The big oil companies helped to fund the election of two oil-men (Enron was Bush/Cheney's biggest contributor in 2000), Cheney allows them to write the country's energy policy, Bush stirs up an enormous amount of instability in the middle east with an unprovoked invasion, and suddenly gas prices are topping $3 per gallon and the oil companies rake in record profits. Who's surprised?

Gasoline prices are poised to explode again. Oil companies are setting up the framework for higher prices because of fears of a Turkish invasion of Kurdish-controlled Northern Iraq and administration saber rattling about Iran. Crude oil, at $29.59 a barrel when President Bush took office in January 2001, is now pushing toward $100. there is no actual shortage. Even if something happened, Kurdish oil production is less than 1/4 of 1% of the world's oil, and all of Iraq generates under 3%. Iran's share of world production is falling, 5% last year compared to 8% in 1974. The oil industry uses the unrealized potential of small disruptions to implement huge price fluctuations. They are using the fear factor and war profiteering to repeat and increase what they had last year, the highest profits for any industry in American history. Furthermore, home heating oil bills are up a third from a year ago, and double six years ago-a $1700 annual household increase, seven times inflation. Home heating bills are the silent economic killer to families - the spotlight has been on car gas prices. As former House Energy Committee Chair Joe Barton (R-TX) said, "No federal statute prohibits price gouging." (An unintended consequence of the Bush saber rattling is even higher prices and more money to Iran, which defeats the purpose of sanctions to stop nuclear weapons.) Congress needs to rise above special interest relationships, protect Americans from oil company gouging, and define the term so it means what it really is. Source: "Gas Price Gouging - Call It Like It Is" By Robert Weiner and John Larmett - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer - October 30, 2007 "Isn't this the same guy whose administration hasn't increased fuel efficiency standards for passengers cars even a single m.p.g. in six years?" It's not a coincidence that the oil and gas industries donated over $25 million to Congressional campaigns in 2004 (with 80% of that money going into Republican coffers), and another $7.2 million so far in the 2006 cycle (with 84% going to the GOP). They also doled out over $4.5 million to Bush's 2000 and 2004 presidential runs. And what did they get for their largess? According to Public Citizen, the top five oil companies have pocketed over a quarter of trillion (that's with a "T") in profits since Bush took office. Talk about a return on investment. That's a gusher! Source: "The inspiration of George Bush" by Arianna Huffington - The Huffington Post - 05.02.06 Let me go through this one more time. Stay with me. It's not that complicated. The president is a Texas oilman. His father is a Texas oilman. His vice president is an oilman who shoots Texas lawyers. All the rich people he knows, his father knows and Dick Cheney knows have 30 weight running through their veins. All the people who gave him money that put him in the White House are oilmen. Does this clear anything up? Maybe a little? His major priority is to pay them back in spades, then they tell him what a good job he's doing and give him more money. Source: "Gouging? What gouging?: On gasoline, oil-pedigree President is not on our side" by Will Durst -WorkingForChange.com - 05.04.06 Another misnomer that you are beginning to hear is that a good way to decrease prices at the pump would be to eliminate the federal gas tax. The truth is that (1) that tax only adds 18 cents to the cost of a gallon, and (2) it's the only part our gas bill that goes to support the commonwealth….that is build and maintain roads, bridges, etc. It would be better to decrease ANY OTHER PART. We could start by decreasing the part that comprises record oil company profits, which go to stock holders and a very few corporate executives who are getting VERY RICH off the hard-earned money of working people being gouged at the pump. Natural gas for delivery in January has traded above $14 a thousand cubic feet this week, even reaching a record of $15.78 on Tuesday [12/13/05] Source: "Bass Family Is Expected to Sell Gas Pipelines to Southern Union" By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN and SIMON ROMERO - NY Times - December 16, 2005 ExxonMobil reported that it made $9.92 billion in the last quarter. It will make from $33 billion to $34 billion this year, Wall Street analysts predict. That's more than any company has ever made, more than Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Merck, McDonald's and General Motors combined. More than the budget of the National Institutes of Health. The other big oil companies are also earning stratospheric profits. The four so-called supermajors - ExxonMobil, BP Amoco, Royal Dutch Shell and ChevronTexaco - will collectively make almost $100 billion, analysts say. But such success presents a problem, analysts say. The companies are making money far faster than they can spend it. Source: "Big Oil, Big Bucks" By ALEX BERENSON - NY Times - October 30, 2005 Ariel Cohen of the Heritage Foundation... in September 2002 published (with Gerald P. O'Driscoll, Jr.) a post-invasion plan, "The Road to Economic Prosperity for a Post-Saddam Iraq," that put forward the idea of using Iraq to smash OPEC. Cohen explained to me how such an extraordinary geopolitical feat might be accomplished. OPEC maintains high oil prices by suppressing production through a quota system effectively imposed on each member by Saudi Arabia, which reigns by dint of its overwhelming reserves. The Saudis, to maintain their control on pricing, must keep a lid on production from other members-particularly Iraq, which has the second greatest proven reserves. Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq adhered to the OPEC quota limit (historically set to equal Iran's, now 3.96 million barrels a day) via state ownership of all fields. Cohen reasoned that if Iraq's fields were broken up and sold off, a dozen competing operators would quickly crank up production from their individual patches to the maximum possible, swiftly raising Iraq's total output to 6 million barrels a day. This extra crude would flood world petroleum markets, OPEC would devolve into mass cheating and overproduction, oil prices would fall over a cliff, and Saudi Arabia-both economically and politically - would fall to its knees. [I]t is certainly understandable why smashing the oil cartel would not strike oilmen as a good idea. In 2004, with oil approaching the $50-a-barrel mark all year, the major U.S. oil companies posted record or near record profits. ConocoPhillips, Rob McKee's company, this February reported a doubling of its quarterly profits from the previous year, which itself had been a company record; Carroll's former employer, Shell, posted a record-breaking $4.48 billion in fourth-quarter earnings. ExxonMobil last year reported the largest one-year operating profit of any corporation in U.S. history. [T]he switch to an OPEC-friendly policy for Iraq was driven by Dick Cheney himself. "The person who is most influential in running American energy policy is the Vice President," who, says Morse, "thinks that security begins by . . . letting prices follow wherever they may." And Dick Cheney, far from "putting the squeeze on OPEC," has taken his de facto seat there, assenting by silence to the oil monopoly's piratical price gouging. But hasn't OPEC's stratospheric crude prices choked the life out of America's auto industry and bankrupted half a dozen airlines? In the Vice-President's bunker the elimination of jobs of Democratic-leaning union members is likely seen as a bonus for the good deed of boosting oil industry profits far above the ozone layer. Iraq's system of oil production, after a year of failed free-market experimentation, is being re-created almost entirely on the lines originally laid out by Saddam Hussein. Under the quiet direction of U.S. oil company executives working with the State Department, the Iraqis have discarded the neocon vision of a laissez faire, privatized oil operation in favor of one shackled to quotas set by OPEC, which have been key to the 148% rise in oil prices since the beginning of 2002. This rise is estimated to have cost the U.S. economy 1.5% of its GDP, or a third of its total growth during the period. Source: "OPEC AND THE ECONOMIC CONQUEST OF IRAQ: Why Iraq Still sells its oil à la cartel - Twilight of the neocon gods - By Greg Palast- Harper's - October 24, 2005 The Natural Resources Defense Council has just put out a new study showing that the five biggest oil companies (ExxonMobil, Total, Shell, BP and ChevronTexaco) reported a $5.5 billion, or 16 percent, increase in profits during the first half of 2004 compared with the same period last year, which was no slouch either. Both ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco posted record second quarter profits in 2004. Source: "Debate this" by Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate - 9.30.04 Crude oil prices reached a fresh record Friday [7/30/04] on mounting worries about supply disruptions and closed July with the largest monthly gain in 14 years. Oil for September delivery gained $1.05 to $43.80 a barrel, the highest close since trading began in 1983 on the New Your Mercantile Exchange. Source: "Oil bubbles to new record" - by Suddep Reddy - Dallas Morning News - 7/31/04

Source: New York Times - 9/30/06

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Have you seen this article? This shows he didn't do it to protect the American people from Saddam Hussein, etc. GW,his daddy, and their elitest allies have wanted to control Iraq and its oil for a long time. Check out this story I found on www.infowars.com: Bush told Houston Journalist: If Elected, ------------------------------------------------------ Bush told Houston Journalist: If Elected, “I’m Going to Invade Iraq” Sherwood Ross Uruknet June 3, 2009 Two years before the 9/11 attacks on America, George W. Bush told a Houston journalist if elected president, “I’m going to invade Iraq.” Bush made the comments about starting an aggressive war to veteran Houston Chronicle reporter Mickey Herskowitz, then working with Bush on his book “A Charge To Keep,” later brought out by publisher William Morrow. This disclosure was uncovered by Russ Baker, an award-winning investigative reporter when he interviewed Herskowitz for his own book, “Family of Secrets” (Bloomsbury Press) about the Bush dynasty. However, Baker says, when he approached The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times with the potentially devastating story to President Bush prior to the 2004 presidential election, they declined to publish it. In a new book, “Media In Crisis”(Doukathsan), Baker quotes Herskowitz as telling him: “He (Bush) said he wanted to do it(invade Iraq), and the reason he wanted to do it is he had been led to understand that you could not really have a successful presidency unless you were seen as commander-in-chief, unless you were seen as waging a war.” Bush told Herskowitz that his father (President George H.W. Bush) knew that from Panama and (President Ronald)Reagan knew that from Grenada and…(UK Prime Minister)Maggie Thatcher knew this from the Falklands.” According to Baker, Bush told Herskowitz, “The ideal thing was a small war, and this is why Bush said nobody was going to be killed in Iraq because he thought it would be small war.” Bush co-authored his book “A Charge To Keep” with Karen Hughes. In his introduction to the work, Bush wrote, “I thank Mickey Herskowitz for his help and work in getting the project started.” Baker said he believed if a major daily ran his Herskowitz interview it “could have changed the election” but “I could not get it published.” The story was turned down by both The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. He described the Post as “scared because of the Dan Rather thing, and they said to me, ‘What do you have in the way of evidence?’” Baker replied, “Here’s a tape of Mickey Herskowitz, who’s published 20-some books, long-time journalist of the Houston Chronicle, friend of the Bush family, telling me this story.” The Post said, “It’s not enough. In this climate, we need Bush on tape saying this.” Expressing his disappointment over the rejection, Baker said, “Well, that standard has never applied anywhere.” The story about Bush’s comments to Herskowitz is one of many about the frustrations journalists face in getting the truth to the public that appear in “Media In Crisis.” The book contains the comments of five Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, among others, and officials of various journalism foundations, as well as veteran broadcasters. The book also covers the economic woes of daily newspapers and their future, the rise of Internet bloggers and other news-purveying media, the quality of reporting, and the quality of instruction in journalism schools. What do all of you Bush lovers think of this information?		6/28/2009
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