ZGram - 10/19/2002 - "Ruppert: The Unseen Conflict"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

10/19/2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite.

This morning I watched Michael Ruppert's fabled Portland/Oregon 
presentation.  It is a tape worth its price.  Certain things might 
jar you ideologically, but all in all, the tape will leave you 
thoughtful.  It can be purchased from the Ruppert website, 
www.copvcia.com

Here is today's analysis of where the world is heading:

[START]

The Unseen Conflict
By Michael C. Ruppert
mruppert@copvcia.com
10-19-2

War Plans, Backroom Deals, Leverage and Strategy -- Securing What's 
Left of the Planet's Oil Is and Has Always Been the Bottom Line
 
The Opening Salvos of a New and Bloody War are PR, Economic and Political
 
=A9 COPYRIGHT 2002, Michael C. Ruppert and From The Wilderness 
Publications <http://www.fromthewilderness.com>
fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved.
May Be Recopied, Posted on the Internet or Distributed for non-profit only.
 
(FTW) -- What started out as a blitzkrieg, the Bush agenda for the 
invasion of Iraq is now producing a world picture that can only be 
described with one word -- confusing. It is becoming apparent that 
outraged world opinion, guided by shrewd public relations efforts of 
foreign governments (including Iraq), has thrown a curve ball to the 
Bush military plan for a pre-election invasion and occupation .
 
But one curve ball is not a strikeout. The continuing military build 
up, more frequent air strikes, and the risky covert deployment of 
combat troops in supposedly neutral regions shows the degree of 
Washington's commitment to war. These troops are going to be used.
 
Russia, France and China are only stalling for time, hoping to cut 
the best backroom deals possible. They're perhaps also hoping that 
the American Empire will make a fatal mistake or a delay will break 
Bush's political, popular, and economic support.
 
Wall Street's 500-plus point rally on the two days of shameless 
congressional votes authorizing the use of force last week clearly 
signaled what world leaders have known for some time, and what the 
American public is seriously beginning to grasp -- the whole thing is 
about Iraqi oil.
 
The Associated Press ran a story yesterday indicating that the U.S. 
had been overwhelmed by global opposition to the invasion of a 
country second only to Saudi Arabia for its known oil reserves. Iraq 
is capable of quick production increases even if Saddam tries to 
destroy his oil fields, as former CIA director James Woolsey recently 
acknowledged. The story's lead sentence read, "Facing strong 
opposition from dozens of nations, the United States has backed down 
from its demand that a new U.N. resolution must authorize military 
force if Baghdad fails to cooperate with weapons inspectors, 
diplomats told The Associated Press on Thursday."
 
However, a Reuters story released hours later clearly indicated that 
the U.S. was playing hardball behind the scenes. "Iraq's main 
opposition group says a post-Saddam government would review existing 
oilfield development deals with French and Russian companies and 
could favour U.S. firms instead.
 
"Sharif Ali Bin Al Hussein, spokesman for the main Iraqi opposition 
group the Iraqi National Congress (INC), told Reuters in an interview 
that his group would open the oil sector to all companies, including 
the U.S. majors.
 
"'We would have to review all contracts which have been signed by 
this regime to make sure it is in the interest of the Iraqi people 
and not just for Saddam Hussein,' Hussein said."
 
Nobody is asking who controls the INC. It's a given.
 
The stakes are incredibly high for Russia. Major press organizations 
are now acknowledging what FTW has been saying for months. The Bush 
objective is to drive the price of oil down and simultaneously drive 
a stake through OPEC, forestalling a further and perhaps catastrophic 
crash in the U.S. economy. News analyses from Pravda to Fox News have 
foreseen that a successful U.S. invasion will result in crude oil 
prices of between $12 and $16 per barrel. Oil currently consts $30 
per barrel.
 
That would destroy Russia's economic recovery as it sells hand over 
fist its own diminishing reserves -- oil that is more expensive to 
produce and of a lesser quality than Mideast crude, while prices are 
at $30. Iraq owes Russia $7 billion in debt from the Soviet era.
 
And on Aug. 19, Russia and Iraq signed a $40 billion infrastructure 
development deal, which, as reported in the Tehran Times, saw a team 
of Russian engineers on their way to what may soon be targets of U.S. 
bombing raids.
 
Both Russia and France have development interests in major Iraqi oil 
fields. The Reuters story reported, "Although [France's] TotalFinaElf 
has no contract, it has been earmarked by Saddam's government to 
develop the Majnoon and Bin Umar fields with reserves totaling 26 
billion barrels. [Russia's] Lukoil has signed a contract for the 15 
billion-barrel West Qurna field."
 
The back room deals and implied threats are getting hot and heavy. On 
Sept. 5, the Asia Times reported that Russia was considering an 
expensive trans-Siberian pipeline to service China. This would 
compete with post-9-11 pipeline deals that have been negotiated to 
send Caspian and Central Asian oil through Afghanistan for the 
Chinese market under U.S. control.
 
As FTW noted last month, the World Bank has opened offices in Kabul 
to facilitate the financing of the U.S.-backed projects. Russia's 
move may not be much of a threat because Russian oil is inferior to 
Caspian oil. Also, Russia has long passed its peak of production, 
which means that as time passes it will be increasingly expensive to 
produce. The message is clear, however, and a coalition of nations 
opposed to U.S. Imperial behavior could pull it off.
 
In the meantime Stratfor, a geopolitical analysis firm, reported that 
the U.S. is quietly offering a quid pro quo to Russia in the form of 
a trade off. If Russia will sanction the U.S. invasion, the U.S. will 
allow Russia a free hand in Georgia to deal with Chechen and Islamic 
rebels and presumably a piece of the profits from the new 
Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline project that just broke ground. It seems 
like a very little quid for a lot of pro quo.
 
And in Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal made a 
second about face on Monday and once again categorically withdrew any 
Saudi support for the U.S. war. The timing was possibly influenced by 
a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) report released today that was 
exceptionally critical of the Bush Administration for not cracking 
down on Saudi Arabia's extensive financial ties to al Qaeda. The CFR 
investigation, directed by Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, CEO of American 
International Group (AIG), was chartered by the CFR to be an 
intelligence analysis of terrorist financing. Greenberg, a staunch 
Israeli supporter, is well qualified for this task. In 1996 Bill 
Clinton floated his name to replace John Deutch as the director of 
central intelligence.
 
Greenberg and AIG have been connected by FTW in previous 
investigations to suspected money laundering through the Arkansas 
Development Financial Authority and to the drug trade. AIG's San 
=46rancisco legal office recently employed the wife of convicted 
Medellin Cartel co-founder Carlos Lehder.
 
The CFR criticism of Bush is significant for many reasons. First, it 
signals that the CFR is anxious to pursue an agenda that will likely 
result in the demise of the Saudi kingdom and the division of that 
country, with the U.S. simultaneously occupying both Iraq and the oil 
producing regions of Saudi Arabia. FTW predicted this scenario last 
month. The significance of a move that would give the U.S. military 
control of 36 percent of the world's oil is not lost on the rest of 
the world and it suggests the presence of a much deeper reality.
 
So flimsy are the Bush Administration's frequently changing 
justifications for war that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jay 
Bookman wrote a Sept. 29 editorial called "Pax Americana," in which 
he openly called the U.S. an empire.
 
"The official story on Iraq has never made sense," Bookman wrote. 
"The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw 
between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial. 
In fact, it was hard to believe that smart people in the Bush 
administration would start a major war based on such flimsy evidence."
 
He continued to make the point that the administration had no Iraqi 
exit strategy because it didn't intend to leave. Period. His premise 
seemed to be, 'Hey, let's stop kidding ourselves. We are an empire 
and we should go out and act like it.'
 
But perhaps the most critical element of the post-9-11 landscape, 
which is made clear by the CFR report, is a sense of urgency held by 
major financial players. As FTW has been saying for a year now, the 
only way both the urgency and the frenzy and the near desperation of 
these moves to carve up the world's oil can be explained is with one 
simple concept: the world is starting to run out of oil.
 
Coming cataclysmic global oil and natural gas shortages are about to 
become very real, certainly within the next two years, to everyone on 
the planet. Those countries that have access to what oil remains will 
survive and dominate and those that do not will atrophy and 
disintegrate. This is a deadly game of musical chairs. It is the kind 
of unspoken crisis that would compel the U.S. Congress to worship 
Caligula's horse, forget the Constitution and international law, and 
sell out completely.
 
Many have almost worshipped the progressive, seemingly unassailable 
credentials and leadership of Sen. John Kerry from Massachusetts, who 
is a possible 2004 Democratic nominee for the White House. However, 
many have charged him with being a privileged member of an elite 
ruling class. He was educated at Yale and belonged to the secretive 
Skull and Bones Society, of which both Bush presidents are members.
 
What one believes about Kerry's background is not significant. What 
is significant is that he voted for the use of force resolution last 
week without even a whimper. That vote was noticed and so were many 
others.
 
These are strange times.
 
Yesterday's announcement by the State Department that North Korea has 
a nuclear weapons program is troubling for two reasons. First, it 
raises all of the obvious questions about whether, if the U.S. isn't 
really concerned about oil, it will now drop all Iraqi plans and go 
invade Korea instead. They seem to be closer to building a bomb than 
Iraq is. But secondly and perhaps most importantly is the fact that, 
as reported by Stratfor, Pyongyang told the Bush Administration about 
the nuclear program two weeks ago. Why didn't we hear about it then?
 
Stratfor suggests that reason is a pending summit between the U.S. 
and China where one country might be traded for another. But instead 
it is likely the announcements earlier this year that the two Korea's 
might unite scares the White House infinitely more. What, then, would 
be the need for massive U.S. troop deployments in the former South 
Korea, right next to China? And isn't it also strange that a number 
of pipeline plans involving both U.S. and Russian companies that 
might go around China and make oil marketable to Japan and South 
Korea seem to pass through North Korea?
 
Go figure.
 
We are already being prepared for the Bush Administration's fallback 
position if it cannot get the war it wants, when it wants it. 
Yesterday, CIA director George Tenet sounded the clarion call in the 
last public hearing of the Joint House-Senate Intelligence Committee 
examining the 9-11 attacks. "Al Qaeda has reconstituted itselfIt is 
capable of multi-theater operations." Tenet made no bones about the 
fact that another major attack -- one that will be very convenient 
for the White House -- is on the way.
 
The Oct. 12 bombing of a nightclub in Bali that killed many 
Australians has not seemed to impact widespread anti-war sentiment 
among the people down under. That might well be an omen for the 
outcome of the next terrorist attack in the U.S.
 
We now know that Bush et al knew enough about the last one to prevent 
it but did not. It has already been shown that CIA-linked members of 
the Pakistani intelligence service helped to fund it; that five of 
the hijackers received flight training at U.S. military 
installations; that no fighters were scrambled in time to do 
anything; and that President Bush lied when he said he had no idea 
that planes could be used as weapons. We know that it is a state 
secret as to whether the intelligence agencies told Bush what we now 
know that they knew.
 
I hope that this government fully understands how numerous, 
well-informed, now-seasoned and capable citizens will be watching an 
attack this time, and how quickly the worldwide networks that have 
formed in the last year will expose the first scintilla of untruth in 
the government's actions. I hope this government understands that the 
"sleeping giant" of the American people is beginning to stir and 
unite with peoples all around the world who are already awake.
 
But, as my dear friend Catherine Austin Fitts loves to say, "Those 
who win in a rigged game get stupid." And that is perhaps the most 
frightening thing of all.

[END]

(Source:  =1Fhttp://www.rense.com/general30/unseen.htm)