Reply #36: Great analysis clear eye -- it really is all about the oil/natural gas

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This is starting to remind me of Cheney's 2001 energy task force. We've heard a lot about the possibility they were cooking up plans for Iraq -- but were they including Alaska as well?

I've been puzzling over the stakes in the Alaska natural gas pipeline issue. A Newsweek article from June (http://www.newsweek.com/id/139335/output/print) indicates that Palin has been promoting the TransCanada pipeline plan -- which is opposed by the big oil companies -- as part of an attempt to force the oil companies to execute their natural gas leases, which they've been sitting on for 30 years.

This is how she got the maverick reputation that McCain has been touting -- but it seems like the unlikeliest thing in the world for her to be an actual maverick, so I've been wondering whose interests she's really serving.

That's why it makes so much sense to see Cheney's hand in the deal. Cheney may be an oilman, but he isn't really on the side of the big oil companies. He's far more interested in creating Fortress America -- and getting those Alaskan natural gas reserves to market would plausibly matter more to him than the profits of BP and ConocoPhillips.

But that would also mean, as I take you to be saying, that Cheney is the real hand behind the McCain campaign -- and that is both enlightening and scary.

It also suggests that the recent investigations of Ted Stevens and other corrupt Alaskan political figures might not be a matter of good government rearing its head but something more in the nature of a coup -- like some third world government which is corrupt but protective of local interests being overthrown by outside forces in the guise of reformers.

But then how do you see the Rove interest in the Gulf Coast states as fitting in? Is that ultimately about, say, offshore drilling and not just about creating a cheap-labor power base in the Deep South?

I've been very aware of the geostrategic approach in Central Asia as it applies to US meddling with Caspian oil, pipeline routes, and the invasion of Iraq and confrontation with Iran. But it never occurred to me before that the geostrategists might also have been mapping out the US and its energy reserves and potential pipeline routes with an eye to asserting control here at home. You've given me a lot to think about.