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Bush hopes Cheney's Mideast visit will rein in oil prices
WASHINGTON: With oil soaring to a record $108 a barrel amid mounting signs of U.S. economic turbulence, President George W. Bush said Monday that he was sending Vice President Dick Cheney to the Middle East to raise concerns about oil prices and to press Israeli and Palestinian leaders to move toward peace.
Cheney, who leaves Sunday, will meet with King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil producer and the de facto leader of OPEC.
"Obviously, we want to see an increase in production," said Dana Perino, an administration spokeswoman. "The president does want OPEC to take into consideration that its biggest customer, the United States - our economy has weakened and part of the reason is because of higher oil prices. We think that more supply would help, and I don't anticipate that the vice president would have any other message than that one."
From the second...
The Man Between War and Peace
As the White House talked up conflict with Iran, the head of U.S. Central Command, William "Fox" Fallon, talked it down. Now he has resigned.
By Thomas P.M. Barnett
If, in the dying light of the Bush administration, we go to war with Iran, it'll all come down to one man. If we do not go to war with Iran, it'll come down to the same man. He is that rarest of creatures in the Bush universe: the good cop on Iran, and a man of strategic brilliance. His name is William Fallon, although all of his friends call him "Fox," which was his fighter-pilot call sign decades ago. Forty years into a military career that has seen this admiral rule over America's two most important combatant commands, Pacific Command and now United States Central Command, it's impossible to make this guy--as he likes to say--"nervous in the service." Past American governments have used saber rattling as a useful tactic to get some bad actor on the world stage to fall in line. This government hasn't mastered that kind of subtlety.
From the first...
Iran's oil bourse could topple the dollar
By Mike Whitney
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 6, 2008, 00:15
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Two weeks ago George Bush was sent on a mission to the Middle East to deliver a horse's head. We all remember the disturbing scene in Francis Ford Coppola's “The Godfather” where Lucca Brassi goes to Hollywood to convince a recalcitrant movie producer to use Don Corleone's nephew in his next film. The “Big shot” producer is finally persuaded to hire the young actor after he wakes up in bed next to the severed head of his prize thoroughbred. I expect that Bush made a similar “offer they could not refuse” to the various leaders of the Gulf States when he met with them earlier this month.
The media has tried to portray Bush's trip to the Middle East as a "peace mission," but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, three days after Bush left Jerusalem, Israel stepped-up its military operations in the occupied territories and resumed its merciless blockade of food, water and medicine to the 1.5 million people of the Gaza Strip. Bush must have green-lighted Israel's aggression or it would have been seen as an insult to the president of the United States.
So, what was the real purpose of Bush's trip? Why would he waste time visiting the Middle East if he had no real interest in promoting peace or resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
Sometimes personal visits are important, especially when the nature of the information is so sensitive that it has to be delivered face to face. In this case, Bush went to the trouble of traveling halfway around the world so he could tell the Saudis and their friends in the Gulf States that they were going to continue linking their oil to the dollar or they were going to “sleep with the fishes." For the last two months, a number of sheiks and finance ministers have been publicly groaning about the falling dollar -- threatening to break from the so-called “dollar-peg” and covert to a basket of currencies. Bush's trip appears to have rekindled the spirit of brotherly cooperation. The grumbling has stopped and everyone is back "on board." The regional leaders now seem less bothered by the fact that inflation is trashing their economies and driving food, labor, energy and housing through the roof.
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