UPDATED with VIDEO below
In the second time in as many weeks, the state-run CBC’s “Your Business” segment reporter Jeannie Lee has chosen to “report” on… a new book being released! I know, that’s odd for a “Your Business” segment. The first time, it was the new book by Stephane Dion’s right brain, Al (“I’m all freaked out and I want you to be too”) Gore. His new enviro freak-out book has practically nothing to do with business—except of course in a negative context as a cause of all the “man-made global warming”. And so, I concluded in my blog entry about that particular “Business news” report, it was perhaps fitting for a socialist “news” network.
(But as I also pointed out, our columnist Ann Coulter, who, unlike the CBC or Al Gore, isn’t drinkin’ the Kool Aid, is very free-market friendly, is totally pro-business, and is in fact all about promoting “Your Business”, My Business, and Everyone’s free-market, enterprising Business .jpg)
—and gets absolutely no attention from “business reporter” Jeannie Lee, apparent anti-Bush book reviewer and promoter —for her latest book If Democrats Had Any Brains, They’d Be Republicans, to be released in 10 days or so.)
Today Lee’s pumping a book by former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan who is at least a free-market friendly guy. But the point is, as Lee advises liberal Canadians, he criticizes the Bush Administration on many levels (YAY!) And she gives examples, including, she said, a revelation that in his book, he reveals—as if from insider knowledge—that the war in Iraq was “all about oil”. Thus, liberal-leftists are left with the perception that they’ve been vindicated for their zany far-leftist Bush-hating Rosie O’Donnell-esque vitriol.
She said, and I quote:
”….And he says that he’s saddened that’s it’s politically inconvenient to acknowledge that the Iraq war is largely about oil”.
Actually, Lee is totally misleading Canadians, I think. She’s totally wrong—the truth is the opposite, really. Greenspan wasn’t against the notion of getting rid of Hussein—for oil or otherwise—in fact he believed in ousting him because he should not own all that oil! All sensible people believed that. Greenspan’s remark wasn’t an indictment of the Bush doctrine for going to war against Hussein’s Iraq, and yet it was included in her list of criticisms that Greenspan leveled against Bush, and presents an inflammatory illusion. This article explains:
Greenspan: Ouster Of Hussein Crucial For Oil Security
…Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, said in an interview that the removal of Saddam Hussein had been “essential” to secure world oil supplies, a point he emphasized to the White House in private conversations before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Greenspan, who was the country’s top voice on monetary policy at the time Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, has refrained from extensive public comment on it until now, but he made the striking comment in a new memoir out today that “the Iraq War is largely about oil.” In the interview, he clarified that sentence in his 531-page book, saying that while securing global oil supplies was “not the administration’s motive,” he had presented the White House with the case for why removing Hussein was important for the global economy.
“I was not saying that that’s the administration’s motive,” Greenspan said in an interview Saturday, “I’m just saying that if somebody asked me, ‘Are we fortunate in taking out Saddam?’ I would say it was essential.”
[…]
Greenspan said he had backed Hussein’s ouster, either through war or covert action. “I wasn’t arguing for war per se,” he said. But “to take [Hussein] out, in my judgment, it was something important for the West to do and essential, but I never saw Plan B”—an alternative to war.
Greenspan’s reference in “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World” to what he calls the “politically inconvenient” fact that the war was “largely about oil” was first reported by The Washington Post on Saturday and has proved controversial.
[…]
As for Iraq, Greenspan said that at the time of the invasion, he believed, like Bush, that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction “because Saddam was acting so guiltily trying to protect something.” While he was “reasonably sure he did not have an atomic weapon,” he added, “my view was that if we do nothing, eventually he would gain control of a weapon.”
His main support for Hussein’s ouster, though, was economically motivated. “If Saddam Hussein had been head of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands,” Greenspan said, “our response to him would not have been as strong as it was in the first gulf war. And the second gulf war is an extension of the first. My view is that Saddam, looking over his 30-year history, very clearly was giving evidence of moving towards controlling the Straits of Hormuz, where there are 17, 18, 19 million barrels a day” passing through.
Greenspan said disruption of even 3 to 4 million barrels a day could translate into oil prices as high as $120 a barrel—far above even the recent highs of $80 set last week—and the loss of anything more would mean “chaos” to the global economy.
Given that, “I’m saying taking Saddam out was essential,” he said. But he added that he was not implying that the war was an oil grab.
“No, no, no,” he said. Getting rid of Hussein achieved the purpose of “making certain that the existing system [of oil markets] continues to work, frankly, until we find other [energy supplies], which ultimately we will.”
[…]
Therefore it seems to me Lee’s information is tainted—perhaps by her overt anti-Bush, anti-conservative bias and CBC-style agenda. And you can’t trust an agenda-driven media. Some would say it’s an outright lie that she’s perpetrating here. And part of the problem is that once again, those poor saps who only watch the left-wing state-run and funded CBC Newsworld will not know the truth. They will only know what the leftists at the CBC told them. And that’s dangerous. And common. And, I think, the idea.
Once again let me state the obvious: state-run and state-owned media should be banned in this country, and that notion enshrined in our constitution.
UPDATE
Brit Hume and panel on Fox News Channel
managed to figure it all out today.
Seems some people can, some people can’t.
Click the lower left to play video (2 1/2 minutes)
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Rush Limbaugh also picked up on the smear campaign by the media. In his daily member update called Rush in a Hurry he writes (Notes: Rush calls the liberal mainstream media the “Drive-By media”; and “EIB” is his radio broadcast company):
The Drive-Bys purposely took Alan Greenspan out of context in order to splash their “Iraq War for Oil; Clinton is a Hero” headlines all over the world this weekend. As usual the Drive-Bys made a mess, and the EIB Network cleans it up. In truth, Greenspan said the war was “about oil” not for oil, a big difference. He also told Lesley Stahl that he won’t be voting for Hillary in 2008. None of that goes into the Drive-By reporting. Plus, Rush confirms Greenspan’s account of a phone conversation between the two in the 90s. (Rush 24/7 Members: Listen Here).
Update 2
ABC Touts Greenspan’s Bush Went to War for Oil, Skips Real View
“Harsh accusation,” ABC anchor Dan Harris teased at the top of Sunday’s World News as he highlighted how “one of the most respected figures in Washington says the Bush administration went to war in Iraq because of oil.” Harris soon referred to it as “an eyebrow raising allegation on Iraq” in a new book from Alan Greenspan, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve. But after a Monday Washington Post story, in which Greenspan declared that oil was “not the administration’s motive,” and appearance by on the Today show made it abundantly clear the inaccuracy of the implication that Greenspan was somehow endorsing a left-wing conspiracy theory about how George W. Bush went to war to financially benefit Dick Cheney’s oil industry friends,
ABC’s World News on Monday failed to offer any correction for its incendiary, and erroneous, reporting. In fact, the September 17 World News didn’t mention Greenspan at all.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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