( (( ((( H & O on Iran ))) )) )

Sourced from ABC News: http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/Vote2008/story?id=4700982&page=1

By JAKE TAPPER, CHRIS CUOMO, ELOISE HARPER, COLE KAZDIN, JAY SHAYLOR AND EMILY FRIEDMAN

Obama and Hillary Visit A Pro Wrestling Card; Then Discuss Iran

Yesterday:

Democratic presidential rivals topped off six weeks of often bitter battles by appearing on WWE's pro wrestling show "Raw" on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary.

"You can call me Hillrod," said Clinton of her WWE persona, and Obama asked the audience, "Do you smell what Barack is cooking?"

Today:

In an interview with ABC's Chris Cuomo, Clinton expressed her toughest stance yet on Iran's nuclear ambitions and the potential threat the country poses to American allies.

"If Iran were to launch a nuclear attack on Israel what would our response be?" Clinton said. "I want the Iranians to know that if I'm the president, we will attack Iran. That's what we will do. There is no safe haven."

"Whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons program in the next 10 years during which they may foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them," Clinton said.

Clinton's tough talk on Iran came a day after she launched a TV ad in Pennsylvania that included the ominous face of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Clinton introduced bin Laden into the campaign along with the narrator's voice warning, "It's the toughest job in the world. You need to be ready for anything."

When asked how he would respond to a nuclear attack by Iran, Obama told ABC News' Robin Roberts that he would do everything he could to prevent the country from having weapons in the first place.

"I was absolutely clear about the fact that if Iran used nuclear weapons on Israel, or any of our allies, we would respond forcefully and swiftly," said Obama. "But, in some ways, this hypothetical presupposes a failure to begin with. We shouldn't allow Iran to have nuclear weapons, period. I have consistently said that I will do everything in my power to prevent them from having it and I have not ruled out military force as an option."

Obama suggested that Clinton's use of terms such as "obliterate" in reference to Iran are ineffective "saber rattling."

"Talk using words like obliterate doesn't actually produce good results," said Obama. "I think the Iranians can be confident that I will respond forcefully, and it will be completely unacceptable if they attacked Israel, or any other of our allies in the region, with conventional weapons or nuclear weapons."

Obama Machine vs. Hillary Machine

With Pennsylvania on the line, here's a look at the confrontational memos being issued today by the teams behind Obama and Hillary:

From NBC's Mark Murray

Source: http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/22/932542.aspx

The Obama and Clinton campaigns have released dueling memos to frame today's Pennsylvania primary. The Cliffs Notes version: The Obama folks continue to argue that Clinton was always favored in the state, but that the delegate math is stacked against her. Meanwhile, Team Clinton wonders -- if Obama is the front-runner -- why he shouldn't be expected to win in the Keystone State.

The Obama camp's memo: "Clinton has been leading by large margins in Pennsylvania. In the weeks leading up to the primary, she led by as much as 25 points. They were so confident that their own Pennsylvania spokesman said Clinton would be 'unbeatable' in Pennsylvania—regardless of spending by her opponent... Behind in delegates and sporting a 14-30 primary record (not good enough even to make the playoffs in the NBA Eastern Conference), the Clinton campaign needs a blowout victory in Pennsylvania to get any closer to winning the nomination. Even President Clinton said that only a 'big, big victory' will give her the boost she needs.

More: "Tonight’s outcome is unlikely to change the dynamic of this lengthy primary. Fully three quarters of the remaining delegates will be selected in states other than Pennsylvania. While there are 158 delegates at stake in today’s primary, there are 157 up for grabs in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries two weeks from today. We expect that by tomorrow morning, the overall structure of the race will remain unchanged—except for the fact that there will be 158 delegates off the table."

The Clinton memo: "[A]fter the Obama campaign’s 'go-for-broke' Pennsylvania strategy, after their avalanche of negative ads, negative mailers and negative attacks against Sen. Clinton, after their record-breaking spending in the state, a fundamental question must be asked: Why shouldn't Sen. Obama win? Sen. Obama's supporters -- and many pundits -- have argued that the delegate 'math' makes him the prohibitive front-runner. They have argued that Sen. Clinton's chances are slim to none. So if he's already the front-runner, if he's had six weeks of unlimited resources to get his message out, shouldn't he be the one expected to win tonight? If not, why not? As the phrase goes, watch what they do not what they say."

"There's a reason Sen. Obama and his campaign have ratcheted up their year-long assault on Sen. Clinton's character and ended the Pennsylvania campaign with a flurry of harsh negative attacks. It's because they know that a loss in Pennsylvania will raise troubling questions about his candidacy and his ability to take on John McCain in the general election. And it's because they know that the race is neck and neck and tonight's contest is a measure of where the campaign stands."

( ( (( A brief history of opium )) ) )

From the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program's THE CHINA AND EURASIA FORUM QUARTERLY, Volume 4, No. 1

www.silkroadstudies.org/new/docs/CEF/Quarterly/February_2006/Pierre-Arnaud_Chouvy.pdf -

Afghanistan’s Opium Production in Perspective
By: Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy

Note: Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy is a geographer and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) research fellow in Paris, France. He produces www.geopium.org.

Afghanistan has been the world’s primary opium producing country since 1991, when it surpassed Burma (Myanmar) in total annual production. Both the Taliban regime and the Karzai government inherited an illicit drug economy that has been stimulated by two decades of war and also fuelled the country’s war economy. However, just as the Taliban government successfully, but counterproductively, prohibited opium production in 2001, their regime was toppled by U.S. military intervention in response to the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Then, in a rather chaotic Afghanistan, opium production resumed and grew back to normal. Now, the illicit drug economy in Afghanistan is said to fuel terrorism. The Afghan government, the U.S.-led coalition and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime consider that "fighting drug trafficking equals fighting terrorism." However, in Afghanistan as in other parts of the world, in Burma for example, opium has long been at stake in armed conflicts as its trade has allowed these conflicts to be prolonged. As the complex history of opium in Asia demonstrates, opium production and trade have been central to world politics and geopolitics for centuries and the role of the opium economy in Afghanistan does not represent a new trend. In many ways, history reinvents itself.

A Brief History of Opium

Opium is one of the world’s oldest pain-relievers. It is a narcotic drug that is obtained from the unripe seedpods of the opium poppy, Papaver somniferum L. It is difficult to pinpoint the geographic area of origin of the opium poppy. Although the oldest opium poppy capsules have been found in Switzerland, the plant itself is thought to have originated somewhere between the eastern Mediterranean and Minor Asia. However, the opium poppy has proven its ability to adapt to most ecological environments and, thus, has spread across Europe and Asia, and, even to the Americas, Australia and Africa. Very early on then, the opium poppy grew around human settlements and has most likely thrived in a symbiosis with early human activities along transcontinental migration routes. Indeed, historically, human societies have widely used opium as an analgesic and a sedative. Its cultivation was also a way to finance empires, colonial ventures, and wars. It was not until the British Empire started organizing and commercializing opium production in the 19th century that the opium poppy became entrenched in the world economy. The opium produced in British India was the first drug to become integrated into the then emerging globalization. Tea, which was then only grown in China, was bought by British merchants with silver extracted from South American mines. This triangular trade went on at least until the British Empire, together with the East India Company it had set up, created a thriving opium market in China, first through illegal smuggling and then through forced imports. The two so-called “opium wars” (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) waged by the British to impose their opium trade onto China resulted in “unfair treaties” that not only made Hong Kong a British colony but also provoked, in China, the biggest addiction ever to happen in world history. Eventually, opium consumption and addiction also spurred tremendous opium production in China. In response to the Chinese national consumption that drained its silver reserves, China became the world’s foremost opium producer.

China did not succeed in suppressing both national opium consumption and production until after World War II. Opium production then moved to the hills and mountains of Southeast Asia, where the so-called Golden Triangle quickly became the primary opium producing region in the world. As Alfred McCoy revealed in his 1972 seminal book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (reedited in 1991 as The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade), the Cold War clearly helped the illicit opium-heroin economies thrive in Asia. This trend emerged first in Laos and in Burma, then in Afghanistan in what came to be known as the Golden Crescent. In both Southeast and Southwest Asia, the Central Intelligence Agency’s anti-Communist covert operations and secret wars benefited from the participation of some drug-related combat units or individual actors who, to finance their struggles, were directly involved in drug production and trade. To cite just two, the Hmong in Laos and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in Afghanistan.

Opium Production in Afghanistan (and Asia)

Today, Afghanistan’s opium production is the direct outcome of Cold War rivalries and conflicts waged by proxies who helped develop a thriving narcotic economy in the country. Afghanistan has been the world’s leading opium-producing country for years now, with Burma and Laos ranking second and third respectively.

However, the spread of drug trafficking in Asia and elsewhere is also clearly linked to the international prohibition of certain drugs of which the two most significant events occurred in 1961, when the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was adopted, and in 1971, when the administration of U.S. President Richard Nixon declared a global “war on drugs.” However, the U.S.-led push for global prohibition had unintended local and regional consequences. In Iran for example, the 1955 prohibition stimulated production in Afghanistan and Pakistan and even in the distant Golden Triangle. Turkish prohibition of opium production in 1972 spurred the Golden Crescent’s production and further linked together Asia’s two main poppy-growing areas.

After the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the illicit drug trade continued to fuel Asian conflicts, and Afghanistan and Burma became the world’s two main opium-producing countries. Their national economies have now been affected for decades by an illicit agriculture that, to some extent and in some areas, grew detrimentally to food crops such as wheat and rice, even though most farmers grow the opium poppy as a cash crop to cope with extreme staple crops shortages. Various political and economic factors have favored or still favor the resort to the illicit drug economy in both countries: internal or transnational conflicts, the disintegration of the state, ethnic contentions, religious strife, oppressive regimes, lack of economic development projects, low international prices of food crops and droughts, just to name a few.

Illicit opium production thrives on war economies and poverty. Impacts and consequences of such economies vary according to time and location. Opium production threatens alimentary self-reliance and subjects growers to repression and even harsher life conditions. Trafficking destabilizes producing and neighboring countries by stimulating the corruption of authorities. Trafficking also spreads consumption of opium and especially of heroin, both creating and increasing drug addiction along trafficking routes, as is the case in Central Asia and China. Production, trafficking and consumption also nurture armed violence across international borders and spread scourges such as the HIV-AIDS epidemic that is transmitted by way of intravenous drug use in most of Asia.

Conclusions

Thus, illicit opium production can be assessed to be a national, regional, and global problem. This problem is deeply rooted in local as well as global histories and may only be addressed in various and specific cultural, political and economic contexts. However, any solution to the problem of illicit drug production in Asia, as in the rest of the world, has to be achieved through a global and coordinated approach. If opium suppression is to be achieved, if it is to be sustainable and not counterproductive, it has to be implemented progressively, through use of a long run strategy, as has happened in Pakistan and Thailand.

Afghanistan has suffered two decades of war and economic and political disintegration. Although the role of law enforcement is necessary to rid the country of its drug economy, concrete results will not be achieved without political stability and economic development. It is only when these conditions exist that opium suppression becomes possible in Afghanistan. This is to be achieved through a broad program of alternative livelihood development, mainstreamed into national development strategies.

To the East: The Golden Triangle

Sourced from the Drug Policy Alliance website...

http://www.drugpolicy.org/global/drugpolicyby/asia/seasia/

For centuries South East Asia has grown and sold narcotics. Today, the focal point of illicit drug production and trade is known as the 'Golden Triangle', a relatively lawless territory where Myanmar, Thailand and Laos meet. According to the CIA Factbook, Myanmar is the "world's second largest producer of illicit opium," behind only Afghanistan. Ethnic minorities living in the remote mountainous areas of the country depend on opium poppy cultivation to survive and are generally under the power of insurgent groups. The government is progressively gaining control of the area leading to a drop in opium cultivation however the sustainability of this decline is subject to the government's ability to continue with eradication programs and also develop alternative sources of income for the communities. Already, the production and sale of amphetamine-type stimulants is emerging and could surpass opium trade.

There exists a series of penalties for drug offenders including death under certain circumstances and three year jail terms for unregistered drug users. Myanmar is also engaged in sub-regional cooperation, and has established a working relationship with the respective narcotic control bodies in China and Thailand. Nevertheless, due to internal conflicts and a poor economy Myanmar continues to be a weak link in the supply control chain and faces future drug problems without development resources for opium farmers and HIV/AIDS health programs to eliminate the practice of needle sharing.

Unlike Myanmar, Thailand is no longer a significant producer of opium. Thailand does however face the problem of importation of opium, heroin and amphetamine-type stimulants from neighboring Laos and Myanmar. Thailand's narcotic act classifies drugs into five categories. Those found to be in possession of the most dangerous category of drugs, including no less than 20 grams of heroin, amphetamine, methamphetamine, ecstasy or LSD, will be imprisoned for 1 to 10 years and fined large sums of money. The highest penalty for heroin and methamphetamine traffickers is capital punishment. Recent changes in the narcotics law were made to see that drug addicts and those who support their habits by selling small amounts of drugs were forced to attend military style camp rather than jail. It was hoped that this would shift the focus of narcotic control attempts to drug traffickers and reduce crowding in jails, however, health care and treatment is not freely available to those in need and in February of 2003 the Thai government launched an all-out war on drugs. With hundreds of reported slayings - many in vague circumstances - human rights advocates express concern for the future of the country.

There is an estimated 2 to 3 million drug users in Thailand of which most use methamphetamine, and 60 per cent of incarcerated drug offenders are charged for possessing between one and 100 speed pills. Consequently, the Thai government has established a new national policy focused on stimulant supply reduction strategies. The seriousness of Thailand's HIV/AIDS epidemic has long been denied by the government. There is evidence to suggest that drug trafficking, injecting drug use, and HIV infection are woven closely together and that HIV follows drug trafficking routes. Asia had an estimated 7.2 million HIV cases in 2000 making it the world leader in HIV infection after Africa. Thailand is one of the worst affected countries. The first wave of HIV infection in Thailand occurred amongst injecting drug users, followed by the sex trade and finally the sexually active adult population and their children. This is a pattern observed throughout SE Asian countries and it is predicted that unless immediate action is taken, HIV will spread in a similar fashion through Central Asia.

The Meadows of Afghanistan

By JAMES EMERY, Middle East Times

http://www.metimes.com/International/2008/03/26/afghanistans_opium_dilemma/6923/

Afghanistan's annual opium crop is expected to rival last year's record yield to exceed a staggering 8,000 metric tons, or more than 90 percent of global production, according to a U.N. survey released in February, with the bulk being grown in Taliban strongholds.

Afghanistan grew 8,243 metric tons in 2007, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in its winter assessment survey. Its forecast for 2008 suggests a flattening out of production, however, following hefty increases in each of the last two years in the war-torn country.

It takes about 10 kilograms of opium to make one kilogram of heroin. However, due to improved quality and higher morphine content, Afghan opium has been converted at a seven to one ratio the last three years. During 2007, 58.4 percent of Afghan opium (8,243 metric tons less 156 tons consumed locally and 105 tons seized) was refined to morphine or heroin, creating 666 tons for export.

Five predominantly Pushtun provinces, Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Nimroz, and, Farah, which are Taliban strongholds, were responsible for 77.7 percent of Afghanistan's opium cultivation last year. Helmand province alone produced 53 percent of the nation's total crop. Opium cultivation in Helmand is projected to stabilize this year following a 48 percent increase in 2007 and a 162 percent increase in 2006 after the Taliban regained control of the region.

When NATO forces pressed against Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, many fled to the provinces of Nimroz and Farah, where they regrouped. The combined opium cultivation in these two provinces increased 121 percent during 2007 after the Taliban began using them as sanctuaries. Their yields will increase again during 2008, especially in the Khash Rod district of Nimroz province.

"It is quite obvious the Taliban are involved in the drug trade, particularly in the southern provinces," said Dr. Thomas Pietschmann, of the Research and Analysis Section of the UNODC in Vienna, Austria. "We also have information that the farmers were told by the Taliban to grow opium," he added.

The Taliban tax all aspects of the drug trade, from cultivation to processing and distribution. Many of these taxes are paid in drugs, which the Taliban sell. They also earn money by providing protection for opium fields, heroin labs, drug shipments, and narcotics traffickers.

The average wholesale price in 2007 for a kilo (2.2 pounds) of Afghan heroin was $4,500 in Central Asia, $3,206 in Pakistan, and $3,000 in Iran. A kilo of opium was $325, $175, and $600, respectively, in these areas.

Afghan poppy cultivation is a tale of two regions, the narco-terrorists' provinces controlled by the Taliban, and the rest of the country that is significantly more stable and is responding favorably to reconstruction efforts and eradication programs. This trend will continue in 2008. If the five problem provinces are factored out, the other 29 provinces of Afghanistan had a collective 32.4 percent decrease in opium poppy cultivation last year. Twelve provinces are now opium free and eight more are close to eradicating all of their opium.

The anti-opium programs funded by Western governments and supported by reconstruction and humanitarian projects are working and should be continued. The explosion in poppy cultivation is occurring in Taliban dominated provinces. If Western countries seriously want to eradicate this opium, they are going to have to allocate the troops and resources necessary to stabilize and secure these provinces.

Poppy cultivation is much more likely to take place in areas that lack security, as noted by the fact that 85 percent of the villages in southern Afghanistan grow opium, compared to just 1 percent in the central region of the country.

"The vast majority of southern Afghanistan is closed to U.N. operations," said Hakan Demirbuken, who ran the UNODC opium surveys in Afghanistan for several years. "U.N. people are only in the city centers," he added. "They cannot go to the villages. It is very dangerous."

Due to the lack of security, most of the non-governmental organizations shut down their southern operations or they operate only in the major cities. The Taliban have killed staff and aid workers of relief agencies who attempt to travel to rural villages.

"There is obviously a link between instability and opium cultivation," said Jen-Luc Lemahieu, UNODC's chief of Europe, Central Asia, and West Asia. "The linkage between terrorism and opium cultivation is one of agricultural tax as well as protection money in those areas where the Taliban would be a dominating factor."

Poppy cultivation and heroin refineries also strengthen the Taliban's ties with the Afghan population, because so many of them are employed in the drug trade.

NATO troops in Afghanistan, referred to as the International Security Assistance Force, generally avoid any involvement in eradicating opium. Fighting the Taliban is a full-time job and they are concerned that destroying poppy fields will alienate the population, making it more difficult to gain the cooperation necessary to root out insurgents.

The United States wants to implement aerial eradication, which is done by spraying the poppy fields with chemicals. This is one of the most effective methods to destroy opium, but the Afghan government won't allow it for fear that airborne chemicals will drift onto humans and livestock and contaminate the water supply.

It would also antagonize farmers unless alternative sources of income are in place, which is not likely to happen while the Taliban are in control. If opium crops are eradicated, economic desperation will force many farmers to join the primary employer in the region, the Taliban.

Cannabis cultivation is expected to increase again this year, making Afghanistan one of the world's leading suppliers of hashish. Cannabis production in 2007 was 70,000 hectares, a 40 percent increase over the previous year.

Most of the Afghan cannabis is processed into hashish. "In some areas, growing cannabis is as lucrative as growing opium poppy," Pietschmann said, adding, "Cannabis yields about twice the quantity of drugs per hectare as growing opium."

The Taliban and narcotics traffickers are killing Afghanistan. Regardless of what else is accomplished in 29 provinces, the "cancer" in the remaining five will consume and destroy the nation unless it is removed. Security is the single most important factor in eradicating opium. The Taliban must be soundly defeated. In order to achieve this, a significant influx of troops and supplies is needed. Destroying the drug trade will eliminate the Taliban's primary financial source, seriously diminishing their ability to wage a protracted insurgency.

Note: Professor James Emery is an anthropologist and journalist who has reported on regional conflicts and the drug trade for more than 20 years, including five years overseas. He's made several trips into Afghanistan, Myanmar, and other drug-producing and transit countries. Emery lectures on Afghan and Arab culture and the use of applied anthropology in the stabilization of Afghanistan, global terrorism, and the war on drugs.

What Was Dick Cheney Thinking About in 1999?

This transcript can be found at EnergyBulletin.net at http://www.energybulletin.net/559.html.

Full text of Dick Cheney's speech at the

Institute of Petroleum in 1999

"By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?... Oil is unique in that it is so strategic in nature. We are not talking about soap flakes or leisurewear here. Energy is truly fundamental to the world’s economy."

Dick Cheney introduced by the President of the Institute of Petroleum, Mr. Chris Moorhouse:

Thank you.

It's my privilege and honor to welcome all our guests to this, the second Autumn lunch arranged by the Institute of Petroleum. It’s very good to see so many friends, old and new here today. Close to three hundred I’ve been told, so welcome. Guests represent not only a broad cross-section of the UK energy industry, including the major energy companies, contractors, suppliers, consultants, but also representatives from many of the industries associated with the energy business. My own guests include a broad cross-section of the senior representatives of the Institute of Petroleum itself, welcome gentlemen, and I would make special mention of Basil Butler and Larry Farmer who helped to secure today the presence of our principal speaker. The breadth of representation around the room clearly demonstrates a wish to have this kind of opportunity to meet colleagues from the energy industry in such an informal setting, but even more demonstrates a real wish to hear the views of our eminent speaker today. So on behalf of all, I would like to say a very special welcome to Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney is a household name around the world, not only as the Chief Executive Officer of Halliburton, but also from his previous long and distinguished career in US politics. He grew up in Wyoming and was educated at the Universities of Wyoming and Wisconsin and embarked on a career in public service. After appointments to the staff of the Governor of Wisconsin and as a congressional fellow on the staff of a member of the House of Representatives, in 1969 he joined the Nixon administration. He served in a number of positions at the Cost of Living Council, the Office of Economic Opportunity and in The White House, when Gerald Ford took over the presidency in August 1974, Dick Cheney was invited to serve on the transition team and later as Deputy Assistant to the President. In November 1975, he was named Assistant to the President and White House Chief of Staff, a position he held throughout the remainder of the Ford Administration. Returning to his home state of Wyoming in 1977, Dick Cheney was elected to serve as the State’s sole congressman in the US House of Representatives in 1978. He was re-elected five times. At the end of his first term his Republican colleagues elected him to serve as Chairman of the Republican policy committee. He later became Chairman of the Republican Conference and House Minority Whip. As Secretary of Defense from March 1989 to January 1993, Dick Cheney directed two of the largest military campaigns in recent history, Operation Just Cause in Panama and Operation Desert Storm in the Middle East. He was also responsible for shaping the future of the US military in an age of profound and rapid change as the Cold War ended. For his leadership in the Gulf War, Dick Cheney was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George Bush on 3rd July 1991. After leaving the Defense Department in 1993, Dick Cheney served as a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and lectured widely around the country. He currently serves on the Board of Directors at Proctor and Gamble, Union Pacific and EDS. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Southern Methodist University and the American Enterprise Institute. He also serves on the Board of Directors and the Public Policy Committee of the American Petroleum Institute. Not surprisingly, with such a wide-ranging career in politics and now at Halliburton, Dick Cheney has a deep interest in the geo-politics of the energy industry, so we are privileged today to have his unique insight into the energy industry in the new century. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to join me in welcoming Dick Cheney.

Applause.

Dick Cheney: Thank you very much for that welcome and that introduction. I am delighted to be back in London today and have an opportunity to spend some time with all of you. To hear that resume reciting all of my political background and experience, of course oftentimes people say that work in the oil industry isn't really an upper crust kind of organization and I say, Yeah, but I used to be a Congressman and it’s clearly a step up for me to go from the political world to the world of the oil and gas industry. I’m often asked why I left politics and went to Halliburton and I explain that I reached the point where I was mean-spirited, short-tempered and intolerant of those who disagreed with me and they said "Hell, you’d make a great CEO," so I went to Texas and joined the private sector.

But I am delighted to be here and I want to try to avoid, I understand last year when Sheikh Yamani spoke that he was rather pessimistic about the outlook for oil prices and the ability of OPEC to arrive at a price level and maintain it over time and I’m not sure that it’s fair to come back a year later and second-guess and I hope a year from now people won’t do that to me in terms of the forecasts I’m going to make, but I do want to talk about the outlook, certainly from the perspective of Halliburton, how we look at what may occur here in the future and let me say at the outset that I am unreasonably optimistic about our industry.

From the standpoint of the oil industry obviously and I’ll talk a little later on about gas, but obviously for over a hundred years we as an industry have had to deal with the pesky problem that once you find oil and pump it out of the ground you’ve got to turn around and find more or go out of business. Producing oil is obviously a self-depleting activity. Every year you’ve got to find and develop reserves equal to your output just to stand still, just to stay even. This is true for companies as well in the broader economic sense as it is for the world. A new merged company like Exxon-Mobil will have to secure over a billion and a half barrels of new oil equivalent reserves every year just to replace existing production. It’s like making one hundred percent interest discovery in another major field of some five hundred million barrels equivalent every four months or finding two Hibernias a year.

For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?

Governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about ninety percent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow. It is true that technology, privatization and the opening up of a number of countries have created many new opportunities in areas around the world for various oil companies, but looking back to the early 1990s, expectations were that significant amounts of the world’s new resources would come from such areas as the former Soviet Union and from China. Of course that didn’t turn out quite as expected. Instead it turned out to be deep water successes that yielded the bonanza of the 1990s.

A fundamental challenge for companies is to do more than replace reserves and production. The trick obviously is also to replace earnings. For most companies, the majority of their profits come from core areas. That is areas where they have significant investments, economies of scale and large license areas locked up. But many of these core areas are now mature and it can be difficult to replace the earnings from the high-margin barrels there. Some of the oil being developed in new areas is obviously very high cost and low margin.

Companies that are finding it difficult to create new core areas through exploration are turning to production deals where they can develop reserves that are already known, but where the country doesn’t have the capital or the technology to exploit them. In production deals there is less exploration risk, but dealing with above ground political risk and commercial and environmental risk are increasing challenges. These include civil strife, transportation routes, labor issues, fiscal terms, sometimes even US-imposed economic sanctions. Many companies are more comfortable dealing with the below ground risk like drilling and reservoir performance than they are with the above ground political risks. The other major element that it is changing is the nature of competition.

One of the biggest questions is what the competitive field will look like in the new industry after this current wave of consolidation in the oil business. Clearly the main driver behind the biggest mergers are the cost savings that are anticipated as a result of economies of scale.

Concentration and critical mass are clearly keys to success. There are also cases where difficulty in sustaining and growing the companies has led management to offer the firm to a bigger player. In the worldwide competition for capital, there are imperatives for size and scale. Larger companies tend to have the highest credit ratings and therefore the lowest borrowing costs, but they also tend to have higher multiples in the stock market. The share price premium becomes a valuable currency for takeovers. They also have stronger financial staying power to undertake the larger projects and to ride out the lean periods. The result of all this consolidation is that now four out of the five largest oil and gas companies by market value are European.

For oil companies, I do not believe that the "bigger-is-better" model is the only viable one. While Halliburton has certainly grown bigger through its merger with Dresser and other key acquisitions, this made sense in part because it gave our company both a broader array of services and also greater depth in products and services.

For oil companies, I see four basic types of firms that I think will survive and prosper in the new environment. First, we will obviously have the super majors, but they have to be careful to avoid the drag-down of facts and the distractions of physically merging, plus the danger of becoming lumbering giants. I think there is a good chance they will avoid becoming bloated bureaucracies because they are very focused on delivering cost-saving synergies for their shareholders.

The second type of survivor will be those companies that have dominance in a region or a market. These integrated companies may not be in the top five globally, but they will be number one or number two in their respective markets. This gives them the critical mass and concentration to compete and win on their turf. Repsol YPF is an example of this type of company; number one in Iberia and the southern corner of Latin America and very profitable.

A third model for competing in the new century is that of what I would call the super independents. These are firms that focus on one line of business but have sufficient scale to have several core areas of material size where they can go head to head with anyone. These combine the advantages of a super major with the agility of an independent. A common element in these three classes of firms will be critical mass and concentration.

A fourth category of survivor in the new competitive world will be what I call niche players who can prosper off the properties that the bigger firms don’t want or because of the very special circumstances they find. Those in the special players will obviously have to compete somewhat below the radar screen of the more dominant companies.

The immense portfolio restructuring that we think likes ahead in the wake of the recent large mergers should create opportunities for competitors to strengthen their positions. New aggregators are likely to emerge which, together with a lot of the brain drain from staff cuts at the majors, could well provide the bigger companies with unexpectedly strong competition in the decade ahead. In many ways, the traditional role of oil companies is changing. Increasingly, we are seeing international oil and gas companies concentrating on managing investment, financial, commercial and political risk or above-ground risk, while service companies are managing technical, completion and operating risk. Meanwhile, national oil companies are focused on managing their country’s national interest and its resources and in the domestic markets. This is part of the new resource rationalism of the 1990s. NOCs may own the resources, but when it is in the national interest to bring in outsiders to help develop them, they do so. Venezuela obviously is a clear example of what I would define as the new resource nationalism. Some NOCs are still looking outside their own borders, but I expect that in the future the emphasis may well be closer to home.

NOCs can focus on becoming regionally dominant players, leveraging off their strong domestic base to move into neighboring countries. This will occur where there are links and synergies with their home business, not just going global for its own sake. I think Petrobras in Brazil may be an example of this in Latin America.

People ask about the future role for OPEC. Certainly the organization represents companies that have a vast amount of oil reserves and it has held together for over a quarter of a century already. OPEC has shown the ability for crisis management every time oil prices have dropped to single digit levels, but the group may ultimately bring about its own undoing if it shoots for too high a level for oil prices. As observers point out, in the long run, this effectively underwrites higher-cost oil exploration and development around the world all at the same time, limiting demand growth below what it might otherwise be. Nonetheless, I believe most of us in the industry have welcomed the restraint in the leadership shown by OPEC in recent months and the improved outlook for the international oil markets. I know I am pleased with the leadership provided by Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Venezuela and, in the long run, I think the world will be best served, and the consumer best served, as well as producers, by stable prices at reasonable levels.

The oil industry will become more integrated in the new century but not necessarily in the traditional sense of link-ups between producers and refiners. The new integration will bring together new capabilities, skills, technology and risk management to create synergies that add value. From my perspective in the oil service industry, I see an integrated role for us in helping to manage certain technical risk, leaving oil companies to retain control but focus on investment decisions, commercial and political risk and financial risk.

Oil companies probably spend the most and make the lowest returns on the actual development and operation of their assets. It is here in the middle of the opportunity chain where service companies can add the most value on the below ground aspects of the operation. Service companies can assist oil companies in making knowledge based value added decisions and implementing them quickly; through this type of integration oil companies can better leverage their skills and resources to maximize value, focusing on their core competencies. For NOCs, working with service companies can make use of the best technical expertise available world-wide, whilst still retaining control and managing the state’s interest in its own natural resources. Service companies are becoming more integrated themselves oftentimes offering integrated solutions.

Let me say a word or two about the impact of technology in the new century. Clearly technology has revolutionized the oil business in the last decade with rapid advances in data interpretation, reservoir management, enhanced oil recovery, directional drilling and deep water operations and the pace of advancement is accelerating. The oil industry is saddled with this image problem as a polluting manufacturing industry when in reality it has become a knowledge based business. The application of technology and information processing is remarkable. Our success as a company and as an industry will depend even more heavily in the future on our ability to develop and deploy new technology.

Let me say a word, if I can, about natural gas because we think there will be tremendous growth occurring in this area in the years ahead. In terms of the North American natural gas market, we are consciously bullish over the next five years and beyond. The demand side has plenty of upside and gas is likely to grab a greater share of US energy consumption in the decade ahead. Virtually all new US power plants are likely to be gas fired and residential penetration is growing fast as well. On the supply side, onshore gas outputs should be weaker and this means that the demand gap will need to be met by perhaps double-digit growth rates and Canadian imports and various significant increases in production out of the Gulf of Mexico. The industry will need to get busy bringing on new production facilities and pipelines systems to meet these needs. Deep water gas, obviously, will have a very important role to play.

There are a number of factors which we believe will drive the growing role for gas on a global basis. The environment, obviously, will be a key driver in the natural gas business in the new century as there is increasing opposition to so called ‘dirty fuels’ like coal and high sulfur fuel oil. Gas is the preferred fuel for power generation. There are continuing technological innovations in gas for power generation, combined psycho plants, greatly increased output efficiency. Gas to liquids is in the threshold of commercial success. There is growing demand in emerging markets like China, India and Brazil. For international oil and gas companies, gas is increasingly a key element of the E and P portfolios--oil becomes more difficult to replace while gas reserves and production will grow. Another reason natural gas will have a huge role in the next century is that the world’s gas resources are obviously vast.

The Middle East and Africa have over one hundred year’s supply of gas reserves at current low usage levels and the former Soviet Union and Latin America have gas reserve to production ratios which should last over seventy years. Even estimates of proved gas reserves understate the volumes involved, since there is plenty of gas still to be found and many existing discoveries have not been booked, usually due to the difficulty of getting gas to market. As companies find more gas, they need to find ways to monitize the remote fields, developing stranded gas often entails new risk involved in building a new market to use the gas. The three main options for moving this gas to market are pipelines, liquefied natural gas and now gas to liquids.

The world will get more and more connected with gas pipelines in the new century as high strength steel and automated equipment allow pipelines to become economical over long distances. In LNG new markets will fundamentally alter the nature of the business. The days of the twenty year take or pay contracts and top drawer buyer credit ratings like Tokyo Electric are over. New buyers will be local power generators in places like India and Turkey. Credit worthiness of new buyers, contracts lengths and base floor prices will be under pressure, introducing new risk. New structures will be needed to share the risk in building the new markets amongst all the participants: producers, consumers, governments and project managers. The long waiting list of green field and LNG expansion projects may signal market limitations for LNG, problems for putting together new projects are due in part to economic slow down in Asia. LNG producers are facing greater competition and lower returns and they may need to look at investing down the gas chain and re-gasification and power as well.

Long term, there are innovations on the way such as power generation synergies with re-gasification, cost reductions and smaller scale projects that could permit floating LNG terminals. An alternative to LNG as a means of monitizing gas reserves is gas to liquids, or GTL which serves a completely different market. This is a well established process for turning low value gas into high value, ultra clean, refined products that are easily transportable meeting the coming demand for green fuels. With a huge world market for refined products, gas to liquids is much more flexible than pipeline or LNG projects which require rigid contracts and off-take commitments. GTL products can be exported inexpensively on product tankers and distributed through existing infrastructures. The appeal of gas to liquids is that there is no exploration risk as with oil, no market risk as there is when trying to open up new areas to gas.

The remaining hurdle has been the economics, but while the conventional wisdom is that gas to liquids viability is still a way off, there are commercial projects on the way right now that have attractive rates of return with the right tax incentives and when viewed as part of a larger strategy. For example, Chevron and Sasol’s plant, Escravos GTL plant in Nigeria is the enabler that permits things such as more gas processing with associated liquids productions, lubes and an ethylene plant. The project, together with Shell’s rebuilding of the MDS plant in Bintulu Malaysia, and projects in Cutter and elsewhere show that GTL’s time is finally arriving. The viability of gas to liquids will be further enhanced through incremental improvements and radical technology breakthroughs in areas such as process, catalyst and reactor technology leading to lower costs, increased efficiency and greater scale and this could herald a revolutionary new era for the international gas industry. Companies are looking at all the sectors: gas transmission, gas distribution, gas trading, power generation, electric utilities, even electricity trading. Some think the opportunities are in owning the infrastructure, while others see the preferred role in the merchant banking function in the energy business, especially trading and providing financial instruments. Still, others think the key is in having the customers and cross selling services. In some instances, gas and electric utilities facing the loss of monopoly positions want to diversify into higher growth, unregulated businesses like oil and gas.

For the other side, oil and gas companies may seek the earnings stability of an utility business that can broaden or integrate their business. These new businesses could cushion the earnings volatility of the petroleum side of the business, for example one of the companies whose earnings held up the best in 1998 during the oil price downturn was Repsol due to its stable income from Gas Natural. In any event, gas and power will be of growing importance in the portfolios of many energy companies with new forms of integration and this has the potential to expose companies to new and unfamiliar risk.

Firms have a lot to learn about electricity price risk and spark spreads. In addition to new risk there will be new competition. Major players may include names likes CMS, AES, Duke Energy, Reliant, Dominion Resources etc. In the minds of many, the energy business is becoming a commodity business whether it’s oil or gas or kilowatts. I think that in many ways it is also a service industry and in any event, on the product side, one has to concede that these are nonetheless unique commodities.

Oil is unique in that it is so strategic in nature. We are not talking about soap flakes or leisurewear here. Energy is truly fundamental to the world’s economy. The Gulf War was a reflection of that reality. The degree of government involvement also makes oil a unique commodity. This is true in both the overwhelming control of oil resources by national oil companies and governments as well as in the consuming nations where oil products are heavily taxed and regulated.

Essentially, the petroleum industry deals with extreme risk and with billions of dollars on the line. Oil is produced in distant lands as a result of huge risk and enormous capital outlays, it is transported over vast distances, refined in expensive refineries with very heavy outlays required to protect the environment and to comply with strict and expensive regulations, distributed through a wide network of pipelines, trucks and wholesale outlets and sold at stations in prime locations and taxed heavily.

It is the basic, fundamental building block of the world’s economy. It is unlike any other commodity.

The oil and gas industry provides essential goods at the lowest possible cost with regular reliability while still ensuring a cleaner environment and the industry provides security of supply even though at the same time we are required to manage huge political risk.

What we do isn’t always appreciated by the public and this is part of our industry’s image problem that we need to work on in the next century.

Frankly the focus in today’s economy on globalization and emerging markets is old news to the oil industry. Ours are global companies investing outside the industrialized companies at the turn of the last century. People need to realize that the energy industry often represents the largest foreign investment in many parts of the world and its interest, insights and experience need to be considered.

Oil is the only large industry whose leverage has not been all that effective in the political arena. Textiles, electronics, agriculture all seem oftentimes to be more influential. Our constituency is not only oilmen from Louisiana and Texas, but software writers in Massachusetts and specially steel producers in Pennsylvania. I am struck that this industry is so strong technically and financially yet not as politically successful or influential as are often smaller industries. We need to earn credibility to have our views heard.

Another concern is the disruptive volatility of the industry. In the new century the oil business needs to learn how to break out of the boom and bust cycles we have experienced over the last century. Perhaps it is part of being a commodity business, but it wreaks havoc with planning processes and can drive smaller companies out of business and, needless to say, creates problems for consumers as well.

One hope might be that the new super majors would use their financial staying power to keep capital spending steady throughout the cycle or even to invest counter-cyclically. This would help smooth out the bumps and of course the financial community could do its part by taking a longer view of financial performance and not pressuring sound companies to cut back during periods of weakness, however unlikely. Technology can help smooth out the cycles by lowering costs. A key challenge for companies in the commodity business is growth and there are basically only two avenues to grow earnings: one is through increasing volume and the other is through improved unit efficiencies. These two options have been driving company strategies.

On the volume side we can see the aggressive production targets that some companies have announced of late. On the unit efficiency side we have the cost cutting targets most firms announced for 1999 and beyond, as well as the mergers designed to generate savings through synergies, economies of scale and reduction in overheads. The view is that in the commodity business the lowest cost producer will be the winner.

In the last century and up to World War Two, coal was king and looks to have a lock as the primary source of energy. It was dethroned by oil, mostly due to transportation fuels, but also because oil was less polluting and easier to handle. Coal is still with us today, but oil is clearly dominant. In the new century, will the oil age give way to another source of energy or to new technologies? Some predict natural gas will erode oil’s performance, others say that technology, fuel cells, telecommuting on the Internet or some other breakthrough will lessen our dependence on hydrocarbons.

Well, the end of the oil era is not here yet, but changes are afoot and the industry must be ready to adapt to the new century and to the transformations that lie ahead. It will mean showing more speed and agility. As I have outlined today, there are new areas to co-operate in, new risk, new competition, new roles, new integration and a new convergence with power. This will be a challenging environment as we cross the threshold into the new millennium.

You don’t hear our times referred to as the Space Age anymore, instead it’s the Information Age. You will notice they call it the Information Age, not the Knowledge Age. Well, I would conclude today by saying that this industry must be at the forefront of moving into the Knowledge Age. Successful competitors will be those that best manage knowledge. This means technology, expertise, best practices, country, market and competitor intelligence and opportunity assessment. These will be the hallmarks of the energy industry in the new century. I for one am proud to be a part of the industry and I am optimistic about our future in the coming century.

Thank you.

Applause.

Chris Moorhouse: Ladies and Gentlemen I would just like to conclude today by giving a vote of thanks to Dick Cheney for coming to speak to us today. I think it’s been a marvelously inspiring speech. I picked up a couple of things: what we do isn’t always appreciated by the public - I definitely feel that from time to time - and that we are the only large industry which has not been politically influential. Finally, as far as the Institute of Petroleum is concerned, I picked up on the remark that the industry must be ready to change and I would add to that its institutions too. So thank you very much and thanks once again to Dick Cheney.

Applause.

Stabilizing Iraq from the Bottom Up

Earlier this month, Dr. Stephen Biddle, a Senior Fellow for Defense Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, met before the United States Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations to testify on the topic of “Stabilizing Iraq from the Bottom Up.”

Dr. Biddle has provided us with a transcript of his testimony, which paints a vivid picture of the complex, and somewhat surprising, situation in Iraq today.

As Biddle states: "This is not what the Administration had in mind when it invaded Iraq." Whoever occupies the White House next inherits one of the great challenges of our time.

Here is an excerpt of Dr. Biddle’s speech to the Senate:

“What will happen to Iraq as the recent surge in US troop strength subsides? Violence fell in late 2007; will this trend continue, or was this merely a temporary lull created by an unsustainable US troop presence? The last week saw a major spike in fighting as the Maliki government launched an offensive against militia fighters in Basra; is this a harbinger of future violence? And what do the answers imply for the US posture in Iraq? Should we extend the ongoing troop reductions? Or should these be slowed or even reversed?

In fact the violence reduction was more than just a temporary lull. It reflected a systematic shift in the underlying strategic landscape of Iraq, and could offer the basis for sustainable stability if we respond appropriately.

But this will not yield Eden on the Euphrates. A stabilized Iraq is likely to look more like Bosnia or Kosovo than Germany or Japan. And like Bosnia and Kosovo, a substantial outside presence will be needed for many years to keep such a peace. If US withdrawals leave us unable to provide the needed outside presence, the result could be a rapid return to 2006-scale violence or worse. Nor can we afford to hold out for a less Balkanized Iraq that could control its own territory without us in the near term: pushing too hard too soon for the ideal of a strong, internally unified Iraqi state can easily undermine the prospects for a lesser but more achievable goal of stability per se.

This is because the violence reduction of 2007 was obtained from the bottom up, not from the top down. Instead of a national political deal, the military defeat or disarmament of the enemy, or their conversion into peaceful politicians in a reconciled, pluralist society, violence fell because most of the former combatants reached separate, local, voluntary decisions to stop fighting even though they retained their arms, their organizations, their leaders, and often their ambitions. These decisions were not accidental or ephemeral – they reflected the post-2006 strategic reality of Iraq, which for the first time gave all the major combatants a powerful self-interest in ceasefire rather than combat. This new self-interest in ceasefire creates an important opportunity for stability. But the decentralized, voluntary nature of these ceasefires means that peace would be fragile and would need careful and persistent US management to keep it from collapsing, especially early on. The required US presence would change from war fighting into peacekeeping, and US casualties would fall accordingly. But a continued presence by a substantial outside force would be essential for many years to keep a patchwork quilt of wary former enemies from turning on one another – if we try to exploit the violence reduction to take a peace dividend by bringing American troops home too quickly, the ceasefire deals we have reached would likely collapse. And if we try to replace this patchwork quilt of local ceasefire deals with a strong central government that could monopolize violence in Iraq and allow us to leave, the result is much more likely to be the collapse of today’s ceasefires without any effective central government to put in their place.

This is not what the Administration had in mind when it invaded Iraq. Reasonable people could judge the costs too high and the risks too great. But an Iraq stabilized from the bottom up in this way nevertheless offers a meaningful chance to stop the fighting, to save the lives of untold thousands of innocent Iraqis who would otherwise die brutal, violent deaths, and to secure America’s remaining vital strategic interest in this conflict: that it not spread to engulf the entire Middle East in a regionwide war. No options for Iraq are attractive. But given the alternatives, stabilization from the bottom up may be the least bad option for US policy in 2008."

- From a statement by Dr. Stephen Biddle, Senior Fellow for Defense Policy, Council on Foreign Relations before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, Second Session, 110th Congress.

U.N. Will Investigate Bhutto Assassination

Benazir Bhutto in the minutes before her death.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) -- Pakistan's National Assembly unanimously adopted a resolution Monday calling for a United Nations probe into the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

The move is not surprising given that Pakistan's new government and parliament is dominated by a coalition led by Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party.

Party members and Bhutto's family have repeatedly called for such an investigation since she was killed December 27 after a campaign rally in Rawalpindi, south of the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

Until now, President Pervez Musharraf has balked at calls for a United Nations inquiry. His government -- before it was ousted from power after parliamentary elections in February -- had contended that the killing was orchestrated by Baitullah Mehsud, who as leader of the Pakistani Taliban has ties to al Qaeda.

The CIA reached the same conclusion. But two nationwide polls conducted this year found that a majority of Pakistanis believe Musharraf's government was complicit in Bhutto's assassination.

The cause of Bhutto's death is not clear. Her family has refused to carry out an autopsy.

From CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/04/15/bhutto.uniquiry/index.html?iref=newssearch

( (( ((( al-Q in Pakistan ))) )) )

A Pakistani soldier in North Waziristan, on the Afghan border. Al-Qaeda is thought to be using the region as a base for global terror operations. – Photo and caption from the New York Times

In December 2007, shortly after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, The Brookings Institute, a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC, published an interview with Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy. Conducted by Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor of CFR.org (Council on Foreign Relations), Riedel makes it clear that, in his mind, al-Qaeda was behind Bhutto’s killing in the streets of Pakistan. While not a stunning revelation, it raises further questions as to al-Qaeda’s potential sympathizers already established inside Pakistani’s leadership structure.

Q: Let’s start with an obvious question. In the aftermath of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, who do you think was responsible?

BRUCE RIEDEL: It was almost certainly the work of al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda’s Pakistani allies. Al-Qaeda has been trying to kill Ms. Bhutto for decades. She has been the target of assassination attempts by al-Qaeda before. They were most likely responsible for the attack on her when she first returned to Pakistan. Their objective is to destabilize the Pakistani state, to break up the secular political parties, to break up the army so that Pakistan becomes a politically failing state in which the Islamists in time can come to power, much as they have in other failing states where al-Qaeda knows its chances for success are higher.

Riedel later goes on to say: “I am sure that conspiracy theories about that will abound in Pakistan. [Bhutto] was widely disliked in the intelligence apparatus, but it was more likely the work of al-Qaeda and its cohorts. Now it is certainly possible that they had penetrated and had sympathizers within the Pakistani security apparatus and had advance knowledge of her movements. It is clear from the al-Qaeda attacks in the past, including on President Musharraf, that al-Qaeda has sympathizers at the highest levels of security, and intelligence which provided information on his movements in the past which facilitated the efforts to kill him.”

He also states: “The only way that Pakistan is going to be able to fight terrorism effectively is to have a legitimate, democratically-elected, secular government that can rally the Pakistani people to engage al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremist movements.”

Source: http://www.brookings.edu/about.aspx

Pakistani Bombings: An Overview

"The United States has escalated its unilateral strikes against al-Qaeda members and fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas, partly because of anxieties that Pakistan's new leaders will insist on scaling back military operations in that country, according to U.S. officials." - From an article by By Robin Wright and Joby Warrick of the Washington Post. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/03/27/ST2008032700935.html?sid=ST2008032700935

Recent Predator Attacks:



























"Recent Documented Predator Strikes: Precision attacks against small clusters of Islamic militants were believed to have been carried out by CIA-operated MQ-1B drones, the pilotless, camera-equipped aircraft armed with 100-pound Hellfire missiles." - The Washington Post














Image Sources: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/03/27/GR2008032700658.html?sid=ST2008032700935 and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2008/03/27/GR2008032700641.html?sid=ST2008032700935

In Search of Al Qaeda: U.S. Bombing Pakistani Border

From Newsweek: http://www.newsweek.com/id/128617

By Mark Hosenball, Zahid Hussain and Ron Moreau NEWSWEEK
Mar 31, 2008 Issue Updated: 12:41 p.m. ET Mar 22, 2008

"The United States has stepped up its use of pilotless planes to strike at Qaeda targets along Pakistan's rugged border area, a measure that in the past drew protests from President Pervez Musharraf but now has his government's tacit approval. Since January, missiles reportedly fired from CIA operated Predator drones have hit at least three suspected hideouts of Islamic militants, including a strike last Sunday on a house in a South Waziristan village called Toog.

The surge began after visits to Pakistan at the beginning of the year by senior U.S. officials, including intelligence czar Mike McConnell, CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden and Adm. William Fallon, who recently resigned as commander of the U.S. forces in the region. Some news reports said at the time that Musharraf had "rebuffed" U.S. proposals to step up combat operations inside Pakistan. But U.S. officials and Pakistani sources, who asked for anonymity discussing sensitive information, said the recent wave of Predator attacks are at least partly the result of understandings the high-level visitors reached with Musharraf and other top Pakistanis, giving the United States virtually unrestricted authority to hit targets in the border areas.

One former official said that the United States has been relying on its own intel to uncover terror targets because Pakistani intelligence agencies are weak on espionage in the tribal areas. By contrast, U.S. forces have a heavy presence on the Afghan side of the border. Bruce Riedel, a retired CIA expert on the region, said that a new wave of terrorism inside Pakistan—there were 62 suicide attacks last year, after just six in 2006—has forced Musharraf and the new military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, to acknowledge that the same extremists threatening Americans now also pose a growing threat to Pakistan's internal security. Another reason for the rise in Predator strikes, according to a current U.S. official: Washington fears that any newly formed civilian government in Pakistan will be more hostile to U.S. operations there than Musharraf's current regime. Time to act, in other words, may be running out.

At least one top Qaeda operative has been killed in the Predator strikes. After a missile hit a home in North Waziristan in late January, reportedly killing 10 militants, U.S. officials confirmed that among the dead was Abu Laith al-Libi, a top field commander who was believed to be a liaison between Qaeda's fugitive leaders and Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. The CIA declined to confirm or comment on any of the reported attacks, but three current and former U.S. officials, who also asked for anonymity, said that the one-per-month strike rate is definitely higher than in previous years."

Iraq Death Count

As of 4/13/08:

Sourced from: http://icasualties.org/oif/ and http://www.iraqbodycount.org/:

Iraqi Coalition Forces casualty count:
US troops: 4,036 dead
UK troops: 176 dead
Other troops: 133
TOTAL: 4345
Days: 1,853
Avg. deaths per day: 2.34


















Deaths per day from vehicle bombs:
2003: 0.9
2007: 14

Deaths per day from gunfire/executions:
2003: 15
2007: 39

US troops injured in Iraq:
Official: 29,628
Estimated: 23,000-100,000

Documented Iraqi civilian death count:
Estimates range from 82,771 – 90,304

- - - from the wilderness - - -

From The Wilderness (http://fromthewilderness.com/index.html) stands as one of the more fascinating sites on the web.

As it states, FTW "has been as much as a year ahead of the mainstream media on major stories. Now, as the world is undergoing one of the biggest changes in human history we find that attitudes and positions we have been writing about for five years--like the dependence of the global economy and financial markets on laundered drug money--are finding their way into mainstream press reports and academic circles. The events since September 11, 2001, have shown that FTW has been ahead of the curve in predicting the current crisis."

FTW is run by Mike Ruppert, the author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, one of the three best-selling books globally and in the US about the attacks of 9/11.

A 1973 Honors Graduate from UCLA, Ruppert is a former LAPD narcotics investigator and whistleblower who was "forced out of the LAPD in 1978 while earning the highest rating reports possible and having no pending disciplinary actions.

In 1996, after 18 years of struggle, he engaged in a face-to-face public encounter with then CIA Director John Deutch on national television [regarding the CIA trading drugs in order to fund covert operations in the Middle East]. Washington sources later told Ruppert that Deutch's mishandling of the encounter cost him a guaranteed appointment as Secretary of Defense."

RUPPERT'S 2008 UPDATE HERE: http://fromthewilderness.com/retrospective2008.shtml

In February 2006, Ruppert and writer-turned-activist Jenna Orkin launched "Act 2: From the Wilderness' Peak Oil Blog" at http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/. Orkin's nearly daily posts go where our mainstream does not. Both "From the Wilderness" and "Act 2" are worth investigating -- especially FTW's archives going back to before 9/11.