Hypocrisy at Foggy Bottom

April 16, 2006 -- Hypocrisy at Foggy Bottom. No sooner had Chad's President Idriss Deby threatened to cut off the flow of oil to the West via the Exxon-Mobil Chad-Cameroon pipeline, rebels from neighboring Sudan launched an attack on Chad's capital, N'Djamena. All along, Deby has been an ally of the Bush administration in the battle against pan-Sahelian rebels who were linked to the so-called "Al Qaeda" global terrorist bogeyman. Not only did Deby receive military assistance from Washington, but U.S. advisers have helped train his troops. However, when Deby got into a tiff with the Wolfowitz-run World Bank over oil revenues, he found himself facing armed rebels massed on the outskirts of his capital. Wolfowitz cut off oil revenues to Chad after Deby said he wanted to money to fight the rebels. France, which is opposed to growing U.S. hegemony in Africa, sent fighters to bomb the rebel encampments. In a display of pure Bush-Cheney hypocrisy, it was discovered that the U.S.-supported Chadian "rebels," called the "United Front for Change," were supported by Sudan and its genocidal paramilitary forces in Darfur. This, after statement after statement by the State Department that it condemned the genocide by Sudan in Darfur. The Chad-Sudan situation demonstrates how the neo-cons intend to use the World Bank to suppress the poorest people in the world in order to enrich the coffers of the wealthiest.



Whether its the Darfur-Chad border region, the diamond fields of Sierra Leone and Congo, the desert illegal immigrant corridors of the U.S. Southwest, or the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, the machinations of the neo-cons towards people of color and the poorest of the poor have no bounds. However, the day of final reckoning with the neo-cons draws ever closer.

U.S. Africa policy is based solely on financial interests and is dictated by the influential Corporate Council on Africa. After longtime U.S. ally Sudanese Christian rebel leader and the new Vice President John Garang argued with the U.S. and Britain over increased oil revenues for his poor southern region, his Ugandan-supplied helicopter crashed after a stormy meeting with the U.S., British, and Dutch envoys to Uganda. It was reported that Garang's body was also riddled with bullet holes.