Enron, UNOCAL, Cheney & Afghanistan

Tom Turnipseed writes A Creeping Collapse in Credibility… for CounterPunch about the Bush administration’s entanglements in oil policy. Dick Cheney is especially suspect, since:

<q> … [He] was then CEO of Haliburton Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed Cheney in 1998, “I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It’s almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight. The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places here, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But we go where the business is.” Would Cheney bargain with the harborers of U.S. troop killers if that’s where the business was?</q>

Remind me again…this isn’t a holy war, is it? Bush is also making some interesting decisions, especially regarding the people he chooses to represent U.S. interests in Afghanistan:

<q>As reported in Le Monde, the new Afghan government’s head, Hamid Karzai, formerly served as a UNOCAL consultant. Only nine days after Karzai’s ascension, President Bush nominated another UNOCAL consultant and former Taliban defender, Zalmay Khalilzad, as his special envoy to Afghanistan.</q>