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Monday, March 17, 2008 |
Published on Sunday, March 16, 2008 by The Indepenedent/UK
Five Years of Occupation, Iraq Destroyed
Iraq is a country no more. Like much else, that was not the plan
by Patrick Cockburn
[OE]It reminds me of Iraq under Saddam,[per thou] a militant opponent of Saddam Hussein said angrily to me last week as he watched red-capped Iraqi soldiers close down part of central Baghdad so the convoy of Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, might briefly venture into the city.
Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the US and the Iraqi governments claim that the country is becoming a less dangerous place, but the measures taken to protect Mr Maliki told a different story. Gun-waving soldiers first cleared all traffic from the streets. Then four black armoured cars, each with three machine-gunners on the roof, raced out of the Green Zone through a heavily fortified exit, followed by sand-coloured American Humvees and more armoured cars. Finally, in the middle of the speeding convoy, we saw six identical bullet-proof vehicles with black windows, one of which must have been carrying Mr Maliki.
The precautions were not excessive, since Baghdad remains the most dangerous city in the world. The Iraqi Prime Minister was only going to the headquarters of the Dawa party, to which he belongs and which are just half a mile outside the Green Zone, but his hundreds of security guards acted as if they were entering enemy territory.
Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party, and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.
The Iraqi government tries to give the impression that normality is returning. Iraqi journalists are told not to mention the continuing violence. When a bomb exploded in Karada district near my hotel, killing 70 people, the police beat and drove away a television cameraman trying to take pictures of the devastation. Civilian casualties have fallen from 65 Iraqis killed daily from November 2006 to August 2007 to 26 daily in February. But the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left.
More than most wars, the war in Iraq remains little understood outside the country. Iraqis themselves often do not understand it because they have an intimate knowledge of their own community, be it Shia, Sunni or Kurdish, but little of other Iraqi communities. It should have been evident from the moment President George Bush decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein that it was going to be a very different war from the one fought by his father in 1991. That had been a conservative war waged to restore the status quo ante in Kuwait.
The war of 2003 was bound to have radical consequences. If Saddam Hussein was overthrown and elections held, then the domination of the 20 per cent Sunni minority would be replaced by the rule of the majority Shia community allied to the Kurds. In an election, Shia religious parties linked to Iran would win, as indeed they did in two elections in 2005. Many of America[base ']s troubles in Iraq have stemmed from Washington[base ']s attempt to stop Iran and anti-American Shia leaders such as Muqtada al-Sadr filling the power vacuum left by the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The US and its allies never really understood the war they won that started on 19 March 2003. Their armies had an easy passage to Baghdad because the Iraqi army did not fight. Even the so-called elite Special Republican Guard units, well-paid, well-equipped and tribally linked to Saddam, went home. Television coverage and much of the newspaper coverage of the war was highly deceptive because it gave the impression of widespread fighting when there was none. I entered Mosul and Kirkuk, two northern cities, on the day they were captured with hardly a shot fired. Burnt-out Iraqi tanks littered the roads around Baghdad, giving the impression of heavy fighting, but almost all had been abandoned by their crews before they were hit.
The war was too easy. Consciously or subconsciously, Americans came to believe it did not matter what Iraqis said or did. They were expected to behave like Germans or Japanese in 1945, though most of Iraqis did not think of themselves as having been defeated. There was later to be much bitter dispute about who was responsible for the critical error of dissolving the Iraqi army. But at the time the Americans were in a mood of exaggerated imperial arrogance and did not care what Iraqis, whether in the army or out of it, were doing. [base "]They simply thought we were wogs,[per thou] says Ahmad Chalabi, the opposition leader, brutally. [base "]We didn[base ']t matter.[per thou]
In those first months after the fall of Baghdad it was extraordinary, and at times amusing, to watch the American victors behave exactly like the British at the height of their power in 19th-century India. The ways of the Raj were reborn. A friend who had a brokerage in the Baghdad stock market told me how a 24-year-old American, whose family were donors to the Republican Party, had been put in charge of the market and had lectured the highly irritated brokers, most of whom spoke several languages and had PhDs, about the virtues of democracy.
There was a further misconception that grew up at this time. Most Iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein. He had been a cruel and catastrophically incompetent leader, who ruined his country. All Kurds and most Shia wanted him gone. But it did not follow that Iraqis of any description wanted to be occupied by a foreign power.
Later President Bush and Tony Blair gave the impression that overthrowing the Baathist regime necessarily implied occupation, but it did not. [base "]If we leave, there will be anarchy,[per thou] friends in the occupation authority used to tell me in justification. They stayed, but anarchy came anyway.
In that first year of the occupation it was easy to tell which way the wind was blowing. Whenever there was an American soldier killed or wounded in Baghdad, I would drive there immediately. Always there were cheering crowds standing by the smoking remains of a Humvee or a dark bloodstain on the road. After one shooting of a soldier, a man told me: [base "]I am a poor man but my family is going to celebrate what happened by cooking chicken.[per thou] Yet this was the moment when President Bush and his Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, were saying that the insurgents were [base "]remnants of the old regime[per thou] and [base "]dead enders[per thou].
There was also misconception among Iraqis about the depth of the divisions within their own society. Sunni would accuse me of exaggerating their differences with the Shia, but when I mentioned prominent Shia leaders they would wave a hand dismissively and say: [base "]But they are all Iranians or paid by the Iranians.[per thou] Al-Qa[base ']ida in Iraq regarded the Shia as heretics as worthy of death as the Americans. Enormous suicide bombs exploded in Shia marketplaces and religious processions, slaughtering hundreds, and the Shia began to hit back with tit-for-tat killings of Sunni by Shia militia death squads or the police.
After the Sunni guerrillas blew up the Shia shrine in Samarra on 22 February 2006, sectarian fighting turned into a full-blown civil war. Mr Bush and Mr Blair strenuously denied that this was so, but by any standard it was a civil war of extraordinary viciousness. Torture with electric drills and acid became the norm. The Shia Mehdi Army militia took over much of Baghdad and controlled three-quarters of it. Some 2.2 million people fled to Jordan and Syria, a high proportion of them Sunni.
The Sunni defeat in the battle for Baghdad in 2006 and early 2007 was the motive for many guerrillas, previously anti-American, suddenly allying themselves with American forces. They concluded they could not fight the US, al-Qa[base ']ida, the Iraqi army and police and the Mehdi Army at the same time.
There is now an 80,000 strong Sunni militia, paid for and allied to the US but hostile to the Iraqi government. Five years after the American and British armies crossed into Iraq, the country has become a geographical expression.
[OE]Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq[base '] by Patrick Cockburn is published next month by Faber & Faber.
9:58:59 AM 
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Jeff Cohen: Iraq Winter Soldier Hearings: Victory for Independent Media.
In 1971 at age 19, I had a life-changing experience when I met dozens of Vietnam veterans who'd descended on my hometown of Detroit to testify at the "Winter Soldier" hearings organized by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. In anguished presentations, the Vets painstakingly described the horrors against Vietnamese they'd seen or taken part in. And the attitudes of racism and bloodlust that motored the war. Many vets blamed the lies in mainstream media for convincing them to go to Vietnam in the first place.
Virtually every soul in that Detroit hotel banquet hall wept openly at the heartfelt, bone-chilling revelations pouring out of the Vietnam vets struggling with bloody memories and post-traumatic stress. But no one outside that hall could see or hear the proceedings. No TV or radio networks covered the event.
This weekend at the National Labor College near Washington D.C., a new generation of vets convened by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) presented powerful hearings -- "Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan" -- that were more extensive and perhaps even more emotional.
Thirty seven years later, I again found myself sobbing at testimony from solemn young Americans returned from needless war, grappling with shattered lives over brutalities against civilians and prisoners they'd witnessed or participated in.
But I was nowhere near D.C.
This time, I watched the dramatic testimony -- often buttressed by photographic and video evidence -- live online at www.IVAW.org. This time, I caught hours of coverage on Free Speech TV, the national satellite network that broadcast the panels of testimony and featured interviews with vets and their families in between panels. This time, I received regular video news feeds in my email inbox from The Real News Network. (The hearings were also televised on 20 public access channels from Fayetteville to Palo Alto, and in public gatherings from Florida to Alaska.)
On my car radio, I listened to the proceedings live on the Pacifica network, which broadcast the hearings to affiliates nationwide -- along with call-ins and email from listeners, including Iraq vets and soldiers not as critical of the war.
The four days of vets' testimony revealed the struggle these young Americans are waging to regain their humanity and morality after having been transformed into callous war-fighters who largely dehumanized Iraqis as a people -- not just "the enemy" or combatants. An objective observer hearing the testimony would have good reason to wonder if U.S. troops -- given the often gratuitous and racist brutality, and the mistreatment of women, children and the elderly -- can ever be a solution in Iraq.
On panel after panel, the veterans offered heartfelt "apologies to the Iraqi people" for what our country has done to their country. I saw a vet rip up the commendation he'd received from Gen. David Petraeus, denouncing the general as a cheerleader who put his own ambitions above his duty to the troops and to the truth. Many vets called for rapid withdrawal from Iraq and criticized Democratic leaders for prolonging and funding the endless occupation.
Ex-Marine Jon Turner, who served two tours in Iraq, ripped his medals from his shirt and threw them on the ground, concluding: "I'm sorry for the hate and destruction I and others have inflicted upon innocent people... Until people hear what is going on, this is going to continue. I am no longer the monster that I once was."
Such powerful first-hand accounts -- if heard by the American public -- would threaten continued funding of the Iraq occupation. But national mainstream outlets in our country, unlike big foreign outlets, largely ignored this weekend's proceedings.
Not surprisingly, these Iraq veterans had little but scorn for U.S. corporate media whose journalistic failures helped sell the war five years ago, and whose sanitized coverage helps sell the troop "surge" today.
But thanks to the Internet and the growing capacity of independent TV, radio and web outlets, a significant minority of Americans had access to these proceedings. And the archived hearings are now available to anyone anytime with computer access.
In Detroit in 1971, I remember what happened when one of the rare mainstream camera crews showed up at Winter Soldier... and then abruptly packed up to leave in the middle of particularly gripping testimony. A roomful of Vietnam vets booed and jeered. It was the moment I became a media critic.
Winter Soldier II shows that it's not enough to criticize corporate media. Even more important is to take advantage of new technologies to keep building independent media.
Jeff Cohen is the founding director of Ithaca College's new center for independent media. He founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
9:50:34 AM
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Five Years Later, Iraqis Still Lack Basic Services, Believe Surge Has Made Security Situation Worse.  This week marks the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion in Iraq. While security has improved, there are growing concerns by both Iraqis and U.S. military officials that it will rise again in the near future. As has been widely noted, this lull in violence has not led to political progress. It also hasn’t led to an increase in services in Iraqis’ everyday lives.
McClatchy reports on these “worms in the water” five years after “liberation”:
To them, the real crime is that five years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, they still swelter in the summer and freeze in the winter because of a lack of electricity. Government rations are inevitably late, incomplete or expired. Garbage piles up for days, sometimes weeks, emanating toxic fumes.
The list goes on: black-market fuel, phone bills for land lines that haven’t worked in years, education and health-care systems degraded by the flight of thousands of Iraq’s best teachers and doctors. […]
In some poor areas of Baghdad, militias or Iranian-backed charities have become the main source of propane tanks, food staples, garbage collection and other services that the government should provide.
A new poll for BBC, ABC, ARD and NHK finds that a majority of Iraqis think their lives are good, “more than at any time in the last three years.” Yet at the same time, 72 percent oppose the presence of coalition forces in Iraq and 61 percent believe that these troops are making the security situation worse. Additionally, 53 percent say that Bush’s “surge” has “made overall security worse, not better,” and a plurality want foreign forces to leave immediately.
A look at some areas of Iraqi life that the surge hasn’t been able to lift up. In many cases, these services are worse than they were before the U.S. invasion:
| Services |
% Rating ‘Bad’ |
% Rating ‘Good’ |
Snapshot Of Problems |
| Availability Of Jobs |
70 |
29 |
The nationwide unemployment rate is currently between 25-40%, where it has remained since November 2005, according to the Brookings Institution. |
| Supply Of Electricity |
88 |
12 |
The average hours of electricity per day is at 9.7 hours nationwide, one of the lowest levels since the surge began in early 2007. Baghdad currently has an average of 7.5 hours of electricity, down from pre-war levels of 16-24 hours. |
| Availability Of Clean Water |
68 |
30 |
In late 2007, the World Health Organization confirmed that cholera had infected at over 7,000 Iraqis. Cholera is “typically spread by drinking contaminated water.” |
| Availability Of Medical Care |
62 |
37 |
New ICRC report finds that hospitals lack “qualified staff and basic drugs.” Health care facilities “have not been properly maintained, and the care they provide is often too expensive for ordinary Iraqis.” |
| Freedom To Live Anywhere Without Persecution |
60 |
40 |
In August 2007, the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization indicated that “the total number of internally displaced Iraqis [had] more than doubled, to 1.1 million from 499,000” since the surge started in February. Baghdad, which once used to be a 65 percent Sunni majority city, “is now 75 percent Shia.” |
[Think Progress]
9:32:35 AM
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Red Cross Slams "Critical" Situation In Post-Invasion Iraq. The humanitarian situation in post-war Iraq five years after the US-led invasion is one of the most critical in the world, the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a report late Sunday.
Millions in the country had no access to drinking water, sanitation or healthcare. Decades of previous unrest and economic sanctions had exacerbated the situation, it stressed.
"The fact that some people in Iraq are now relatively safer must not make us forget the plight of millions," said Beatrice Megevand Roggo, the Red Cross head of operations in the Middle East and North Africa.
Although the situation had improved in some areas, Iraqis were either killed or wounded in daily attacks or violence with civilians often being targeted, said the report. Healthcare was far too expensive for the average citizen, it added.
A recent World Health Organisation and Iraqi health ministry report estimated that 151,000 people were killed between the start of the invasion on March 20, 2003 and June 2006.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
9:25:04 AM
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Mike Farrell: Ending the Hidden, Savage Routine of Prison Rape.
Fyodor Dostoevsky once said, "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." Try it here in the U.S. But wear boots; it's a sewer.
You may know that our prisons are appalling. If you don't, you should; you're responsible. But even with what you think you know, you've certainly missed the disgusting secret of U.S. jails and prisons: rape. Rape is a method of control with the collusion, sometimes instigation, of guards. Men rape men; women are raped by guards, staff and other inmates. Rape, with the silent acceptance of wardens and staff, is the savage routine in our prisons. It is the initiation process for frightened "new fish;" it's the price of survival for the small, the weak, the defenseless, the gay. It is the fear that haunts the days and nights of those not yet turned out -- or turned into predators. Per the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, its "horrors... border on the unimaginable."
Imagine it.
Those who object to it face denial, denial, and then denial. Stop Prisoner Rape, founded in 1980 to deal "with the problems of rape, sexual assault, un-consensual sexual slavery, and forced prostitution in the prison context," was formed by brave men who admitted their own victimization in order to save others from the same fate. After twenty years, they were finally able to open an office. Not until 2003 did they develop enough support to secure the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), the first-ever federal law acknowledging this hidden sin.
Now, the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission meets periodically to "study the impact of prisoner rape." While they study, rape continues. And to this day those who decades ago had the courage to challenge rape in prison are tortured for their audacity. In a biting irony, the Commission recently met in New Orleans, Louisiana. At Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary known as "The Farm," two of the Angola Three have been in solitary confinement for 35 years for standing up to protect "new fish" from the long established practice of sexual dominance by veteran inmates.
The three, Robert King Wilkerson, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, were sent to Angola in the late 1960s. Unwilling to submit to this depravity, they organized a chapter of the Black Panther Party -- said to be the first inside a prison -- in 1971, in an effort to end systematic rape and violence, desegregate the institution and offer help and hope to others. Their efforts so infuriated the authorities that they were separated from everyone else, tried on trumped-up charges, convicted and placed in solitary confinement in 1972. And there they remained, for decades. Robert Wilkerson was exonerated and released in 2001 after 29 years in solitary confinement. Herman Wallace, still in solitary, recently had his conviction reviewed by a state court commissioner who recommended it be overturned. Albert Woodfox lives in hope, alone for 35 years in solitary confinement.
As Dostoyevsky said, "A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals." 35 years in solitary confinement for standing up against rape? Wear boots, it's a sewer.
Mike Farrell, President of the board of Death Penalty Focus, is the author of "Just Call Me Mike; A Journey to Actor and Activist."
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
9:23:34 AM
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Brad Pitt Joined By Bill Clinton In New Orleans. NEW ORLEANS — Former President Clinton and Brad Pitt met with hundreds of volunteers in the Lower 9th Ward at the site where a foundation headed by Pitt plans to begin building affordable homes for Hurricane Katrina victims.
"We hope to see a huge change here in the next six months," Pitt told a group of residents as he posed for pictures Sunday and signed autographs.
The 44-year-old actor and Clinton walked a street as hundreds of volunteers on either side, wielding shovels and rakes, prepared the land for homes. For hours, they cleared overgrown grass and weeds that were covering street drains and sidewalks.
The Lower 9th Ward was one of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in New Orleans when Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005, causing the city's levee system to fail with devastating flooding.
"We're working to get the grounds ready so construction can begin," said Anne Bouthilette, a 20-year-old sophomore history major at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.
"It is only fitting that we culminate a weekend focused on youth service by turning words into action," Clinton said in a prepared statement.
A brass band played in the background as Clinton and Pitt shook hands and chatted with volunteers.
Bouthilette said this was her first visit to New Orleans and she was enjoying the opportunity to help with the city's recovery.
"There's a pressing need for people to come down here and do work," she said. "There are still so many things that need to be done. Everybody can do something."
Bouthilette was among some 600 college students in New Orleans for the Clinton Global Initiative University, a three-day program that began Friday and was designed to challenge college students and universities to tackle global problems with practical, innovative solutions.
The event wrapped Sunday with the volunteer effort in the Lower 9th Ward, at the site where Pitt and his Make It Right Foundation are building homes using environmentally friendly materials such as cisterns and solar panels for residents who lost their homes in the storm.
Pitt and Clinton broke ground with shovels after their mingling with the volunteers.
___
On the Net:
Make It Right:
http://www.makeitrightnola.org
CGIU:
http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid1853
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
8:29:31 AM
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Raymond J. Learsy: Oil at $111/Bbl. We Are Being "Sovereignly Screwed"!.
The price of oil has diverged from fundamentals in such a dramatic way it is placing our economy at grave and immediate risk, not to speak of the consequences of the enormous, unprecedented transfer of wealth that is taking place.
There are no crude oil shortages. Commercial inventories of crude oil, even excluding our Strategic Petroleum Reserve are 9% higher than they were at the end of last year. Crude inventories increased in seven of the last eight weeks. This past week crude oil inventories jumped by 6.2 million barrels far more than the 1.7 million barrels forecast. Yet prices barely budged below their all time highs of $111/bbl . Gasoline inventories are at their highest levels in the past 18 months.
Geopolitical concerns, though always present and forever overplayed are no more problematic presently than they have been in years past. Supply and demand? Largely adequate supply and diminishing demand. Yet, the price for crude oil continues to escalate to ever higher highs.
Turn on the television or read the papers and the reasons are always the same. The falling dollar (rarely a mention that the price of oil has increased by over 120% over the past 15 months, far more than the dollars the 18% fall over the same period (see "A Short Tutorial on the High Price of Oil and the Falling Dollar" 10.19.07). The dollar weakness can be blamed for much, but hardly the massive and disproportionate increase in oil prices. In addition the economy is slowing markedly and gasoline consumption is being impacted appreciably by higher prices as well as the weakening economy- Economics 101 prescription for lower oil prices which just isn't happening (today's overall turbulence excepted but still to levels that are historically steep highs).
To better understand what is happening we need a time warp moment. With a tongue in cheek heading "Oil Baron Longs for Past, Not
Futures" Newsday reported on November 2, 1990 -(yes, 1990. Leon Hess, erstwhile owner of the New York Jets, was Chairman and Founder of Hess Oil & Chemical now known as the Hess Corporation -HES-):
"Leon Hess, whose oil company made more than $200 million by trading oil futures during the Persian Gulf crises..."I'm an old man, but I'd bet my life that if the Merc (the NY Mercantile Exchange) was not in operation there would be ample oil and reasonable prices all over the world, without this volatility" Hess said at a hearing the Senate Committee on Government Affairs held on the role of futures markets in oil pricing"
Ah but, we are told, hedge funds, speculators, individual investors and even conservative institutional investors such as the CalPERS (the California Public Employees Retirement System) given the risks of the stock market and the disastrous bond markdowns are pouring significant funds into commodities as an asset class. As quoted by Reuters "the financial flows have been overwhelming the fundamentals of the oil market" The inflows are large and the aforementioned groups are forever cited as the source of liquidity flooding the commodity pits. Yes, but oil continues to go up, up, up while other commodities such as grains have occasional and significant retracements.
But wait, there is a conspicuous absence in virtually all these analyses. Let me explain. In an eye opening article that surprisingly received little or no attention by our forever somnolent press on issues of oil pricing, London's "Financial Times" headlined "Brazil Sovereign fund to target currency" 12.10.07. According to the FT Brazil's finance minister Guido Mantega Brazil is to create a sovereign wealth fund with the primary aim of intervening in foreign exchange markets to counter the appreciation of the country's currency.
Now consider the following. The vast transfer of wealth to oil exporters, most especially members of the OPEC cartel are accumulating enormous currency surpluses, permitting them in their own manner, to create sovereign wealth funds, deep reservoirs of cash without oversight, without transparency, without regulatory constraints, without operational standards, without disclosure requirements including conflicts of interest, without being subject to due diligence. This staggering accumulation of wealth has resulted in the formation of such behemoths as the United Arab Emirates with its $875 billion fund, Kuwait $250 billion, Qatar, Libya, Algeria, (coincidentally or not, all members of OPEC) among others and then of course Saudi Arabia whose sovereign fund according to the FT is expected to dwarf that of the UAE's.
Now given the lesson learned from the candid Brazilians it doesn't take an advanced degree in Rocket Science to begin to discern a relationship between these opaque pools of capital and the otherwise inexplicable price moves in the energy trading pits. Are there valid reasons that underlie high oil prices. One could certainly put forward reasons supportive of strong pricing. But nothing either in demand nor supply nor market dislocation that in any way could reasonably substantiate the exacerbated degree of current price increases other than concerted manipulation toward ever higher prices, pure and simple. If Brazil presumes they can control the value to the Real on world currency markets through their sovereign wealth fund, influencing the price of a commodity, even one as widely traded as oil, would be equally plausible.
Can one reasonably suggest that these massive holdings of capital would not seek to support the price of the primary resource which is the mainstay of their economies by underpinning the price of oil on commodity exchanges around the world? Remember, trading on these exchanges is largely opaque and barely regulated. Anonymity of buyer and seller is easily achieved, especially so in the commodity exchanges outside the U.S. and over electronic traded markets The way the price of oil is now traded provides it perfect cover to those who have the means and the objective of gaming the system.
Circumstantial evidence, circumstantial presumption? Perhaps. But certainly the logic is inescapable and cries out for Congressional hearings on the role of the futures markets and the sovereign wealth funds and their offshoots in determining oil pricing.
Of course, there are many in this oil addled administration who are content with oil prices as they are, given the riches being visited on colleagues, friends and supporters in the oil industry no matter the crocodile tears now, at long last, being shed at the current level of prices. The same is true for too many in Congress especially those from states closely related to the oil and energy industry.
To expect much from this administration and the Congress given its craven obeisance to the oil industry these past years is wishful thinking at best. What is needed is an entirely new approach that needs be defined, ideally in the upcoming Presidential debates whereby each candidate defines clearly his policies toward energy, and its consumption.
Certainly a way needs be found to divorce oil pricing from the commodities futures pits or at the very least, that trading on those exchanges become transparent and represent freely functioning markets that are not riddled with conflicts of interest or purposeful manipulation.
Some further thoughts of what might be done in future posts.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
8:26:33 AM
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© Copyright 2008 Patricia Thurston.
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