Regarding a point you raise in your post on the other thread about Mary McCarthy:
Did you read Fedora's essay on Joe Wilson?
Makes me think that Clinton and crowd were positioning themselves to swoop into Africa and make their fortunes on African raw materials, including and especially oil.
Let the Bushes have the House of Saud! They have the House of All of Friggin Afica, and who knows about Venezuela. They would be the middle men (big $$$) for China's growing thirst, too. This may not be just philosophical preferences for Marxism over Capitalism... it could be plain old greed.
Wonder if they're playing the Marxist 'true beleivers' for fools...
I think that's on the right track. I'd add that in addition to Africa other emerging oil markets were attracting Clinton and others (including various Western oil companies and the Saudis) at that time--notably in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union and adjacent regions, especially in the Caucasus and Caspian area, which is relevant to Wilson's ATC involvement mentioned above:
Scowcroft has lobbied for Pennzoil in relation to a project of interest to the ATC involving the Azerbaijan International Operating Company (AIOC), a consortium of oil companies seeking to develop $8 billion of Caspian oil fields in the region north of Iraq near Turkey. Scowcroft has recently chaired the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) U.S. Middle East Project, directed by Palestinian advocate Henry Siegman, with Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Sultan serving as Honorary Chair.
I posted some additional details of interest here:
What Wilson Didn’t Say About Africa: Joseph Wilson's Silent Partners
Meanwhile, as Turkey competed for EU membership, Saddam Hussein’s regime had been bribing Turkish oil companies through the Oil-for-Food Program, and in December 2001 had awarded a drilling contract to one of these companies, the Turkish state oil company Turkish Petroleum International Company (TPIC), a subsidiary of the Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO).22 Also at this time the Alamoudi-affiliated company Delta Oil was involved in several oil development projects in Turkey and the surrounding region, including a joint project with TotalFinaElf and Turkish Petroleum and other companies to build a major oil pipeline, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) Pipeline, from Turkey through Georgia to Azerbaijan.23
While Wilson was pursuing his foreign investment ventures, he also served as a foreign policy advisor to the 2000 Presidential campaign of Al Gore. A company the Gore family had a long-term relationship with, Occidental Petroleum, shared business interests with Alamoudi-affiliated companies in Africa and the Middle East, and employed as Vice President for Middle East business Odeh Aburdene,24 who shared a complex network of relationships with Rock Creek’s Elias Aburdene and Joseph Wilson--notably, all three contributed to Arab-American Congressional Caucus leader Nick Rahall,25 who supported Muslim lobbying groups linked to terrorists and opposed military action in Iraq.26 Abdurahman Alamoudi also contributed to Rahall, and sat on the steering committee of Arab Americans for Clinton/Gore '96 along with his associate James Zogby, who later advised Gore’s 2000 Presidential campaign.27 Wilson had worked as an aide to Gore from 1985 to 1986 and had developed a friendly relationship with him. Wilson says Gore was the first person outside the State Department to contact him expressing support when he was caught in Iraq in the middle of the diplomatic crisis leading up to the Gulf War. In 1997 Gore recommended Wilson to President Clinton to help him plan a trip to Africa. When Wilson began publicly opposing Bush’s Iraq policy in 2002, Gore was still considered a potential candidate in the 2004 election. Gore’s speeches were then being sponsored by the antiwar group Moveon.org, which Wilson would support in September 2003 in an attempt to petition Congress against appropriating funds for Iraq operations.28 Moveon.org was financed by billionaire George Soros,29 who had business interests encompassing, among other things, the BTC Pipeline that Mohammed Alamoudi’s Delta Oil was helping build.30
SNIP
Meanwhile, in June 2002 Wilson joined forces with the Alliance for American Leadership, an antiwar-oriented, Democrat-dominated foreign policy group headed by Clinton’s former ambassador to Morocco Marc Ginsberg. While serving as ambassador, Ginsberg had coordinated new US trade and investment initiatives in the Middle East--including the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) Investment Fund, which had a Turkey-Azerbaijan project under the funding control of the Soros Private Fund Management--and now as a private citizen he consulted for companies doing business in the Middle East.
I think what we see here is that the expansion into African oil during the Clinton administration involved some of the same parties with an interest in these other oil ventures in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East, and one of these parties was Soros via OPIC (though per his MO he took steps to keep a legal buffer between himself and the ventures funded by his namesake--that's how he operates). Al Gore's ties to Armand Hammer and Occidental Petroleum alluded to above are also good to keep in mind. Gore figured into the Clinton administration's dealings with the Russian oil oligarchs.
This being the same Ambassador Marc Ginsberg who is often interviewed by Brit Hume for a sane perspective on Middle East and Arab issues.
Thanks for repeating those sections. That's what got me thinking that this sometimes looks like a giant game of Risk, with the Bushes, the Clintons (and/or their Chinese and African keepers), and the Kennedy/Kerry factions all wheeling and dealing and we are, literally, pawns and commodities.
My head is reeling again. :-/
Pinz