Bush backer banks on Iraq's failure

[appleannie1]

A Texas oil company whose CEO is a longtime confidant of President Bush with access to the most closely held US intelligence has entered into an agreement to explore for oil in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

The agreement shows that Dallas-based Hunt Oil Co. and its chief executive Ray L. Hunt are "effectively betting against the survival of Iraq as a nation," argues New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

Hunt raised about $100,000 for Bush during the president's 2000 campaign, and he serves on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which gives him access to some of the most exclusive data collected by US spy agencies.

"What's interesting about this deal is the fact that Hunt, thanks to his policy position, is presumably as well-informed about the actual state of affairs in Iraq as anyone in the business world can be," Krugman observers. "By putting his money into a deal with the Kurds, despite Baghdad's disapproval, he's essentially betting that the Iraqi government -- which hasn't met a single one of the major benchmarks Bush laid out in January -- won't get it's act together."
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Krugman_Bush_backer_banks_on_Iraqs_0914.html

And Hunt was on the board of directors at Halliburton.

[appleannie1]

1. Basically, what this tells me is

Bush and Cheney both know there is not a chance in hell that we will ever get any control in Iraq. There is enough intelligence proving it but they are keeping it from Congress and the American people in an attempt to prolong the war while they and their cronies get their hands on the oil in other ways.

[TahitiNut]

2. It seems the "semi-autonomous Kurdistan region" has gotten more autonomous.

The part of this story I find even more interesting is how the Kurds are thumbing their noses at Maliki & Co. Of the sovereign interests of the central Iraqi government they're LEAST likely to share control over, it's OIL.