MEDIA ROOTS – The global petroleum industry has long been the antagonist for environmental and animal-rights advocates. But more recently, “Big Oil” has emerged as a literal threat to democracy for its vast political influence and ability to contrive wars for profit. A report released last month by the National Wildlife Federation exposed to what extent the oil industry, along with coal, affect elections in America.

Speaker of the House John Boehner tops the list of congressman receiving financial aid from the energy industry. Many of these donors stand to benefit from the proposed construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, an ecologically-damaging project that would send diluted bitumen – a tar-like substance – to American oil refineries, and the congressman has repeatedly castigated the president for delaying its permit. If that wasn’t bad enough, the congressman actually owns investments in some of these companies. Congress is exempt from various trade-laws and last year 60 Minutes highlighted Boehner’s record of insider-trading.

More recently, Congress passed a bill referred to as the “Stop the War on Coal Act.” Congressman Johnson, also a Republican from Ohio, authored the bill and explained the bill wasn’t about climate change as much as it was about public health and safety. But dissenters of the bill argue it actually endangers millions of Americans and virtually declares war on public health. Furthermore, the bill could possibly pave way for a similar bill that would further secure the stature of the petroleum industry.

Big Oil should be considered a big country

Seven of the top ten highest-grossing corporations in the world, as ranked by Fortune magazine earlier this year, are of the oil industry. Royal Dutch Shell, the list’s top revenue-generator, is on par with the gross domestic product of Iran. But if it was its own country, it would be the twenty-fifth highest-grossing country in the world.

When considering these seven corporations together, they are the sixth highest-grossing entity worldwide – government or corporate. And because these entities are private corporations, and considered persons by the Supreme Court, they are not subject to the same level of public scrutiny or congressional oversight. While it may not be surprising that over three-quarters of all petroleum refined in the United States produces gasoline, diesel, and jet fuels, it may be news to some just who is consuming these fuels the most.

The petrodollar war, not the terror war

Purchasing over one percent of the world’s refined oil – by far more than any other single entity – is the U.S. Department of Defense. Over half of this consumption is used to fuel jet engines with the Air Force being the branch of greatest oil demand. The department consumes nearly double the amount of fuel annually as the Republic of Ireland and, during the height of battle in Iraq just a half-decade ago, American troops were consuming well over one million gallons of fuel daily making them the highest oil-consuming soldiers in world history. This past year, the military handed taxpayers a $20 billion energy bill which roughly equates to the cost of an automobile tank for every man, woman, and child in the country.

Less than a month after 9/11 several news outlets were reminding readers that oil was actually more of an issue than terrorism. L.A. Weekly pushed the envelope of sensitivity by offering “it’s the oil, stupid” just eight days after terrorists allegedly hijacked four airplanes. These claims are based on the fact that Big Oil has been vying for an Afghan pipeline for decades.

During the Bush-Cheney era, both of whom are previous oil executives themselves, Big Oil lobbied the federal government over $393 million, with nearly a million dollars diverted to Senator Obama during his 2008 campaign for the White House. But as the majority of Americans of all political backgrounds continue to favor renewable energy options, this Congress continues to turn a blind eye and instead demonizes governments – such as those of Iran and Venezuela – that refuse to trade crude oil in U.S. Dollars. “Petrodollar warfare” is the true reason why the U.S. invaded Iraq in 1990, and again in 2003, and is why Iran continues to remain in the military’s crosshairs.

Corporate media complicity

Meanwhile, the corporate media establishment has yet to connect the dots of history for the general public or sound the alarm on the true cause of this grim outlook. In fact, many of these outlets outright support the industry as reported in a Media Matters study earlier this year regarding the coverage of the Keystone XL pipeline. The report showed that while only a quarter of Keystone XL coverage featured the massive demonstrations of people speaking out against the project, the media continued to parrot industry job estimates even though these predictions had already been widely discredited.

Starting in 1980, the FCC began deregulating the media industry which resulted in over 90% of media outlets being owned by just six corporate entities. Already this year over $153 million oil industry dollars have been spent in the corporate media establishment – mere pocket change for this influential group of executives. The result is a misguided society concerned more by the threat of terror than the more realistic threat of economic collapse.

Embedded below is an episode of FTM Daily, a radio program hosted by economist Jerry Robinson, which further explores the extent of the petrodollar system, its influence on the value of the U.S. dollar, and reveals who the major players are.

Oskar Mosco is the managing editor for Media Roots.

Photograph: © 2013 David Oppenheimer – Performance Impressions

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Earlier this year on FTM Daily, Jerry Robinson features an examination of the

Petrodollar system that is what the now-volatile U.S. Dollar is based on.

MEDIA ROOTS –  When Saddam Hussein used white phosphorous against his own people in March 1988, the United States labeled it a chemical weapon and considered it to be a weapon of mass destruction. This helped justify the American-lead invasion of Iraq in 2003. However, when coalition forces used the weapon in Fallujah the following year, it was classified as a permissible incendiary device. Like napalm, white phosphorous has well-known and predictable collateral effects such as fallout linked to birth defects. And according to international law, the thermal weapon is prohibited from use on civilians or in civilian areas. American defiance of this statute in 2004 not only warrants a war crimes investigation of the former Commander-in-Chief, the prolonged high-rate of birth defects in Fallujah makes plausible an investigation for crimes against humanity.

Since the invasion, birth defects in Fallujah have jumped dramatically from once every few months to several daily, according to many whom work at Fallujah General Hospital. The United States officially denies contributing to this increase and pundits continue to marginalize the effects of incendiary devices. But no matter how the story is spun, Fallujah now has a legacy of defects that is five-times the international norm, according to the news agency Al Jazeera in an investigative piece aired last week.

White phosphorous (WP) has been in the American arsenal since World War I. The use of “Willie Pete,” as it was referred to by American soldiers in Vietnam, was initially denied to have been used in Fallujah. However, the following year, United States General Peter Pace confirmed and defended its use for its ability to illuminate the battlefield and hide troop movements. The federal government today sells WP to allies such as Israel where it has been used numerous times against combatants in civilian areas.

Outcry for this injustice continues. The web page Birth defects in FGH was created in 2009 by a doctor at Fallujah General Hospital to help publicize the continued torture of the city’s newborns. Additionally the nonprofit The Justice for Fallujah Project has an advisory board that includes Doctors Noam Chomsky and Dahlia Wasfi and continues to fight for increased public awareness of this endemic.

Oskar Mosco

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Al Jazeera English highlighted the increased birth defects occurring now in Fallujah

in half-hour segment that aired last week.

Fallujah – The Hidden Massacre

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Photo provided by Flickr user Dapper Snapper.  

MEDIA ROOTS – Upon returning home from his second tour in Afghanistan, Lt. Colonel Daniel L. Davis unloaded several truths that exposed continued deception by multiple senior military officials.  The 17-year Army veteran describes, in an 84-page “open-source” report, an increasingly bleak reality for soldiers while chronicling specific episodes of personal gain from top military leaders.

“No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan,” he explains in a recent summary of the report in Armed Forces Journal.  “But we do expect – and the men who do the living, fighting, and dying deserve – to have our leaders tell the truth about what’s going on.”

Prior to informing his chain of command, Davis met with six members of Congress and a New York Times reporter, to submit two documents – one classified and one not – to the Pentagon for internal review.  However, upon learning that there would be a delay in the release of the unclassified report, Davis decided to go public last week in the nation’s premier independent military periodical.  “How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?”

The next day, the Times covered the story, but only to appear backpaged on A13.  Then, last Friday, Rolling Stone released it in an article written by Michael Hastings, the journalist that wrote the bombshell article that lead to General McChrystal’s premature retirement in 2010.

With specific evidence of industry actually impeding military development, hundreds of billions of dollars being wasted, and virtually no accountability of top decision-makers, some generals continue to deceive Congress and the U.S. people.  But with the ongoing expenditure of “blood, limbs, and lives of tens of thousands” of service members and only small gains for the country, “deception reach[ed] an intolerable low,” Davis writes. “If the public had access to these classified reports they would see the dramatic gulf between what is often said in public by our senior leaders and what is actually true behind the scenes.”

While assigned to the Future Combat Systems (FCS) organization in Fort Bliss, Texas, Davis discovered that deception was not isolated to one base or division but had become Army-wide.  Starting in 1999 and lasting nearly a decade, the FCS organization cost nearly $20 billion dollars of taxpayer monies.  Despite the Government Accountability Office documenting consistently significant problems with the agency, senior leaders routinely downplayed failures and often gave the impression of success to Congress.  To date, none of these officials involved in these deceptions have been held accountable.  Instead, one proponent, Major General Charles Cartwright, was promoted Vice President of Advanced Programs at Raytheon upon retirement.  Raytheon was a primary supplier of the FCS blunder that was eventually canceled by the Defense Secretary.

The report also offers an extensive review of the 2007 Iraqi troop surge and the misplaced credit given to CIA Director General Patreaus.  Several perspectives of the surge are featured that mention how, prior to the surge, the Iraqi Sunni community had already decided to revolt against their Al-Qaeda allies.  This shifted momentum and left some Iraqi officials perplexed at why the U.S. was sending additional battalions after they had specifically requested that U.S. troops stay on the bases outside of conflict areas.

The allegations make a clear distinction between criticism for military officials and the presumed naivety of the President and Congress.  According to Obama’s Wars by Bob Woodward, the Commander-in-Chief asked many difficult questions prior to ordering the 30,000-troop surge in Afghanistan that ultimately failed.  Obama was still in his first year of the presidency, had no personal military history, and was outnumbered in opinion by senior security advisors.  Additionally, several misleading testimonies from top brass are provided, with context and factual disparity, that exemplify the rampant deceit offered to Congress and major media outlets.

The report goes on to suggest several areas where the U.S. has lost credibility.  Davis cites how many mid-grade officers are now retiring early within the Army, due to increased disenfranchisement, and warns of a future military with dwindling respect for the chains of command.  Also, as Congress continues to remain unaware of some classified intelligence, several defense contractors are able to study such material at their convenience.  Davis recommends a bipartisan Congressional investigation of all the leaders involved to respond to these allegations, under oath.

When questioned why he felt compelled to come out with these accusations despite the fact he was going to be flamed by Army brass, Davis replied, “I believe that with knowledge comes responsibility; I knew too much to remain silent.”

Oskar Mosquito is a veteran of the U.S. Army and a producer at truth-march.

Picture provided by Flickr user hectorir

MEDIA ROOTS- Perhaps one of the most abhorrent aspects of US foreign policy in the 21st century is the privatization of the US military and the government’s outsourcing of military jobs to corrupt war contractors.

Despite Obama’s early campaign rhetoric about scaling down the use of contractors, he has increased their presence– they now make up approximately 50% of the total military force in both Afghanistan and Iraq.  

Military contractors are murderous thugs-for-hire who act above the law and hold zero allegiance to any constitutional body. Blackwater’s sordid slew of contemptuous behavior and criminal actions during the Iraq war might have cast a negative light upon them, but it didn’t stop the Obama administration from awarding their criminality with a quarter billion dollar contract to continue working in US war zones.

This unaccountability for criminal acts is not unique to Blackwater. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) is a private security company that employs more US private contractors and holds larger contracts with the US government than any other firm in Iraq.

In 2007, a KBR employee named Jamie Leigh Jones claimed that she was gang raped by multiple KBR workers at a camp in Iraq’s Green Zone. After she reported the rape, she was reportedly locked in a shipping container and threatened with her job if she took further action. Appallingly, KBR has turned the case around and is now suing Jones for making “frivolous claims”, demanding $2 million in damages.

“They have beaten us and now they are attempting to crush us,” her lawyer, Todd Kelly, told the Wall Street Journal. “This is an attempt by KBR to chill other people from bringing claims against them.”

It’s shameful that these corporations have essentially no oversight from the US government– the Crime Victims Office at the Department of Justice was unable to investigate the incident because of a lack of jurisdiction over private contractors in Iraq.

Now it’s Jones’s word against KBR, and it doesn’t look like she has much of a chance to win against the monolithic corporation. Let’s just hope she can walk away without having given them a dime.

Written by Abby Martin

Photo by flickr user wenews

MEDIA ROOTS- Since the federal government tends to refer to anyone in Afghanistan with a gun as member of the “Taliban”, it’s difficult to take stories from the corporate media about the Taliban at face value. However, the first official US military estimate of how much money the US has paid the Taliban through “reverse money laundering” since the invasion has been disclosed: $360 million.

Considering how any official Pentagon budget has always been the most conservative estimate when compared to independent analysis, it’s safe to say that this number is a gross underestimate of the true amount of funds the US government has paid to the “terrorists” we are supposedly fighting in the region. For more breaking down the logic of why the US funds the opposition to sustain the Afghan war check out MR Original – Afghanistan War: Resources for Endless Control.

Abby

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ASSOCIATED PRESS– After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals and power brokers with ties to both.

In a murky process known as “reverse money laundering,” payments from the U.S. pass through companies hired by the military for transportation, construction, power projects, fuel and other services to businesses and individuals with ties to the insurgency or criminal networks, according to interviews and task force documents obtained by the AP.

“Funds begin as clean monies,” according to one document, then “either through direct payments or through the flow of funds in the subcontractor network, the monies become tainted.”

More than half the losses flowed through a large transportation contract called Host Nation Trucking, the official said. Eight companies served as prime contractors and hired a web of nearly three dozen subcontractors for vehicles and convoy security to ship huge amounts of food, water, fuel and ammunition to American troops stationed at bases across Afghanistan.

The Defense Department announced Monday that it had selected 20 separate contractors for a new transportation contract potentially worth $983.5 million to replace Host Nation Trucking. Officials said the new arrangement will reduce the reliance on subcontractors and diminish the risk of money being lost. Under the new National Afghan Trucking Services contract, the military will be able to choose from a deeper pool of companies competing against one another to offer the best price to move supplies. The new arrangement also gives the U.S. more flexibility in determining whether security is needed for supply convoys and who should provide it, according to a description of the contract.

HEB International Logistics of Dubai, a Host Nation Trucking prime contractor, “made payments directly to malign actors,” one of the task force documents reads. In 2009 and 2010, an HEB subcontractor identified in the document only as “Rohullah” received $1.7 million in payments. A congressional report issued last year said Rohullah – whose name is spelled Ruhallah in that report – is a warlord who controlled the convoy security business along the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, the two largest cities in Afghanistan.

Read more about $360M Lost To Insurgents, Criminals In Afghanistan

© 2011 The Associated Press

Photo by Flickr user azalea