Korea Two

To my ears I sound like a parrot on meth, but that is only because I bring you the critical story thread at Persona Non Grata before it begins to unravel in the corporate media. Sometime ago [6/19/07] I discussed the Regime's secret planning to create a long term military presence in Iraq even after the resistance had been subdued along the lines of our six decade old military presence in South Korea. As expected the Regime announced it has reached an agreement with the Baghdad government for a long term US military presence in the country. The bilateral security agreement would replace the UN mandate when it expires in 2008. Iraq wants an end to UN imposed restrictions on its sovereignty in place since the invasion of Kuwait in 1990. The parties agreed to extend the Chapter VII arrangement for one more year to allow them time to negotiate details of their new bilateral security pact. One of the "details" is the size and number of "enduring" US bases in the country, several of which are already being built. The security agreement will provide the weak central government with the reliable military force it needs to stay in power, since it allows US forces to intervene in any internal coup. It also will give preferential treatment to American companies wanting to exploit Iraq's energy resources. The fact the overwhelming majority of Iraqis want US armed forces to leave (80%) is not operative.

The Regime will avoid congressional debate on the contentious issue of a long term security guarantee for Iraq by formulating it as a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) rather than as a treaty which requires a two-thirds vote of Congress to ratify. SOFAs are treated as purely executive branch agreements. As we now know, the intervention in Iraq was in reality a military operation to secure Iraq's immense oil wealth by removing it from the control of an unfriendly dictator to the benefit of American oil companies. All the justifications du jour about WMDs, helping terrorists, establishing democracy, combating "Islamofascism", etc were simply a coordinated public relations campaign intended as cover for a neocolonial war. Iraq will be a client state, exploited for its natural resources and used as a political bulwark against radical Islamic states like Iran and Syria in the "Great Game" of Middle East geopolitics. And that game pivots on the Jewish-Palestinian impasse. Conservatives in Congress, from both parties, have aided and abetted this cynical manipulation of American public opinion and the profit motivated use of military force to achieve their foreign policy goals. Their support for war explains their unwillingness to impeach the Charlatan for his crimes.

Only a total US withdrawal could leverage a national compromise between the warring Iraqi factions that pass as a central government. A bilateral security agreement would ostensibly require a 2/3 approval of parliament under the new Iraq constitution. Already 144 legislators have signed a petition calling for the phased withdrawal of all American forces. One reason I support Bill Richardson, besides his obvious experience, is his commitment to end American involvement in Iraq. Governor Richardson is the only Democratic presidential candidate consistently calling for a complete and total withdrawal from Iraq within a reasonable time frame. He is moving up the polls in New Hampshire because the people there are beginning to understand his unique qualifications and see that his policy positions make great sense. Give Bill Richardson your vote and help him change the paradigm of diplomacy by other means.

Trent for Rent

Senator Trent Lott announced he is resigning his seat in the Senate by the end of the year. The Mississippi seat is considered safe for Republicans, so the speculation in Washington concerns his motives for resigning now rather than completing his term which ends in 2012. The consensus opinion is that the former majority leader and closet segregationist now wants to cash in on his thirty five years worth of DC experience and contacts as a lobbyist. Senate ethics rules will change in 2008 restricting former senators from lobbying the chamber for two years. There are rumors that Lott has financial difficulties after losing his beachfront home in Pascagoula to Katrina. Lott's career is a case study of what is wrong with Congress. Lott voted against establishing a Senate Office for Public Integrity, the ethics reform bill that established the modest two year restriction on the revolving door, and the McCain-Feingold bill banning so-called soft money contributions. These are just some recent examples of his long opposition to lobbying reform because Lott apparently has never met a corporation he did not like. Lott leads the Senate in corporate jet usage. He scores a whopping 96% on the US Chamber of Commerce's pro-business voting scorecard. The Senator voted against ending tax subsidies for corporations that move U.S. jobs offshore while denying bankruptcy relief to thousands of Americans.

Lott has a deserved reputation as a traditional pork barrel politician. His most egregious effort at special interest legislation was the $700 million "railroad to nowhere" along the Mississippi Gulf shore. The line was damaged by hurricanes and repaired at the a cost of $250 million to the railroad and it's insurers. After the repairs were made, Lott and fellow Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran added a whopping $700 million earmark to an emergency defense spending bill to move the line farther inland allegedly for protection from storms. The piece of pork is the largest in the history of Congress and maybe the greasiest. The CSX freight line is in the way of a scheme backed by wealthy land developers to turn the storm ravaged coast into a "Las Vegas South"--a glitzy collection of new hotels and casinos along the strand. Lott saved his bloated earmark by one vote after opposition erupted in the Senate. He was miffed by the resistance,"I'll just say this about the so-called pork busters. I'm getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina. We in Mississippi have not asked for more than we deserve. We've been very reasonable." Lott explained his success at passing pork,"I fold them [earmarks] into bills where you can't find it. I've been around here long enough to know how to bury it."

The Senator made his sentiments towards special interest legislation perfectly clear by killing a bill co-sponsored by Senator Obama creating a public database to track spending amendments using Senate procedural rules. I agree with the Senator on one thing: if you can deliver for your clients like Lott has you deserve to be paid more than $165,000 a year plus generous health and retirement benefits. Sooeee!

Le Shorter: Hillary's a Loser

A new Zogby poll of 9,000+ respondents with an error margin of 1% shows that the New York Senator is behind all major Republican candidates when matched in hypothetical races. Like I said, the only thing inevitable about Hillary is a another 4 years of Republicans in power.

Dead Kennedys: The Chicago Attempt

Readers of this blog will recall my opening series on President John Kennedy's assassination in Dallas forty-four years ago entitled "Dead Kennedys" in which I argued that individuals in the US security apparatus had foreknowledge of the assassination plot. There was an attempt on President Kennedy's life in Chicago and Tampa by Mafia hit men prior to the successful ambush in Dealy Plaza. Partial confirmation of this scenario, so at odds with the official version of his murder, came recently from former Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden, interviewed by CNN. Bolden is writing a book about his connection to the assassination. The Secret Service was apparently shadowing two Cubans just prior to Kennedy's arrival in Chicago on November 2nd. Previously on October 30, 1963, it had received a telex from Hoover's FBI that an attempt to assassinate the President would be made by a four man team using high powered rifles. Kennedy's trip to attend an Army-Air Force football game in Soldier Stadium was abruptly canceled. Sickness was given as the reason for cancelling the appearance with major political supporter Mayor Richard Daley.

In reality, the Service deemed a trip to Chicago with two or more hit men at large, possibly armed with telescopic rifles, to be too dangerous for the President. A Kennedy hater and former Marine, Richard Vallee, was arrested in Chicago and found with two M-1 rifles, a pistol, and 3000 rounds of ammunition. Vallee told a journalist that in 1963 prior to returning to his hometown of Chicago he had been on Long Island training Cuban exiles for the assassination of Fidel Castro. Vallee's place of employment looked out over the Jackson Street exit ramp where Kennedy's motorcade would have travelled headed to Soldier Field from O'Hare airport. Despite being heavily armed, the Secret Service considered Vallee to pose a entirely separate threat from the alleged four man assassination team. They left surveillance of Vallee to local police while they followed what were apparently two members of the assassination squad. Researcher Lamar Waldron considers Vallee would have been a patsy similar to the role played later in Dallas by Oswald. Here is a transcript of the superficial CNN report:

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It seems to happen this time every year -- more buzz about the death of John F. Kennedy. This time, the question of whether potential assassins were targeting him weeks before his death. A former Secret Service agent tells CNN just before President Kennedy was to go to Chicago in early November 1963, the agency got an important tip. An employee of a boarding house had seen rifles with telescopic sites and an outline of Kennedy's motorcade route in a room rented by Cuban nationals.The former agent, Abraham Bolden, would not go on camera with us or do a phone interview. He's writing a book out next spring called "The Echo from Dealey Plaza".Bolden admits he was not directly involved in the Secret Service investigation into the alleged plot. But in the 1970s, he told the House Select Committee on Assassinations he learned about it by monitoring Secret Service radio channels and observing suspects in custody.A different author, who has researched the alleged Chicago plot, told us what he believed happened to the suspected Cuban hit man. LAMAR WALDRON, AUTHOR, "ULTIMATE SACRIFICE": From all indications, the surveillance on the two men were -- was blown somehow. And so the two men were actually at large at the time that JFK was getting ready to leave Washington and come to Chicago.TODD: Kennedy's trip to Chicago was canceled. But it's not clear if it was because of a security threat.Contacted by CNN, the Secret Service would not comment on Abraham Bolden's claim, but did tell us he was separated from the agency in 1964 after being convicted of a crime. Published reports say Bolden was convicted of soliciting bribes from a counterfeiter, but that his accuser later recanted. Bolden claims he was framed.

What CNN failed to report is that Bolden was an exemplary law enforcement officer. Eisenhower appointed him to the Secret Service in 1959. He worked counterfeiting cases in Chicago where he won two commendations for cracking counterfeiting rings. In 1961 Kennedy appointed him to the presidential protection detail making him the first black agent to work that detail. The Chicago assassination attempt is documented in detail and confirmed by multiple sources including the former Chicago head of the Secret Service, Maurice Martineau. Lamar Waldron in his extensively researched book, Utimate Sacrifice, devotes an entire chapter to events in Chicago. According to Waldron, Bolden is largely responsible for bringing the attempt to public attention. Bolden was prevented from testifying to the Warren Commission because he was arrested on charges of soliciting bribes. Bolden faced two trials before finally being convicted on the testimony of two criminals, one of whom he had previously arrested. One of the criminals, an associate of Chicago mobster Sam DeStefano, later admitted he perjured himself against Bolden. Bolden served six years in prison some of it in solitary confinement.

Australians Deliver Decisive Verdict

In what must be considered a repudiation of the war policies of the American Regime, everybody and his mate in Aussie land voted for Labor and threw out conservative John Howard who lasted eleven years in office. Howard marched lock step with the Charlatan on prosecuting the Iraq War. The new Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, promised Australians he would take on global warming by signing the Kyoto Treaty and bring Australian armed forces home from Iraq. The vote for Labor is being called a landslide victory. Howard even lost his constituency which had voted Conservative for three decades. When Australia finally signs the Kyoto agreement, the United States will be the only industrialized western nation that has not formally agreed to mandatory greenhouse emission reductions, and the only major nation remaining in the so-called "coalition of the willing" that invaded Iraq (Britain is already making plans to withdraw its remaining contingent). This pathetic situation for the world's "only remaining superpower" constitutes a true policy dead end for the Bushco.

Le Shorter: In Harm's Way

Godspeed to those eco heroes who go down to the frigid Southern Sea in ships to protect the humpback whales from Japanese "scientific research". The whaling fleet left Japan a few days ago to hunt and kill fifty of the singing whales as well as hundreds of others. Japan does not respect the international moratorium on whaling which has allowed the humpback to make a modest increase in population. [Photo credit: National Geographic]

Tough Oil: The Drip of Iraqi Light Sweet

Here is a fact: the new Iraqi constitution says the oil belongs to the Iraqi people. That is all well and good. But here is another fact: no one really knows how much oil Iraq is producing because the meters are broken. The meters have been broken since 1996 according to the UN. In 2006 the Iraqi government signed a contract with Shell Oil to advise it on establishing a system "to measure the flow of oil, gas and related products within Iraq and in export and import operations". Still no working meters. The best thing Iraq terminal personnel can do is measure the oil as it leaves the export terminal in the Persian Gulf. They do that, according to a US Navy lieutenant interviewed by Stars and Stripes, by watching each tanker settle into the water as they are loaded. Each centimeter up the waterline marker indicates another 6,000 barrels of oil. Go figure. No one knows how much oil is stolen either. Some thieves simply back their modified pick up truck to a convenient spot on a pipeline and drill a hole. Others, with more capital and connections, bribe officials to look the other way as they fill tanker trailers at inland terminals. The Iraq Study Group said that 150,000 to 200,00 barrels of oil per day are stolen. That is a lot of oil, but given the chaos that exists in the country, the amount is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Both the Department of Energy and the State Department have tried to get accurate measures of Iraq's production levels. When first reported, the State Department's production figures were consistently higher than the Energy Department's. The DOE stated that the difference, often as much as 300,000 barrels per day, could be due to the fact that it does not count barrels as produced if they are injected back into the ground for lack of oil storage facilities. In Iraq, if the crude cannot be immediately refined or exported, it must be returned to the reservoir. The process is wasteful according to engineers, and Iraq is the only country in the world that does it. Worse yet, some of the surplus crude is stripped of it's lighter gasoline fraction and then injected, thereby diminishing the quality of the entire field. Iraq also flares, or burns off as waste, $10 million worth of natural gas every day. Of course the gas could be processed into needed energy products, if enough infrastructure existed. The supreme irony of the country is that with all the oil literally laying around, it is a net importer of refined products like gasoline, kerosene and fuel oil.

Iraq's production infrastructure has suffered through three wars and 30 years of neglect. Some of the equipment is still pasted with notices printed in Russian. Iraq has an estimated 115 billion barrels of proven reserves. At $90 a barrel, Iraq could finance a rebuilding of the industry. But it also has a lot of other bills to pay. Oil money is the government's only source of revenue besides foreign aid. Engineers think that it will take twenty years and perhaps as much as $100 billion to bring the industry up to international standards. No risk adverse multinational with the necessary technical resources is going to touch such a massive rebuilding project for chump change. Especially when bombs are still going off and a comprehensive, national hydrocarbon law is hung up on the splinters of the Baghdad government.