America’s Dirtiest
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There’s a program on one of the Discovery channels, hosted by Mike Rowe, called America’s Dirtiest Jobs. One of the jobs featured in the series was cleaning up the hog yards, running the slop and the streaming, excrement and urine filth down a chute. Rowe, in fishing waders, surgical mask and goggles, was waste deep in the stuff, shoveling the terrible mixture onto the chute that sent everything into a huge vat, where something was done to it and I don’t know what because I changed the channel because I didn’t want to know. I could easily imagine an emotion akin to “just make it go away.”
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The story in today’s (July 3) paper, “Panel Questions State Dept Role in Iraq Oil Deal” (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/03/world/middleeast/03kurdistan.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print), illustrating the Bush administration’s involvement in A-N-O-T-H-E-R — “Oh Lord, how many have there been now?” too-dirty-to-even-want-to-want-to-touch scandal sent my mind immediately to that hog slop episode. The stench and excreta indelibly and intimately associated with these past seven years-but-seems-like-seven-centuries any more leaves me retching in anticipation of when — “Oh please God make it be over” — it might all finally come to its end.
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While you can click on the link to the story, suffice it that it involved Ray L. Hunt, a Texas multi-kazillion dollar oil magnate and a strong supporter and very close friend of George W. Bush, had negotiated an oil deal with the Iraq Oil Ministry, in knowing violation of the laws of Iraq and with the full knowledge of Bush’s State Department.
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The violation of Iraq law is because Iraq law forbids making such a deal prior to the conclusion of oil-revenue sharing legislation and without the approval of the Iraq central government, neither of which to date have occurred.
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Within the past few days, it was reported that Chevron, Exxon-Mobil, and British Petroleum are also set to ink no-bid contracts for Iraqi oil.
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