Fw: Missing the oil story

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg at tin.it>]

 Missing the oil story
 
 by Nina Burleigh
 <http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/10/11/index.html>

> Nina Burleigh has written for The Washington Post, The
 Chicago Tribune, and New York magazine. As a reporter for
 TIME, she was among the first American journalists to
 enter Iraq after the Gulf War.
 
 Recently I attended one of those legendary Washington
 dinner parties, attended by British cosmopolites and
 Americans in the know. A few courses in, people were
 gossiping about the Bush family's close and enduring
 friendship with the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, dean
 of the diplomatic corps in Washington. By the end of the
 evening, everyone was talking about how the unfolding
 events were going to affect the flow of oil out of
 Central Asia.
 
 I left wondering whether 6,000 Americans might prove to
 have died in New York for the royal family of Saud, or
 oil, or both. But I didn't have much more than insider
 dinner gossip to go on. I get my analysis from the
 standard all-American news outlets. And they've been too
 focused on a) anthrax and smallpox, or b) the intricacies
 of Muslim fanaticism, to throw any reporters at the murky
 ways in which international oil politics and its big
 players have a stake in what's unfolding.
 
 A quick Nexis search brought up a raft of interesting
 leads that would keep me busy for 10 years if the
 economics of this war was my beat. But only two articles
 in the American media since September 11 have tried to
 describe how Big Oil might benefit from a cleanup of
 terrorists and other anti-American elements in the
 Central Asia region. One was by James Ridgeway of the
 Village Voice. The other was by a Hearst writer based in
 Paris and it was picked up only in the San Francisco
 Chronicle.
 
 In other words, only the Left is connecting the dots of
 what the Russians have called "The Great Game" -- how oil
 underneath the 'stans' fits into the new world order.
 Here's just a small slice of what ought to provoke deeper
 research by American reporters with resources and talent.
 
 Start with father Bush. The former president and ex-CIA
 director is not unemployed these days. He's been
 globetrotting as a member of Washington's Carlyle Group,
 a $12 billion private equity firm which employs a
 motorcade of former ranking Republicans, including Frank
 Carlucci, Jim Baker and Richard Darman. George Bush
 senior and colleagues open doors overseas for The Carlyle
 Group's "access capitalists."
 
 Bush specializes in Asia and has been in and out of Saudi
 Arabia and Kuwait (countries that revere him thanks to
 the Gulf War) often on business since his presidency.
 Baker, the pin-striped midwife of 'Election 2000' was
 working his network in the 'stans' before the ink was dry
 on Clinton's first inaugural address. The Bin Laden
 family (presumably the friendly wing) is also invested in
 Carlyle. Carlyle's portfolio is heavy in defense and
 telecommunications firms, although it has other holdings
 including food and bottling companies.
 
 The Carlyle connection means that George Bush Senior is
 on the payroll from private interests that have defense
 business before the government, while his son is
 president. Hmmm. As Charles Lewis of the Washington-based
 Center for Public Integrity, has put it, "in a really
 peculiar way, George W. Bush could, some day, benefit
 financially from his own administration's decisions,
 through his father's investments. And that to me is a
 jaw-dropper."
 
 Why can we assume that global businessmen like Bush
 Senior and Jim Baker care about who runs Afghanistan and
 NOT just because it's home base for lethal anti-
 Americans? Because it also happens to be situated in the
 middle of that perennial vital national interest -- a
 region with abundant oil. By 2050, Central Asia will
 account for more than 80 percent of our oil. On September
 10, an industry publication, Oil and Gas Journal,
 reported that Central Asia represents one of the world's
 last great frontiers for geological survey and analysis,
 "offering opportunities for investment in the discovery,
 production, transportation, and refining of enormous
 quantities of oil and gas resources."
 
 It's assumed we need unimpeded access in the 'stans' for
 our geologists, construction workers and pipelines if we
 are going to realize the conservation-free, fossil-fueled
 future outlined recently by Vice President Cheney. A
 number of pipeline projects to carry Central Asia's
 resources west are already under way or have been
 proposed. They would go through Russia, through the
 Caucasus or via Turkey and Iran. Each route will be
 within easy reach of the Taliban's thugs and could be
 made much safer by an American vanquishment of Muslim
 terrorism.
 
 There's also lots of oil beneath the turf of our
 politically precarious newest best friend, Pakistan.
 "Massive untapped gas reserves are believed to be lying
 beneath Pakistan's remotest deserts, but they are being
 held hostage by armed tribal groups demanding a better
 deal from the central government," reported Agence France
 Presse just days before September 11.
 
 So many business deals, so much oil, all those big
 players with powerful connections to the Bush
 administration. It doesn't add up to a conspiracy theory.
 But it does mean there is a significant MONEY subtext
 that the American public ought to know about as
 "Operation Enduring Freedom" blasts new holes where
 pipelines might someday be buried.