Paul Krugman, The New York Times, September 14, 2007
To understand what’s really happening in Iraq, follow the oil money, which already knows that the surge has failed.
Back in January, announcing his plan to send more troops to Iraq, President Bush declared that “America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.”
Near the top of his list was the promise that “to give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country’s economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.”
There was a reason he placed such importance on oil: oil is pretty much the only thing Iraq has going for it. Two-thirds of Iraq’s G.D.P. and almost all its government revenue come from the oil sector. Without an agreed system for sharing oil revenues, there is no Iraq, just a collection of armed gangs fighting for control of resources.
Well, the legislation Mr. Bush promised never materialized, and on Wednesday attempts to arrive at a compromise oil law collapsed.
What’s particularly revealing is the cause of the breakdown. Last month the provincial government in Kurdistan, defying the central government, passed its own oil law; last week a Kurdish Web site announced that the provincial government had signed a production-sharing deal with the Hunt Oil Company of Dallas, and that seems to have been the last straw.
Now here’s the thing: Ray L. Hunt, the chief executive and president of Hunt Oil, is a close political ally of Mr. Bush. More than that, Mr. Hunt is a member of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a key oversight body.
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Three Reasons Why It’s Time for the Democrats to Woo the Religious Right
Although the religious right has long been the most reliable block of votes for the Republican party, I think that it is time for the Democrats to take another look at this group of potential supporters. Here’s why:
1. Republican gay sex scandals are now a common occurance. One of the tenets most sacred to the religious right is that of homosexuality being wrong. Since the very people that these voters have elected (believing that the politicians agreed on this sacred docrine) are the ones who are now attempting gay sex with underage pages and random men in public restrooms, they may begin to realize that these men will say ANYTHING to get elected and begin to doubt the wisdom of supporting a party of these liars.
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