US buys up Iraqi oil to stave off crisis
Seizing reserves will be an allied priority if forces go in
By Faisal Islam and Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow for The Observer.

Facing its most chronic shortage in oil stocks for 27 years, the US has this month turned to an unlikely source of help – Iraq.
Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.
After the loss of 1.5 million barrels per day of Venezuelan production in December the oil price rocketed, and the scarcity of reserves threatened to do permanent damage to the US oil refinery and transport infrastructure. To keep the pipelines flowing, President Bush stopped adding to the 700m barrel strategic reserve.
But ultimately oil giants such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell saved the day by doubling imports from Iraq from 0.5m barrels in November to over 1m barrels per day to solve the problem. Essentially, US importers diverted 0.5m barrels of Iraqi oil per day heading for Europe and Asia to save the American oil infrastructure.
The trade, though bizarre given current Pentagon plans to launch around 300 cruise missiles a day on Iraq, is legal under the terms of UN’s oil for food programme…
But, in the run-up to war, the US oil majors will this week report a big leap in profits. ChevronTexaco is to report a 300 per cent rise. Chevron used to employ the hawkish Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s National Security Adviser, as a member of its board.
Five years ago the then Chevron chief executive Kenneth Derr, a colleague of Rice, said: ‘Iraq possesses huge reserves of oil and gas – reserves I’d love Chevron to have access to.’

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My bad — I missed this last week and didn’t even realize there was a saga.
The Daily Show covered it last week — and it was stupid, sure, but it seemed like such easy pickens, I didn’t bother.
Now I suppose I’ll have to go dig up the tape… Let me know if you care. (I’m still crowd estimating and state of the unioning and things…)
All this article tells me is that they’ve found a scapegoat for this latest gaffe of pure shrubbery.
This one’s so easy there’s no fun in it, so I’m going to rush to the Shrub’s defense: “It’s not his fault! How was the Shrub to know that those pieces of tape covering up the area where “Made In _____” always goes was something other than “Made In America” — and that the powers that be hadn’t simply chosen to cover up the “Made In America’s” for some complex reason? Who knows why “they” do the things the way they do. This man is the “President” of the United States? Is he supposed to start paying attention to his surroundings at every single press conference? Should he be expected to single-handedly ensure that there are no contradictions between his speech and his props?”
I guess you’re right. He’s got more important things on his mind. (Like remembering to take the medication that causes his pupils to be so dialated…)
President Bush spoke behind a stack of boxes with tape over the words “Made in China.”

Remember “Boxgate,” the incident last week at a St. Louis warehouse in which President Bush touted small business and things made in America? And the problem was, he was standing behind a bunch of boxes that had tape over the words “Made in China”?
Seems the person who did this, said by the White House to be an “overzealous volunteer,” may have committed a federal offense.
Covering up the “Made In” labels is against the law, a violation of venerable Title 19, Chapter 4, Subtitle II, Part 1, Sec. 134.11, which “requires that every article of foreign origin (or its container) imported into the United States shall be marked in a conspicuous place as legibly, indelibly and permanently” as possible, “in such manner as to indicate to an ultimate purchaser . . . [the] name of the country of origin of the article.”

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Just got a link to the actual video here that I mention in an earlier post. (Thanks Danny!)

Way to go Shrub!
Alaska riders included in big federal spending bill
(Associated Press)

The U.S. Senate has adopted two riders included in a major spending bill that would bar court challenges to the new trans-Alaska Pipeline right-of-way agreement and a Forest Service decision on wilderness in the Tongass National Forest.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s amendment, included in the omnibus federal spending bill, would insulate the new trans-Alaska Pipeline right-of-way agreement from lawsuits and judicial review.
The measure, passed Thursday, would extend a key provision in the 1973 law that authorized the pipeline. Effectively, Congress would be saying that the environmental studies conducted during the pipeline reauthorization process are sufficient and shall not be subject to court review…
“The line’s been in place 30 years. And the question is if there is a legal challenge to it, you spend a couple million dollars of taxpayer money toward the lawyer fees and all that’s entailed with that. And I don’t think anybody out there is suggesting that we’re going to be taking the pipeline out of the ground. So what purpose does it serve?” Murkowski told reporters.
But critics who believe the pipeline renewal is flawed and should have undergone more thorough review are outraged by Murkowski’s amendment. Deborah Williams, executive director of the Alaska Conservation Foundation, said that, if the pipeline’s environmental impact study is solid it can withstand a court challenge.
The bill also includes a rider, introduced by Sen. Ted Stevens, that would effectively bar environmental groups from using administrative appeals or the courts to press for more wilderness designations in roadless areas of the Tongass National Forest.
At issue is whether more of the 16.8 million-acre national forest in Southeast should be put off-limits to development. Environmentalists sued the Forest Service over the Tongass management plan, saying the agency ignored the possibility of designating new wilderness areas, where logging and road building are generally prohibited.
In April 2001, a judge agreed and ordered the Forest Service to review 9.7 million roadless acres and decide whether Congress should consider creating new wilderness areas. Last May, the agency issued a draft decision, saying no to new Tongass wilderness. The agency said it would issue its final decision early this year.
The intent of the sentence Stevens included in the spending bill is to allow the Forest Service’s decision to stand.
It says that the agency’s Tongass wilderness decision “shall not be reviewed under any Forest Service administrative appeal process and its adequacy shall not be subject to judicial review by any court of the United States.”

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Looks like “the people” of England aren’t buying into the Bush/Blair doublespeak.
(New! Just got a link to the actual video here. Thanks Danny!)

In Britain, War Concern Grows Into Resentment of U.S. Power
Anxiety Over Attack on Iraq Moves to Political Mainstream
By Glenn Frankel for the Washington Post Foreign Service (in London).

In a recently televised satire here titled “Between Iraq and a Hard Place,” George W. Bush is depicted as an idiot who can’t seem to grasp why Saddam Hussein isn’t cooperating with the U.S. timetable for war. American democracy is defined as “where there are two candidates and the one with the most votes loses,” and Britain’s role in the forthcoming military campaign is starkly simple:
“What is it that the Americans want from us?” asks a British official.
“From us?” replies an army general. “Dead bodies.”
…There are fears that the United States is determined to act without heeding the concerns of its allies — and fears that Britain will be dragged along in its wake. These fears have spread far beyond the traditionally anti-American hard left — known here as “the usual suspects” — to include moderates and conservatives as well.

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How Bush gets his way on the environment
By Terry McCarthy for CNN.

Within days of the Republican gains of last November’s elections, the Administration stepped up what critics view as an all-out assault on the environment with a series of pronouncements: that snowmobiles could operate in Yellowstone National Park, oil drilling could expand in Padre Island National Seashore in Texas, the National Marine Fisheries Service would ease salmon protections in the Pacific Northwest, and Washington would soften rules on logging and energy conservation. Opponents predict a new wave of even bolder measures in the coming months that could affect water and air quality and renew efforts to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil drilling.

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The harrowing past of a top Bush judicial nominee: Civil rights opposition, commie hunting and a partner who publicly decried “queers, quacks, quirks, political agitators.”
By Joe Conason for Salon.

Now that we have revisited Mississippi in 1948 with Trent Lott, perhaps America will take another look at the Magnolia State during the ’60s and ’70s with Lott’s judicial prot