And speaking of Arabs

The Progress Report (from Center for American Progress) has some questions to ask.

Why can we negotiate with Libya and not North Korea?

Just this weekend, Vice President Dick Cheney exacerbated the North Korean situation, blustering, "I have been charged by the president with making sure that none of the tyrannies in the world are negotiated with. We don't negotiate with evil; we defeat it." His comments came at the same time the Administration was using quiet diplomacy and negotiation with the Libyan dictator, begging the question: why the disparity in policies towards the two nations?

Why is Qadafi being handled differently than Saddam?

[T]he Administration is now telling Americans that we can trust Ghadafi - a man with a similar record of repression, aggression, and disdain for international law, not to mention the fact that while Saddam never attacked the U.S., Ghadafi masterminded the killing of 270 people aboard Pan Am 103. On Friday, two days shy of the 15th anniversary of the airliner bombing, Bush thanked Ghadafi for "his commitment to disclose and dismantle all WMD in his country" - yet failed to explain the disparity between the policy towards Saddam and the Libyan leader.

...Stephanie Bernstein of Bethesda, MD, who lost her husband, said the agreement, and the White House embrace of it, was about "providing a Christmas present to the oil companies and justifying the war in Iraq." Other relatives of victims "were upset that in Mr. Bush's announcement of the Libyan pact he made no mention of Pan Am 103."

And this is particularly interesting, to me anyway...

On a visit to Abu Dhabi [in 1996], Cheney criticized U.S. sanctions on Libya saying, "There seems to be an assumption that somehow we know what's best for everybody else and that we are going to use our economic clout to get everybody else to live the way we would like." While many oil CEOs were loathe to attack the U.S. sanctions - especially while visiting foreign nations - Cheney was not. As the Journal of Commerce reported on 5/6/96, "Cheney, Halliburton's chief executive, has publicly slammed the sanctions while others have not."

Why does Dick Cheney hate America?

In May of 1997, Cheney criticized the Congress for tightening sanctions on Libya, and specifically said the oil industry had a right to do business in countries with deadly WMD. As Oil and Gas Journal reported, "Cheney said oil and gas companies must explore where the reserves are, and that means doing business in countries that may have policies that the U.S. does not like." Cheney said, "The long-term horizon of the oil industry is at odds with the short term nature of politics."

Well, Mr. Cheney (with a little help from his friends) has fixed that problem, now hasn't he?

The next year, Cheney ratcheted up his campaign, once again criticizing the U.S. security policy on foreign soil. According the Malaysian News Agency reported, "Cheney hit out at his government for imposing economic sanctions like the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act."

It's the oil, stupid.

And the topper, folks....

World Markets Analysis newsletter reports that the Libya deal coincides with the expiration of a 50-year lease signed between U.S. oil companies and the Libyan regime. Specifically, the Oasis Group (which includes Marathon and ConocoPhillips - both major political campaign contributors to the Administration) leased the Waha oil fields in Libya, but have been blocked from doing business there since sanctions were imposed in 1986. With the lease now expiring, "Libya has made veiled suggestions that it could re-tender the fields to European oil companies"...(emphasis mine)

Remember that one of Saddam's sins was to think about selling his oil for euros instead of dollars. There's a concerted effort on the part of America through all our foreign policy, it seems, to keep the EU unstable. I'm not so sure it's working all that well. The day of the dollar king may be gone forever.

The Progress Report is a pretty good quick view of what's going on. In this issue, some other topics are:

The Media:

Murdoch won a merger option. Oh boy. More Fox news.

The Economy:

According to the Congressional Budget Office, it turns out we can't have our cake and eat it, too. As a new report shows, the country has to either radically rein in spending or increase taxes unless it wants to be hit with giant deficits and "soaring public debt." In fact, the CBO concluded, "Unless taxation reaches levels that are unprecedented in the United States, current spending policies will probably be financially unsustainable over the next 50 years."

The Unemployed:

Yesterday, "more than 90,000 people who have been out of work for months [lost] their federal benefits" as "the program to aid the long-term unemployed expire[d]." While many progressive lawmakers demanded Congress and the President extend the jobless benefits, both refused, and the cutoffs began on December 21....[A]t the same time, the House passed an extension for the temporary tax breaks designed to provide relief for corporations during the economic crisis.

Merry Christmas, suckers.

P.S. A study by economy.com concluded that, as a general rule, "each dollar of new federal expenditures for unemployment compensation generated an increase in...GDP of $1.73." The study found, by contrast, that "for each dollar used for...corporate tax breaks...GDP would rise less than $0.35."

Ashcroft's progress in the war on terror:

The Justice Department has been touting "a list of more than 280 cases that the department cites as evidence that it is winning the war on terrorism." The list has been "regularly highlighted by Ashcroft and other Justice Department officials in speeches and congressional testimony, and even by President Bush." But when the LA Times asked for documentation of the Justice Department claims the "department declined to provide a complete accounting of the terrorism-related prosecutions that Ashcroft and others cite."

After the LA Times filed a Freedom of Information Act request they received "a highly redacted accounting covering only about half the number that Ashcroft trumpets." Included in that list were "two New Jersey men, operators of small grocery stores, who were convicted of accepting hundreds of boxes of stolen breakfast cereal, in a crime that occurred 16 months before the terrorist hijackings." A Justice Department spokesman admitted that some of the cases included in the count "don't necessarily involve terrorists or people convicted of terrorism-related crimes."

Emphasis mine, and the DoJ has two sides to its mouth.

To get the Progress Report as an email subscription, click here.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.