How big oil thrives

You've probably read about Exxon's record-breaking profits. For the year 2005, Exxon Mobil made $36 billion. In the fourth quarter alone, it reaped $10.71 billion. How did it do that?

Well, there are the high prices you've paid at the gas station, of course. But you've also been supporting Exxon Mobil with your tax dollars so that it doesn't have to dish out as many tax dollars of its own. It gets credits from the U.S. for taxes paid abroad. About $60 billion in tax cuts previously granted to oil companies were extended for five more years in legislation passed in the fall. And, since our congressional leaders and the Bush administration hold a special fondness for big oil, the Republican-led Congress gave oil and gas companies an additional tax break of more than $2 billion in its recently passed energy bill.

The Senate did attempt to increase big oil companies' taxes for just one year -- but Bush threatened to veto that increase if presented with a final bill that includes it (which the bill probably won't, since the House version of the bill does not contain any such increase). More about all the above may be found here.

Now, Exxcess Mobil (excuse me, I meant Exxon, of course) wants a federal court to virtually erase the $5 billion jury award it was ordered to pay as a result of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 that caused massive environmental damage when its tanker leaked about 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound. Details, here.

So, no need to wonder how Exxon made all that money. Our government has been busy giving the oil companies the money you contributed to the treasury, while it cut Medicare, student loan programs, food stamps, veterans' benefits and all those other pesky programs that only benefit individuals.

PS: Check out the cartoon. And make sure the sound is on.

Are we becoming what we were told we went to Iraq to destroy?

Are you horrified when you hear that insurgents have kidnapped American journalist Jill Carroll, and will only release her if female Iraqi prisoners are first released?

You should be. But you should also be horrified to know that the U.S. Army is using the same tactic. No, they haven't threatened to kill the female hostages they've taken -- but they don't have to, do they? There is an implicit threat in taking hostages. Otherwise, the hostage-taking would be ineffective. Iraqis know as well as the rest of us that prisoners sometimes are tortured and sometimes killed while detained in U.S. run Iraqi prisons.

So now, under court order to release documents to the ACLU in its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, we learn that the U.S. Army has at least twice taken the wives of suspected insurgents into its custody in order to coerce the insurgents into surrendering. While both an Iraqi minister and a U.S. Army spokesperson deny that Americans are taking hostages (and the Iraqi official pointed out that this was a tactic of Saddam Hussein, not the Americans), the documents apparently make liars out of them both.

http://tinyurl.com/ck9ms

>>In one case, a secretive task force locked up the young mother of a nursing baby, a U.S. intelligence officer reported. In the case of a second detainee, one American colonel suggested to another that they catch her husband by tacking a note to the family's door telling him "to come get his wife."<<

The nursing mother and her baby were released only after a a civilian Pentagon intelligence officer who had taken part in the raid filed a formal complaint. In the second incident, an unspecified number of women were taken into custody in 2004. The paper trail does not indicate whether they are still in custody or were released.

Torture by U.S. Military - Just business as usual?

“We do not torture.” Pres. George W. Bush, November 2005

"…as a matter of U.S. policy" U.S. military are prohibited from torture. Condoleeza Rice, December 2005

But we do torture. Apparently, we torture as a matter of U.S. policy. Apparently, it’s standard operating procedure, as is evident from the testimony in the Colorado military trial of Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer Jr., whose business-as-usual torture of an Iraqi prisoner resulted in the prisoners’ death. The most stunning thing about the trial is that just one individual is on trial for a murder while all the others who engaged in, planned or ordered the torture that eventually led to the prisoner’s death — all the way up the line to the executive branch — are viewed as having done no wrong. Read this:

>> … their star witness, Williams, took the stand and described how the sleeping-bag technique was no more extreme than many other interrogation techniques he had witnessed.

Williams also said he walked away from the eight to 10 "spooks" as they started to clobber Mowhoush with rubber hoses two days before the general died. Williams admitted to hearing screams after he left…

When Welshofer invited Williams to be part of the eventually fatal interrogation of Mowhoush, Williams agreed, but said he had to get a cup of coffee first. <<


On an online bulletin board called rightwingnews.com I read several messages mocking the notion that the United States military is engaged in torture. Participants reassured themselves those who condemn “interrogation techniques” are just getting all hysterical, showing themselves to be wimps at best, jihadist-sympathizers at worst.

What have we become that some of our fellow citizens ridicule others for saying that torture is wrong?

I believe that some of us are in deep denial, knowing that torture is one of the worst possible wrongs, that it turns the torturers and those who condone it into monsters. But instead of saying, stop, they re-define the term. There. All better now. We’re not “torturing” we’re merely “waterboarding” or using other “interrogation techniques.”

Others come right out and say that torture is necessary to have as an option, and then list a bunch of what-if scenarios.

What few seem to want to face is that torture is now just part of the U.S. military repertoire. No “what-ifs?” needed. Torturers are us. On a regular basis. It’s no good to say that Saddam was worse, that he killed more, tortured more. Is this the only comparison by which we can still feel like decent human beings? Do we really think we can defend the morality of our society by comparing numbers of torture victims? Degrees of damage inflicted? Is this how we want to judge ourselves?

Wish I'd said that

Democracy must be something more
than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
-- James Bovard

News Flash -- Reporters actually checking their facts!

Along with numerous constitutional scholars as well as plenty of Democratic and Republican politicians, Al Gore has criticized Bush's apparently illegal/unconstitutional warrantless wiretaps. The White House has been attempting to smear Gore with the charge that the Clinton WH did much the same thing (on the apparent assumption that mainstream reporters would be as inattentive as usual and simply quote without checking).

But instead of just playing the usual lazy-ass he said/he said game, some reporters really are checking their facts.

>> [Bush presidential spokesman] McClellan said the Clinton-Gore administration had engaged in warrantless physical searches, and he cited an FBI search of the home of CIA turncoat Aldrich Ames without permission from a judge. He said Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, had testified before Congress that the president had the inherent authority to engage in physical searches without warrants.

"I think his hypocrisy knows no bounds," McClellan said of Gore.

But at the time of the Ames search in 1993 and when Gorelick testified a year later, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act required warrants for electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes, but did not cover physical searches. The law was changed to cover physical searches in 1995 under legislation that Clinton supported and signed.<< http://tinyurl.com/akne8

In other words, the Clinton WH never engaged in illegal warrantless searches as McClellan insinuates. There was no law prohibiting the Ames search at the time it was conducted (and because no law existed against it, no law was broken). There IS a law against the warrantless secret NSA domestic wiretaps ordered by Bush. The "inherent authority" that Clinton claimed was to conduct a search where no law prohibited it. The "inherent authority" that Bush claims is to ignore the law. Very different claims.

Hats off to Nedra Pickler of the AP for that catch. What's especially promising about the AP reporting this is that it won't simply be mentioned in one paper while all the others run with he said/he said quotes (that make WH twisting appear as if if were simply a different point of view instead of the smear it is). It will be everywhere. Will reporters start checking the truthfulness of WH comments on a regular basis? Wouldn't that be a nice change.

Reasons to love the 22nd Amendment: take a look at who is in the White House

My eyes sprung open wider than if I'd had intravenous caffeine when I read the Op-Ed in the NYT this morning, calling for a repeal of U.S. presidential term limits. Its authors claim:

>>AS George W. Bush's leadership flounders a little more than a year after his re-election, we are seeing a return of an old affliction in American politics, "second termitis." The protracted woes of Richard Nixon's Watergate, Ronald Reagan's Iran-contra affair, and Bill Clinton's impeachment were all, in part, manifestations of that malady.

Is there some human failing that affects second-term presidents, like arrogance or sheer fatigue? To some degree, perhaps. But the main problem is not personal but institutional - or rather constitutional, as embodied by the 22nd Amendment limiting presidential tenure. << http://tinyurl.com/du6uk

So, the Watergate break-in was due, somehow, to the fact that Nixon was running his last campaign? Or are the authors claiming that Congress wouldn't have had the nerve to pay *notice* to the Watergate break-in if Nixon were powerful enough to run for a third term? And Clinton wouldn't have found Monica quite so appealing if only he could have run again? Is that what they're claiming? Or is it, again, that Congress would have been too timid to bother with a presidential blow-job, knowing the prez might bounce back in public opinion, and had the power to hit back?

Of course, it's not just the strangeness of the argument that has my eyes popping. The only thing that keeps me clinging to hope for our country is the fact that the authoritarian would-be monarch, George W. Bush, is barred from a third term.

The authors, as support for their claim that the 22nd Amendment is not what the founders intended, note that Hamilton was against term limits. Uh-huh. Wouldn't it have been nice, (since, as educators and historians, they are obviously extremely well-informed on the topic), for the authors to have pointed out that Hamilton's vision of the presidency was to have something closer to a monarch?

Support for Bush Iraq policy weakens among active duty professional military

Interesting survey results at:
http://tinyurl.com/anyo9

In this poll of professional, active-duty U.S. military, taken by mail between 11/14/2005 and 12/23/ 2005, the majority still expresses support but it's now a slim majority — 54%, down from 63% in Military Times' 2004 poll.

The respondents, mostly officers, most of whom told Military Times that they had been deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are probably more reluctant to express dissatisfaction than civilian Americans. They nevertheless appear to be exhibiting the same signs of Bush fatigue as the rest of the country.

Here is a snippet:

>> The professional military seems to be lessening in its certainty about the wisdom of the Iraq intervention and the way it has been handled,” said Richard Kohn, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina who studies civil-military relations. “This seems to be more and more in keeping with changes in public views, and that’s not surprising.”<<