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Did Bush Cut Secret Oil Deal With Saudis Ahead of 2004 Election?
Bush Appoints Negroponte Iraq Ambassador
No Child Left Unrecruited: Army Recruiters Target High Schools
Coalition Crumbling: Spain Pulls Out of Iraq
Did Bush Cut Secret Oil Deal With Saudis Ahead of
2004 Election?
The White House and a top Saudi official are denying allegations
that before the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration
made a secret deal with Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin
Sultan involving oil price fixing ahead of the November presidential
elections.
The charge came in an interview Sunday on 60 Minutes with
Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward. His new book “Plan
of Attack” hit news stands yesterday and has already
caused a firestorm of controversy. Here is an excerpt from
60 Minutes Host Mike Wallace’s interview with Bob Woodward.
WALLACE: Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office.
His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told
us that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia
will lower oil prices in the months before the election to
ensure the US economy is strong on Election Day.
And you also say, 'Bandar wanted Bush to know that the Saudis
hoped to fine-tune oil prices to prime the economy in 2004.
What was key, Bandar understood, were the economic conditions
before a presidential election.'
Oil prices are at an all-time high.
WOODWARD: They're high, and they could go down very quickly.
That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer or as we
get closer to the election, they increase production several
million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.
Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward speaking this Sunday
on 60 Minutes.
Record-high gasoline prices have become a hot issue in the
presidential race. Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry
was quick to attack Bush at a campaign stop in Florida yesterday.
He said that if the allegation of a secret White House deal
with the Saudis is true, it is “outrageous and unacceptable
to the American people.” Both the White House and the
Saudi government denied the allegation.
Another allegation in Woodward’s book that is causing
a stir is that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice,
Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
were the first to know about his decision to go to war in
January 2003.
What has caused a stir over the past several days is Woodward’s
charge that before Bush informed Secretary of State Colin
Powell of his decision, he gave Cheney and Rumsfeld permission
to inform Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan about
the war plans. Woodward says they even showed Bandar a top-secret
map of the war plan. Woodward charges that Cheney and Rumsfeld
first briefed Bandar at the White House on January 11, 2003.
WOODWARD: Saturday, January 11th, with the president's permission,
Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office.
And the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Myers, is there
with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says "Top
Secret. No foreign." "No Foreign" means "no
foreigners are supposed to see this." They describe in
detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who's skeptical
because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam
out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld 'So Saddam, this time,
is going to be out, period?' And Cheney, who has said nothing,
says the following: 'Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam
is toast.'
WALLACE: And after Bandar left, Cheney said...
WOODWARD: 'I wanted him to know that this is for real. We're
really doing it.' Now, Bandar--this isn't enough for Bandar.
Cheney, Rumsfeld, he said to them--he said, 'I have to hear
this from the president.' Then two days later, Bandar is called
to meet with the president, and the president says 'Their
message is my message.'
At that meeting Woodward describes, Rumsfeld reportedly told
Bandar, “You can take this to the bank,” Then,
pointing at the map of the war plan, Rumsfeld said “This
is going to happen.”Woodward characterizes Powell as
being opposed to invading Iraq. Yesterday, Powell denied Woodward’s
allegation that he was kept out of the loop.
- Jim Paul, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum.
He is based at the United Nations and monitors events there.
He has authored a number of reports on oil companies and
Iraq.
Bush Appoints Negroponte Iraq Ambassador
George Bush has appointed a diplomat infamous for supporting
right-wing death squads in Central America during the 1980s
to succeed Paul Bremer as the top US official in Iraq. UN
Ambassador John Negroponte is set to take over what will be
the largest US embassy in the world, that in Baghdad.
Negroponte currently serves as US ambassador to the United
Nations. But it is his reputation as ambassador to Honduras
from 1981 to 1985 that earned him a reputation for supporting
widespread human rights abuses and campaigns of terror. As
ambassador to Honduras, Negroponte played a key role in US
aid to the Contra death squads in Nicaragua and shoring up
the brutal military dictatorship of General Gustavo Alvarez
Martínez in Honduras. During his term as ambassador
there, diplomats alleged that the embassy’s annual human
rights reports made Honduras sound more like Norway than Argentina.
According to a four-part series in the Baltimore Sun, in
1982 alone the Honduran press ran 318 stories of murders and
kidnappings by the Honduran military. In a 1995 series, Sun
reporters Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson detailed the activities
of a secret CIA-trained Honduran army unit, Battalion 316,
that used "shock and suffocation devices in interrogations.
Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful,
killed and buried in unmarked graves." In 1994, Honduras's
National Commission for the Protection of Human Rights reported
that it was officially admitted that 179 civilians were still
missing.
Former official Rick Chidester, who served under Negroponte,
says he was ordered to remove all mention of torture and executions
from the draft of his 1982 report on the human rights situation
in Honduras. During Negroponte's tenure, US military aid to
Honduras skyrocketed from $3.9 million to over $77 million.
Much of this went to ensure the Honduran army's loyalty in
the battle against popular movements throughout Central America.
Negroponte’s nomination for the UN post he currently
holds was confirmed by the Senate in September 2001, but that
confirmation didn’t come easily. It was delayed a half-year
mostly because of criticism of his record in Central America.
Negroponte was questioned by the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee on whether he had acquiesced to human rights abuses
by Honduran death squads funded and partly trained by the
Central Intelligence Agency. Negroponte testified that he
did not believe the abuses were part of a deliberate Honduran
government policy. “To this day,” he said, “I
do not believe that death squads were operating in Honduras.”
Concern over his nomination was coupled with Bush's decision
to downgrade the United Nations ambassadorship position by
depriving it of Cabinet rank. This decision raised concerns
that Bush would be hostile to the UN. If confirmed by the
Senate, Negroponte will head a US embassy in Baghdad that
will be temporarily housed in a palace that belonged to Saddam
Hussein. At a White House ceremony to announce the appointment,
President Bush praised Negroponte as “a man of enormous
experience and skill” who has “done a really good
job of speaking for the United States to the world about our
intentions to spread freedom and peace.”
- Jim Paul, Executive Director of Global Policy Forum.
He is based at the United Nations and monitors events there.
He has authored a number of reports on oil companies and
Iraq.
No Child Left Unrecruited: Army Recruiters Target
High Schools
Democracy Now! speaks with Michael Cervantes, an Army veteran
with Veterans for Peace who is campaiging against Bush's policy
to target high school students for military recruitment.
The U.S. occupation of Iraq has descended into chaos. Over
700 U.S. troops have now been killed in Iraq since the beginning
of the invasion, 100 of them in April alone. The past 14 days
have reportedly been the deadliest two-week span for US troops
since October 1971 during the Vietnam War.
In the face of overwhelming Iraqi resistance, the Pentagon
has been forced to extend the stay of some 20,000 soldiers
who were scheduled to leave soon for home. Over 130,000 U.S.
soldiers remain stationed in Iraq.
But the American military empire stretches far beyond the
Middle East. The U.S. maintains a vast network of bases on
every continent except Antarctica spanning some 130 countries
around the world and the government is continually looking
for ways to replenish its overstretched military.
One place it is focusing its attention, is American high
schools. Since 2001, the Bush administration has been requiring
high schools to disclose student records to military recruiters
or risk losing federal aid.
Under a mandate authorized by the Bush administration's No
Child Left Behind Act, recruiters are entitled to get the
names, addresses and phone numbers of high school juniors
and seniors, unless parents or students sign a form requesting
that the data be withheld. Districts that don't comply stand
to lose millions in federal funding. As one Pentagon spokeswoman
told the Los Angeles Times, the policy “Allows the Department
of Defense to recruit from a much broader, diverse and more
representative group of the youth of America."
Yesterday in Santa Barbara I spoke with Michael Cervantes,
an Army veteran with Veterans for Peace who is campaiging
against Bush's policy to target high school students for military
recruitment. Cervantes fought in the Vietnam war after being
drafted out of high school. I asked him what actions he had
taken against the policy.
- Michael Cervantes, an Army veteran with Veterans for
Peace who is campaiging against a Bush administration policy
that requires high schools to disclose student records to
military recruiters or risk losing federal aid. He fought
in the Vietnam War after being drafted out of high school.
Coalition Crumbling: Spain Pulls Out of Iraq
The U.S. yesterday lashed out at Spain’s decision
to pull its 1,400 troops out of Iraq within the next 15 days.
Spain’s new Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero
had originally said he would only pull the troops out on July
1 if there wasn’t a new UN resolution But after the
recent Iraqi uprising Zapatero said the move must take place
as soon as possible.
Referring to Spain’s decision, White House spokesman,
Scott McClellan, told reporters that President Bush had stressed
the importance of not giving "false comfort to terrorists
or enemies of freedom in Iraq". Democratic presidential
candidate John Kerry also said Sunday he regretted Zapatero’s
decision.
Meanwhile, European Commission President Romano Prodi praised
the move and suggested that other nations were likely to follow
saying "With this decision, Spain has fallen into line
with our position. The divide that prevented Europe from having
a common position is being overcome."
Spain's troops are stationed now outside Najaf, the Shiite
Holy City where the US has threatened to invade in order to
kill cleric Muqtada al Sadr. On Friday, Sadr warned that his
followers would wage a general war against the US if it decided
to invade Najaf.
According to the Madrid newspaper El Pais, Zapatero speeded
up his decision after his new Defense Minister Jose Bono returned
from an unpublicized trip to Washington two weeks ago with
a gloomy report on the prospects of the United Nations stepping
in by the summer.
Spain’s decision to pull out of Iraq marks the formal
break-up of the alliance known as the Azores Trio named after
the meeting between Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair
and then-Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar where the
date for the invasion of Baghdad was decided.
- Jordi Ortega, independent journalist and filmmaker from
Barcelona, Spain. He has worked for Television Espanola,
public television in Spain, Telemundo, as well as the Fuji
News Network. He also writes for the LA Weekly. He is currently
based in Los Angeles where he is on the board of the LA
Press Club.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Mike Burke, Sharif Abdel Kouddous,
Ana Nogueira, Elizabeth Press, Jeremy Scahill and Parvez Sharma.
Mike Di Filippo is our engineer.
Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Johnny Sender, Rich Kim, Joe Murgio, John Randolph,
Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Eric Rweyemamu,
Jenny Filipazzo and Isis Phillips.
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