August 28, 2004
By Katherine Yurica
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Editor's note: August 29, 2004. This article should be compared to the statements made by former Bush administration Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neil that the Bush administration began working on war with Iraq from day one of the administration, and with Neil McKay's article in the Sunday Herald, in which he stated Mr. Bush's cabinet voted to go to war with Iraq in April of 2001. For further details read Fraud Traced to the White House by Katherine Yurica.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the battle over the release of Dick Cheney?s secret ?energy policy? papers, a Department of Commerce numbered document (DOC-013-0056?0074), has come to light. It may explain why Mr. Cheney has fought so hard to keep his energy group?s records from the public. The policy paper dated September 29, 2000 begins to reveal the war against Iraq was carefully developed and planned in increments, including even the detail of introducing the term ?weapons of mass destruction.? The document takes the reader back to the campaign of 2000. At stake was the presidency of the United States. During Mr. Bush?s campaigning, he and his team prepared a nineteen page position paper titled, ?
Comprehensive National Energy Policy.?
So far, there?s nothing surprising in that. One would expect a candidate to address the nation?s energy policies. However, Mr. Bush set a different tone in the first paragraph of his executive summary: ?Over the past seven and a half years, our international credibility has been diminished, and Saddam Hussein?s Iraq is now a major oil supplier to the U.S.?
Mr. Bush blamed the Clinton administration for allowing the country to grow dependent upon foreign oil. He lamented that imports had gone from thirty-six percent in 1973 to a jump to fifty-six percent, ?the highest percentage ever.? But his own figures show that under Mr. Clinton?s watch, the rise was only from fifty percent to fifty-six percent.
The report keeps shaking the Saddam Hussein tree in an extremely familiar demonization dance. The document reflects a fixation on Iraq?s growing oil power, which in actual fact was really tiny in comparison to the established world markets. While many Americans would accept that dependence on foreign oil might not be in the best interests of the U.S., Mr. Bush blurred and smudged the statistics here and there, and only later in his report admitted that of all the oil imports only seven percent came from ?Saddam Hussein?s Iraq.?
Mr. Bush shows a real talent in his report to hang the necessity to tear up one of America?s most pristine wildlife refuge areas by attaching the whole project to an unrelated evil. He explained that he wanted to promote the development of U.S. oil and gas resources to meet the electricity needs of the new economy. In reaching his goal, Mr. Bush said that he would ?open only eight percent of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? to exploitation, which he indicated was exactly the amount needed to ?replace the oil that the U.S. now imports from Iraq.?
Candidate Bush lamented that the Clinton-Gore administration had ?squandered U.S. credibility with oil-producing nations in the Persian Gulf? and lost the power to influence OPEC policies. Mr. Bush tied Mr. Clinton?s ?failure? to the ?increased Iraqi leverage over the U.S. and international economies.? Then once again Mr. Bush turned his attention upon Saddam Hussein, declaring:
?When the Clinton-Gore Administration took office in January of 1993, the Gulf War coalition was intact, economic sanctions were in place against Iraq, UN weapons inspectors were operating in Iraq, there was an active Iraqi opposition, and U.S. influence in the Gulf was at an all-time high. Almost eight years later, due to the failed leadership of the Administration:
?The international coalition assembled during the Gulf War has come apart.
?UN inspectors have not set foot in Iraq for almost two years, failing to monitor any attempts to produce weapons of mass destruction.
?The Administration has spent only a negligible amount of the $97 million appropriated by Congress under the Iraq Liberation Act to support the Iraqi resistance.
?U.S. credibility in the Gulf is so low that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain?once critical members of the Gulf War coalition?recently restored full diplomatic relations with Iraq.
?As U.S. influence in the Gulf has waned, Iraq?s relative influence as an oil supplier to U.S. and world markets has increased:
?Iraq is now the fastest growing oil supplier to the United States, selling 850,000 barrels of crude oil a day to the United States...
?As spare production capacity becomes tighter, Iraq is moving into a position to become an important ?swing producer,? with an ability to single handedly impact and manipulate global markets.
?Perhaps most ominously, Saddam Hussein is threatening to cut back production and is again claiming that Kuwait is stealing Iraq?s oil?the same claim Iraq made in 1990.?
In actual fact, Mr. Bush?s words will miraculously reappear in the
Baker Institute Report delivered to Mr. Cheney in April of 2001 by James Baker, III (the former Secretary of State and Bush family friend). Mr. Baker?s energy report is discussed in detail in my article, ?
Fraud Traced to the White House,? which was published at the Yurica Report web site in April of 2003. As one reads Mr. Bush?s report and then compares it to Mr. Baker?s, one soon finds identical phrases appearing in both documents. For instance, notice this sentence from Mr. Bush?s policy paper:
?Iraq is moving into a position to become an important ?swing producer,? with an ability to single handedly impact and manipulate global markets.?
Now compare that to this sentence from the later Baker Report:
?Iraq has become a key ?swing? producer, posing a difficult situation for the U.S. government.?
Or this sentence also from the Baker Report:
?Over the past year, Iraq has effectively become a swing producer, turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest to do so.?
Both documents focus on ?weapons of mass destruction.? The Baker Report puts it this way in one of its references:
?Sanctions that are not effective should be phased out and replaced with highly focused and enforced sanctions that target the regime?s ability to maintain and acquire weapons of mass destruction.?
And the Baker Report advises: ?The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq, including military, energy, economic, and political/diplomatic assessments.?
I think it?s safe to conclude that Mr. Bush?s policy paper is undoubtedly the precursor to the Baker Institute Report.
There is another major discovery I noted from Mr. Bush?s energy policy paper. Here?s evidence that Governor Bush knew he was going to dump the Kyoto treaty while campaigning but managed to keep it a secret from American voters! In his policy paper he wrote:
?Excessive regulation is not the answer. A recent study by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) determined that the combined effect of Administration policies and implementation of the Kyoto global climate treaty would reduce electricity derived from coal in the U.S. from over fifty percent today to less than ten percent by 2020. As a result, electricity prices would increase fifty percent in real terms and a massive investment in natural gas infrastructure would be required to replace the lost coal capacity. EPRI found that substantial emission reductions could be more readily achieved by scheduling emission reductions to coincide with technological advances, but the [Clinton] administration is instead insisting upon substantial reductions before these advances can be reasonably deployed.?
After a man has said that, why need we tend to anything else he should say ever again?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Katherine Yurica was educated at East Los Angeles College, the University of Southern California and the USC school of law. She worked as a consultant for Los Angeles County and as a news correspondent for Christianity Today plus as a freelance investigative reporter. She is the author of three books. She is also the publisher of the Yurica Report.
Facebook
Twitter