cardinals.

As for the WW II post a few posts back, It was not American precision bombing that won the war, to the contrary, German war production actually increased from 1943-1945. German petroleum production was affected by the U.S. bombing campaign, but the Soviet advance into eastern Europe cut off Geman access to POL. Victory in Europe was an allied matter. Without the Western Allies, the Soiet Union could not have defeated Germany, and without the Soviet Union, the Western Allies would hae taken a lot longer to defeat Gemany.
Conversely, the Soviet Union could not have made its advances without the US Lend-Lease program which shipped tens of thousands of trucks and tanks to the Soviet Union, enabling the Soviets to form mechanized divisions and armies.
The Soviets fought more Germans, about 1 million vs 1/2 million total on the western front.
As evidence,the Soviets lost more people, 30-40 million, and the Germans lost more men, 1.5 mil. vs the western allies, 250,000-300,000. The allies lost about 700,000-odd people (western).
The Europeans after the end of WWII became a region that lost the influence it had left. France desperately attempted to retain the last outposts of its empire and lost it. (vietnam, Algeria, the Congo, Mocambique, etc.) The United States finally became the Ascendant power after being dragged into it reluctantly by the collapsing Europe and its empires, with the concurrent danger that they would fall under the communist yoke. The US, after becoming the Arsenal of Democracy in WWII, became the finacial underwriter for the majority of the free world, and then its de facto protector.
Europe then realized that in order to compete economically with the US to recover economically, it could only unite economically to have a chance to compete, this was realized in 1952 with the European Coal and Steel Union by France and Germany, laying the foundation for the EU.
France in its effort to restore the "Grandure of France" attempted to distance itself from the US an any way possible, to show to the world that it was its own country, this was expressed in its ultimate form by its withdrawl from NATO in the early 60's.
France, Britain and Western Europe I believe realized the extent of its loss of influence and power during the 1956 Suez Canal seizure, when the US refused to condone the action, and thus, left the British and Frence open to condemnation by the UN.
The British still had a samll vestige of its empire in various parts of the world, yet almost disposed of substantial parts of its military, almost like most of Europe, but realized that it still had to protect these remnants when the Falklands War of '81. This convinced the British to keep most of its Naval and Air assets, and become the most powerful in both ares in Europe.
However, one must also keep in mind the situation right now in Europe. Heavy government debt, a sustantially aging population, low reproductive rates, and a significant immigrant population arising, predominantly from Eastern Europe and significantly from the MIddle East.
Western Europe cannot afford to have both Socialized societies, as its citizens are not reproducing enough, so less workers to pay taxes, means less for both health care and defense, so, with the US a global protector, defense takes a back seat to voter-intensive projects like socialized projects. Its foreign policy must follow a tightrope in the middle east because of its proximity to the region, and most importantly, fear of the substantial immigrant policy in europe.
In effect, Europe will soon be a tertiary power, not as powerful as the US, China, should overtake Europe soon economically, and various other emerging markets, especially Brazil in the near future. The politics of the future will be determined by economics. The simple fact is that Europe cannot compete globally with the US and the emerging economies because of its high social overhead costs, everything costs more to produce in Europe than the US and the rest of the world, it has essentially priced itself out of the market, unless it makes substantial, and hugely unpopular changes in its social and economic systems.
As for the enemies list, I believe Cuba should be a top 10 if not top 5 country. When it had Soviet support, it openly challenged us. In Africa it fomented revolutions in the 60-70's, fought in Angola with its armies, fomented revolution in Latin America, challenged us directly in Nicaragua, and has threatened us repeatedly, (bombing the nuclear reacter in Turkey Point, just outside Miami.) Spying on us, even penetrating the NSA, as its Chief Cuban analyst and Clinton administration NSA Cuba advisor, was a spy. She gave out the names of all her superiors and associates, as well as the names of our assets in Latin America.
Cuba still funds and supports the FARC and ELN in Colombia, evidenced by the offices it maintains in Havana, as well as its continued assistance in facilitating drug trafficking in its sovergn territory to the US. The news of Cuban involvement now in Venezuela, evidenced by the 1700 soldier detachment commanded by a notoriously corrupt and brutal general, in one of our major oil providers, coupled by the anti-US vitriol, is proof to me that it is still attempting to foment troubles in the region that are a detriment to our interests.

Hmm...it seems that my $0.02 has turned into $2.00

I made an error in the Post WWII writings, France was not the colonial power in Congo and Mocambique, Belgium and Portugal were, I did not replace France with Europe.

My apologies for the grammatical errors, but I am in a class, and didn't have time to profread.

Top 10 in Murder per Capita

1. Colombia 0.65 per 1000 people
2. South Africa 0.5 per 1000 people
3. Jamaica 0.33 per 1000 people
4. Venezuela 0.33 per 1000 people
5. Russia 0.2 per 1000 people
6. Mexico 0.13 per 1000 people
7. Lithuania 0.1 per 1000 people
8. Estonia 0.1 per 1000 people
9. Latvia 0.1 per 1000 people
10. Belarus

Is the List of Evil about evil cities, countries, citizens or societies?

I've been to Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia and while Colombia is probably the most violent place on earth, it's mostly caused by narco-funded guerrilas. The people are very hospitable. Venezuela and Mexico have social problems, exacerbated by Mexico's transshipment point for narcotics, which have fueled the criminal element.

Here's a website that has loads of information.
Everything from economy to crime rates.

http://www.nationmaster.com/index.php

i just wanted to say that im Honored to be a dane and make Napolion and Sbusa's Evil list!
(even if it only on the 8th place :P)

anyway... it is pointless to debate who is the evil person/country/whatever as it all depends on your point of view... sadam must be really *bliped* at the USA and alliance because 'we' ruined his little empire... hehe

my list(for USA)

1.N.Korea
2.UK(once they abolish the Monarchy and set up UN-supervised elections for a Democratic UK)
3.France
4.Russia
5.Pakistan
6.Japan
7.Spain
8.Italy
9.Germany
10.South Africa

you're an idiot orby

why is that??.I only accept one type of Government and that is Democracy!!..All them Monarchy's,Autocracy's and oligarchy's must become democratic or they will continue to be on the US's hitlist because in the end the free world will liberate the communist scum and World peace shall be achieved

the monarch of the united kingdom has no power. sure they receive money from english taxpayers (or so I've heard) but they cant control anything. they're just a symbol of the old British Empire. which no longer exists.

but still the UK has no president or congress so therefore it isnt Democratic.THe people of the UK have no say in government as the Prime minister is is chosen by the house of lords and the house of commons and not the citizens. It has been proven that Constitutional monarchies or any other Parliamentary systems dont give the people any power and should be liberated by the US

are you suggesting that we go to war with england?

Orby WTF?

1.N.Korea: obviously
2.UK(once they abolish the Monarchy and set up UN-supervised elections for a Democratic UK): Say WHAT? What color is the sky on the planet you live on?
3.France: not worth it-no contest -no threat except to themselves
4.Russia: no
5.Pakistan: no
6.Japan: no
7.Spain: Say WHAT? no
8.Italy: NO
9.Germany: not worth it -no contest -no threat
10.South Africa: NO. AIDS will kill them before the end of the century.

Last time I checked the UK had a Parliament, which is like a Congress, and a Prime Minister, which is like an executive branch of a democratic government, who is elected.... by... oh what is the word..... by maybe.... votes? Which is.... the essence of democracy. (house of commons)

Give me a brake.

Now I am sorry, with Saddam.... I don't know if anyone had seen on the news the torture movies he made. You know choping body parts off, chopping heads off, mass graves 61,000 in Baghdad being murdered, now I am sorry, if that isn't reason enough to go in there to kick his @$$ wtf is.....

quote:

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Originally posted by Orby387:
but still the UK has no president or congress so therefore it isnt Democratic.THe people of the UK have no say in government as the Prime minister is is chosen by the house of lords and the house of commons and not the citizens. It has been proven that Constitutional monarchies or any other Parliamentary systems dont give the people any power and should be liberated by the US

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Orby,

Who do you think elects Parliament?

(To kornadvocate)Damn straight we should of finished off Great Brittain Centuries Ago!!, The Uk is nothing but a nuisance to us now as they are direct competitors!!. Down with the Queen!!! and that damn Tony Blair figurehead!!