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The New York Times

July 3, 2008

Panel Questions State Dept. Role in Iraq Oil Deal

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/middleeast/03kurdistan.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

Oh God, when will it end?

By Ed Tubbs

America's Dirtiest

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There's a program on one of the Discovery channels, hosted by Mike Rowe, called America's Dirtiest Jobs. One of the jobs featured in the series was cleaning up the hog yards, running the slop and the streaming, excrement and urine filth down a chute. Rowe, in fishing waders, surgical mask and goggles, was waste deep in the stuff, shoveling the terrible mixture onto the chute that sent everything into a huge vat, where something was done to it and I don't know what because I changed the channel because I didn't want to know. I could easily imagine an emotion akin to "just make it go away."

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The story in today's (July 3) paper, "Panel Questions State Dept Role in Iraq Oil Deal" (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/middleeast/03kurdistan.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print), illustrating the Bush administration's involvement in A-N-O-T-H-E-R - "Oh Lord, how many have there been now?" too-dirty-to-even-want-to-want-to-touch scandal sent my mind immediately to that hog slop episode. The stench and excreta indelibly and intimately associated with these past seven years-but-seems-like-seven-centuries any more leaves me retching in anticipation of when - "Oh please God make it be over" - it might all finally come to its end.

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While you can click on the link to the story, suffice it that it involved Ray L. Hunt, a Texas multi-kazillion dollar oil magnate and a strong supporter and very close friend of George W. Bush, had negotiated an oil deal with the Iraq Oil Ministry, in knowing violation of the laws of Iraq and with the full knowledge of Bush's State Department.

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The violation of Iraq law is because Iraq law forbids making such a deal prior to the conclusion of oil-revenue sharing legislation and without the approval of the Iraq central government, neither of which to date have occurred.

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Within the past few days, it was reported that Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, and British Petroleum are also set to ink no-bid contracts for Iraqi oil.

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And 4,200 American soldiers and marines died for this? At least 30,000 American soldiers and marines have been savagely mutilated for this? The United States has gone into debt perhaps as much as $3 TRILLION for this? Perhaps a couple hundred thousand Iraqi civilians have died, more than a million seriously permanently wounded, and a few million have been forced to flee the country, their country, the land of their birth . . . for this?

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And you know someone who voted for George Bush, you know someone who yet claims to apologetically support this president, and you know someone who claims to support John McCain, the aspirant to the presidency of your country, of my country, of our dear and beloved country, and you have not told this person he or she is "dead to you"? And why, in the name of all on earth and heaven that is decent and good and just have you not?

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Precisely how many gondolas of that hog slop are you willing to wallow in before you stand up, reclaim your pride in yourself and assert your first-order right to at least a teaspoon of personal dignity?

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Forty-two hundred American military lives, people who once were vibrant, sentient human beings, now no more . . . just so that Mr. Bush's best friends could secure access to the black goo that lubricates their opulence. WOW! If a "relationship" trumps basic human decency principles . . .

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- Ed Tubbs

Oakland, CA

Authors Bio: An "Old Army Vet" and liberal, qua liberal, with a passion for open inquiry in a neverending quest for truth unpoisoned by religious superstitions. Per Voltaire: "He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity."