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U.S. Ambassador to Iraq trades womens' rights for oil rights
To me, Zalmay Khalilzad is more a representative of Big Oil than he is of the American people. And as such, it seems that he will make any deal with the Iraqi pawns who are drafting their American-approved constitution as long as Big Oil will be able to come in and grab the oil in the privitazation frenzy now underway in Iraq. So it shouldn't be a surprise if we see an Islamic theocracy of some sort evolve in Iraq. All the Bush gang cares about is the oil, and when it comes to Big Oil, Zalmay Khalilzad is a man who knows that game from the inside.

Here are a few highlights of his career: Before being nominated in late 2003 to be the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Khalilzad served as President Bush's envoy to Iraq and Afghanistan and oversaw the Bush-Cheney Defense Department transition team. He worked closely with Paul Wolfowitz in the Bush Sr. and Reagan administrations, and has collaborated with the Project for the New American Century [allegedly one of its founders] on its lobbying efforts. . . . Khalilzad's close connections to Islamic extremists in South Asia and to the oil giant Unocal have been the subject of sharp criticism. As Truthout opined in a 2001 piece, "Simply put, Khalilzad's appointment means oil. Oil for the United States. Oil for Unocal, a U.S. company long criticized for doing business in countries with repressive governments and rumored to have close ties to the Department of State and the intelligence community. Zalmay Khalilzad was an adviser for Unocal. . . . Khalilzad conducted risk analyses for Unocal at the time it had signed letters of approval from the Taliban. The analyses were for a proposed 890-mile, $2-billion, 1.9-billion-cubic-feet-per-day natural gas pipeline project which would have extended from Turkmenistan to Pakistan. In December 1997, Khalilzad joined Unocal officials at a reception for an invited Taliban delegation to Texas." . . . "Khalilzad's critics point out that Zalmay, who gave a speech upon his arrival in Kabul condemning the Taliban, had at one time, as a paid adviser to oil multinational Unocal, courted and defended them. Indeed, Khalilzad has changed his tune so often that one analyst with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, Anatol Lieven, said, 'If he was in private business rather than government, he would have been sacked long ago.'" . . . Afghans, including opponents in the [Karzai] government, view Khalilzad's past association with controversial U.S. policies. … with suspicion. Some noted that in the 1980s he was an official hand-holder of anti-Soviet Islamic militias that later destroyed Kabul in a viscous civil war, and that in the 1990s, he endorsed U.S. accommodation of leaders of the extremist Islamic Taliban."

posted by LoZo 1:00 PM