Oil Drives the Genocide in Darfur: Bush undercuts efforts to stop it

[Karmadillo]

This is a really good analysis of what's going on. Not the sort of thing one finds in the respectable, corporate-owned "liberal" media, but probably much closer to the truth than anything you'll hear from Wolf Blitzer et. al. It's another issue where the Democrats, if really interested in being a genuine Opposition Party, could take to the airwaves to let the American people know just what kind of monsters they've elected to office.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=14239

A war of the future is being waged right now in the sprawling desert region of northeastern Africa known as Sudan. The weapons themselves are not futuristic. None of the ray-guns, force-fields, or robotic storm troopers that are the stuff of science fiction; nor, for that matter, the satellite-guided Predator drones or other high-tech weapon systems at the cutting edge of today's arsenal.

No, this war is being fought with Kalashnikovs, clubs and knives. In the western region of Sudan known as Darfur, the preferred tactics are burning and pillaging, castration and rape -- carried out by Arab militias riding on camels and horses. The most sophisticated technologies deployed are, on the one hand, the helicopters used by the Sudanese government to support the militias when they attack black African villages, and on the other hand, quite a different weapon: the seismographs used by foreign oil companies to map oil deposits hundreds of feet below the surface.

This is what makes it a war of the future: not the slick PowerPoint presentations you can imagine in boardrooms in Dallas and Beijing showing proven reserves in one color, estimated reserves in another, vast subterranean puddles that stretch west into Chad, and south to Nigeria and Uganda; not the technology; just the simple fact of the oil.

<edit>

That bill, how in committee, calls for beefing up the African Union peacekeeping force and imposing new sanctions on Khartoum, including referring individual officials to the International Criminal Court (much hated by the administration). The White House, undercutting Congressional efforts to stop the genocide, is seeking closer relations with Khartoum on grounds that the regime was "cooperating in the war on terror."

Nothing could end the slaughter faster than the President of the United States standing up for Darfur and making a strong case before the United Nations. Ours is the only country with such clout. This is unimaginable, of course, for various reasons. It seems clear that Bush, and the oil companies that contributed so heavily to his 2000 presidential campaign, would like to see the existing trade sanctions on Sudan removed, so U.S. companies can get a piece of the action. Instead of standing up, the President has kept mum -- leaving it to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to put the best face she can on his policy of appeasing Khartoum.

more...

[opihimoimoi]

1. Bushie wants war.....for the oil and the reduction of its consumption

[getmeouttahere]

2. International Criminal Court - much hated by the administration

because BushCo could find themselves before it someday.