http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentS...y&c=StoryFT&cid=1079420027958&p=1012571727085 This FT story reports that OPEC members, including Saudi Arabia, are pressing the cartel members to stick with planned production cutbacks. The avowed aim of these members is to keep prices at current levels. Separately, Democrat candidate John Kerry leveled a blistering attack at President Bush for high gas prices, although he was characteristically vague about what he woiuld do to make things better, other than saying Bush should force OPEC to increase production. Bush is currently running ads that recount Kerry's past support for higher gas taxes. Let me see if I understand this. We saved the Saudi's butts from Saddam Hussein and this is the gratitude we get? Oh yeah, other than their support for OBL and sending terrorists here to conduct the 9/11 attack. And what about Iraq? They still belong to OPEC. How is that helping us? Shouldn't we pull them out of it and start trying to break up this ring of thieves? Why don't we start putting some real pressure on the OPEC members? They are stealing billions from us. They are nothing but common crooks and we should treat them as such. I wonder how many value OPEC over their relations with this country? Maybe it's time to find out. Maybe it's time for Bush to demonstrate some actual leadership and stop talking about it.
Break up this ring of thieves? We love capitalism when we are the ones screwing others. That Bush has done zilch to make the US less dependent on OPEC oil is whose fault exactly? In WWII to fight a common enemy, citizens had to sacrifice. Where is our sense of sacrifice when it come to foreign oil dependency? Since the oil embargo in the 70's, exactly what has been done to reduce or eliminate our dependency on their foreign oil? When Enron and their buddies screwed California during the rigged energy and NG shortage, Bush stood aside and didn't get involved in stopping the profiteering of Americans by large corporations....because it was capitalism at work, but we should now do something about OPEC? We are fully to blame for our own dependency.
Amen. But we have very little to bargain with. You surprise me, AAA...most conservatives on this board, like Pabst, favor higher prices for gasoline, or are at least willing to tolerate them. Word has it that the saudis are having some major problems with some of the relatively new leadership...the fundamentalists have taken control of more saudi government than has been the case over the past decade...
I think AAA's point was that we have invested tax payer $$$ over the past 30 years in efforts to protect saudi arabia and kuwait from almost certain death from saddam...and this is the thanks we get.
We pump money into Israel to protect them from certain death of the Arab world, and they ignore our wishes and assassinate a holy man in a wheelchair with a rocket that will help to fuel the Islamic Jihad mentality and terrorism against the USA....and this is the thanks we get for the billions we pour into Israel? I think by now we would be used to the game of tit for tat, as countries we try to buy our favor with act in their own best interests and not ours. The Saudis own us nothing, as everything we do for them has huge strings attached to our "giving."' Israel's isolation ... and ours -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: March 29, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc. "Israel has a right to defend itself," said President Bush. And against whom was Israel defending itself at dawn on Monday? A half-blind and deaf paraplegic being wheeled out of a mosque after prayers, Sheik Ahmed Yassin was struck by missiles that blew him to pieces. In carrying out the assassination of the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Ariel Sharon used a U.S. Apache helicopter gunship. Thus, in Islamic eyes, we are passive accomplices in the killing. Instantly, protests erupted in Mosul and Basra. Ayatollah al-Sistani, the Shiite leader on whom we depend for a peaceful transfer of power in Iraq, was enraged: "[T]his morning, the occupying Zionist entity committed an ugly crime against the Palestinian people by killing one of their heroes, scholar-martyr Ahmed Yassin." Sharon's defenders say the sheik had sanctioned terror attacks on innocent Israelis. But why did Israel not then seize him, expose his complicity in murder, and put him in prison, as Israel had before? Why convert this crippled old sheik into a martyr-saint? Why enhance the prestige of Hamas? Has the killing made Israel more secure? If so, why were Israeli buses deserted all week? Has it made us more secure? Why then were the travel advisories issued to Americans in the Middle East? Why are U.S. embassies shutting down? How does inflaming the Islamic world against us advance the president's goal of persuading the world that Islam is not America's enemy? President Bush must begin to realize that his blind solidarity with Sharon, who has shown himself contemptuous of America's interests in the larger region, is among the greatest crosses we have to bear in the war on terror. A year after the fall of Baghdad, Bush's men are boasting of his triumphs â the overthrow of the Taliban, the liberation of Iraq, not one act of terror on U.S. soil in two years. But consider the war from bin Laden's vantage point. The murderous strike of 9-11 electrified America-haters, but produced blowback and near total disaster for bin Laden. In weeks, Bush had united a great coalition, smashed the Taliban and almost finished Osama himself at Tora Bora. Then came Iraq. Here Bush played straight into bin Laden's hand. By attacking a prostrate Arab nation that played no role in 9-11, we united Arab and Islamic peoples in hatred of America. We shattered alliances and ignited a guerrilla war. According to a Pew poll, U.S. prestige in the Muslim world has never been lower. Bush is widely detested. In Pakistan, 65 percent of the people hold Osama in high regard, while 8 percent are positive on Bush. We are losing the hearts and minds of the Islamic young, creating a spawning pool out of which future terrorists will emerge. Now, an attack in Madrid has left 200 dead and blown a hole in our coalition. A socialist has come to power who intends to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq. Poland, too, has begun to waver As Bush wins battles, Osama advances toward his strategic goals: Demonization of America as the enemy of Islam, isolation of America as an imperialist aggressor against Arab nations and the enabler of Sharon, and unification of Islam's young behind bin Laden's ultimate war aim: the expulsion of America from all Muslim lands. The legendary Col. John Boyd described strategy as appending to oneself as many centers of power as possible, while isolating one's enemy from as many centers of power as possible. Bush I did this brilliantly in the Gulf War, isolating Saddam. Bush II did it brilliantly in the Afghan war, isolating the Taliban. Now Bush has fallen into the trap his father avoided. He is letting Ariel Sharon create the perception that America's war and Israel's war are one and the same. In the Middle East, Sharon has no friends. He does not care whom he alienates. But we are a world power with friend, allies and interests in 22 Arab and 57 Muslim countries. To protect our interests, to win our war on al-Qaida, it is imperative that we not let ourselves become as isolated as Israel is today. Between America and Israel, there are thus common interests and a collision of interests. Sharon does not want us to confine our war on terror to those who attacked us on 9-11. He wants us to expand our list of enemies to include his list of enemies: Arafat, Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia. He wants us to escalate "the firemen's war" into an American war on Israel's enemies, so, together, we can establish joint hegemony in the Middle East. If Sharon and his acolytes in the Bush administration succeed in conflating Sharon's war with America's war, we could lose our war. Why cannot the president see what is going on? Patrick J. Buchanon
Seems like OPEC is retaliating for the Israel attack on Hamas. What do you guys think? http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/03/30/election.main/index.html And this was extra-cute: "OPEC blames speculative investors who hold record positions on futures exchanges in London and New York for driving up oil prices this year...The Bush administration, in an election year, is pressing OPEC to raise export flows to help control U.S. prices at the pump and prevent energy inflation from slowing economic growth. Saudi and a few other OPEC countries have already ordered marginally lower April volumes." http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/31/news/international/opec.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes
I totally disagree; and in my opinion it is a tremendous "bitch slap" .... The strings should be definetly pulled by us not them. Thank God I walk to my office almost everyday...this is getting silly already...
ART, I think you are mixing two very separate points. One is whether we should make greater efforts at energy independence, both through conservation and supply. The other is whether we should respond to a classic cartel that has imposed an extyra-legal tax of hundreds of billions on the US. As for the former issue, I think reasonable people can differ. No one needs a huge SUV, but at the same time government regulations have contributed to higher energy consumption. How? By making cars smaller and less safe and encouraging people to get large trucks for a snese of perceived ssafety. Of course, the infamous CAFE regulations that impose fuel economy requirements have also certainly raised the average miles per gallon of the US fleet and saved gas, even as they have cost lives. I am all for conservation, but if we want to tax gas, for example, to discourage useage, we should be the ones doing the taxing, not OPEC. As for OPEC, they would be a criminal conspiracy in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act if they did it here. In fact, there have been several cases, but I believe they have escaped through state action loopholes. Perhaps it is time to reexamine this doctrine, or perhaps more direct means need to be considered. The damage to our economy uis bad enough, but there is clear evidence that Saudi oil money is supporting Osama and al Qaeda. We are fully justified in taking military action to cut off this threat to our country.
The Saudis have as much right to practice capitalism on us as we do on them, or we do it on ourselves. What you call a Cartel is no different than the energy business in this country, especially the unregulated energy business as it manifested in California after our deregulation. Here is the problem though with the Saudis, they have the leverage over us due to our own stupidity. Let's assume the Saudi's support Bin Laden, and I believe this to be true. Let's also imagine that after the oil embargo in the 70's, we took every effort to become independent of Arab oil. How much different would our foreign policy be right now as it relates to the Middle East? It is our fault in the sense that we allowed the problem to continue, and allowed American corporations to reap huge profits because of the problem, and right now American corporations are reaping huge profits because of the problem. So who is really to blame? Us, becase we didn't deal with the problem when we were aware of it in the 70's, or them, because they are taking advantage of our stupidity for not solving the problem then?