I'm not sure if there is anything to this or not, but here goes.
http://www.omegaletter.com/articles.asp?ArticleID=1635 'Why America Slept' and the Price of Gas in Phoenix
Commentary on the News
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Jack Kinsella - Omega Letter Editor
The price of gasoline at the pump over the Labor Day weekend broke all historical records at a time when, for the first time in a dozen years, the oil spigots in Iraq are wide-open. At first, the blame was placed on the Blackout of '03, which shut down refineries in the affected areas, creating a temporary shortage in the West, where cities like Phoenix were seeing prices approaching three dollars a gallon.
But that didn't make sense. Then attention was turned to the oil companies themselves, who many consumers assumed was gouging them. But that didn't make sense either. Oil companies would love to stick it to the consumer, but if they didn't have a good excuse, the Congress would be all over them like white on rice. And they don't.
It turns out that the culprit for the high gas prices are our old friends and allies, the Saudis. The US has been putting a lot of pressure on the Saudis to cut funding to terrorists, allow US inspection of Islamic charities, freeze bank accounts and reign in the Wahabbi clerics who regularly call for continuing the jihad against America.
The Saudis have decided to apply a little leverage to the Bush administration, knowing that the last thing the administration can afford is an economic downturn in an election year. So they've cut oil production, creating an artificial shortage.
Despite the allegedly close Bush family ties to Saudi Arabia, the Saudi royals don’t seem to like Dubya very much and would prefer to see a new administration it can work with as well as it did during the Clinton years.
According to a new book just out by author Tom Miniter, the US ‘missed’ getting bin-Laden at least a dozen times during the 1990’s. Miniter says that the Clinton administration allowed the September 11 attacks to happen by not trying to capture or kill bin Laden.
In two cases the terrorist leader's exact location was known. Clinton’s focus was on getting re-elected. He knew if he went after bin-Laden, it would open a whole can of worms with the Saudis. Clinton was running on the strength of the economy, and feared a Saudi oil embargo for the same reason Bush does.
The one time Clinton did put pressure on the Saudis, a Saudi production slowdown resulted in the Clinton administration releasing a part of the US strategic oil reserve to keep prices low.
Following the strike on the USS Cole, Clinton's counter-terrorism chief, Richard Clarke, urged an immediate strike on al-Qa'eda camps and Taliban buildings in Kabul and Kandahar. Such a strike would destroy terrorist infrastructure and with luck might kill bin Laden, Clarke said.
Janet Reno opined that an attack would break international law. Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state, is quoted as saying that "bombing Muslims wouldn't be helpful at this time".
Secretary of Defense William Cohen said the attack on the USS Cole was "was not sufficiently provocative" to justify retaliation.
And, there was the possibility of another Saudi oil slowdown to consider. Even after Clinton had secured four more years in the White House, he needed all the public goodwill he could muster to see him through impeachment. An economic downturn at the wrong time could make him the first president in history to get officially booted from office.
Coincidentally, another author, Gerald Posner, has just released a new book that claims the Saudis and Pakistanis knew of the September 11 attacks in advance.
Abu Zubaydah, captured last year in Pakistan, told U.S. interrogators that high-ranking Pakistani air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir had agreed to provide Al Qaeda with protection, arms and supplies, Gerald Posner wrote in his new book “Why America Slept.”
Posner made his reputation debunking conspiracy theories and is the author of "Case Closed" and "Killing the Dream," two books that discredited conspiracy theories surrounding the deaths of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy.
Lending credibility to Posner’s allegations is the fact the Pakistani military announced it has four other senior military officers under investigation. The investigation is a consequence of Posner’s book, and not the fact the US passed on the information from al Zubaydah to the Pakistani authorities.
According to Posner, when the US shared its information with Pakistan, Pakistani Air Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir -- named by al Zubaydah -- suffered a tragic air crash, together with his top aides and his entire family. Zubaydah said Ali Mir, together with Saudi Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz and two other Saudi royals, "knew that an attack was scheduled for American soil" on Sept. 11, 2001.
Prince Ahmed, 43, died of a heart attack on July 22, 2002. The next day, a car crash killed Saudi Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, 41. A week later, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, 25, reportedly died "of thirst" while traveling east of Riyadh.
Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2002, was duped by U.S. interrogators masquerading as Saudis and using painkillers and sodium pentathol, sometimes called "truth serum," to befuddle him into divulging secrets, Posner says. Zubaydah, he writes, thought he was in a Saudi prison, when in fact he was in Afghanistan.
Posner says Zubaydah was “relieved” to find himself in Saudi custody, and gave what he thought were his Saudi interrogators a phone number to call that would ‘straighten everything out.’ The phone number was that of Prince Ahmed, nephew to King Fahd and a future heart attack victim at age 43.
It appears the Saudis didn’t want their guys questioned anymore than the Paks wanted anyone talking to Ali Mir.
Let’s connect the dots, shall we?
The Bush administration ordered 28 pages of the Congressional 9/11 report blacked out before it was released, citing reasons of ‘national security’. The information is beginning to leak out anyway.
The price of gasoline has skyrocketed just at a time when the presidential election season is kicking off in earnest and the US economy is beginning to show signs of recovery.
The Democrats have been desperate to make the economy their campaign issue, and the Bush administration is extremely sensitive to anything that might stall the recovery, or worse, reverse it.
Despite the reputed close ties between the Bush family and the Saudis, the Saudis didn’t seem to show much fondness for either Bush administration. The first Bush administration lost the election when a slowdown in the oil economy following Gulf War I created a short recession just as Clinton and Bush were squaring off for the 1992 Election. Exactly the same scenario is being repeated now, just as the presidential primary season is getting underway.
And the frontrunning candidate is ultra-liberal anti-war Dr. Howard Dean of Vermont.
The politics of oil handed the White House to Bill Clinton in 1992. Clinton ignored bin-Laden – one might even say he avoided him – to keep the Saudis from unseating him the way they did Bush Sr.
While Clinton was distracted by campaigns, damage control from his many scandals, and ultimately fighting off impeachment efforts, Osama bin-Laden was free to develop al-Qaeda’s network and plan the attacks on New York and Washington.
The politics of oil apparently prompted the second Bush administration to redact the 9/11 report. Not to protect the Saudis. To protect the economy. Bush remembers what happened to his father's re-election hopes in 1992.
If true, there's a good chance Howard Dean just got handed the keys to the White House in 2004. The Saudis will continue to dictate terms to the Oval Office, just like the good old days under Clinton.
And al-Qaeda gets another timeout to regroup.
It’s a mess.
The Omega
I read your page...you should really try to have an original thought...not just quote others.
You got me. (WHO's KARL?)
Why don't you explain why oil prices have falling as much as they have, yet I see only about a $.05 drop in gas prices?
Even now after the "travel season" is done.
Prices are still up because the price drop at the upstream hasn't caught up with the downstream end yet, plus there is high demand.
The oil comapnies don't get government subsidies. Most of you guys sound like Leftists when you talk about oil companies, and you're just as wrong about them as the Lefties are.