Texas Oilman's Trial Shows War Opponents Also Sought to Get Rich

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At the same time Alan Greenspan is out defending the Bush administration from the "no blood for oil" crowd, a man accused of illegally buying and selling oil from Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime is being put on trial.

Looking at the case of Oscar Wyatt, one soon realizes that that Iraq war opponents were hardly the pure and innocent people that the media usually makes them out to be. The leadup to the Iraq war was hardly a struggle between peaceful, loving protesters and nefarious right-wing billionaires, in reality, there were people on both sides who saw Iraq as an opportunity to make money. Somehow, though, we never hear about the anti-war money men. This is odd because while we've heard endlessly about Vice President Cheney's connections to Halliburton, we've heard almost nothing about Oscar Wyatt's boast that he had persuaded Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy to speak out against the Iraq War. As TigerHawk puts it:

In Oscar Wyatt's view, "no war for oil" means "fight no war so that we can get the oil." He understood that there was a much more direct path to control over Iraqi oil, and one that would have appeased those Democrats who opposed the war and whose hearts bled for the Iraqis suffering "because" of American sanctions.

No wonder this case is generating so little interest in the press, which is curiously uninterested in Wyatt's claim that he persuaded a U.S. Senator to speak out against the war. Only Reuters drew a line between Wyatt's bragging and a particular U.S. Senator -- Ted Kennedy -- and that was weeks ago. Stories published in the New York Times and elsewhere did not mention Kennedy by name, probably because editors figured he would have spoken against the war anyway. And he would have. But the Wyatt claim is evidence that Ted Kennedy damn well knows that oil interests would have much preferred cutting a deal with Saddam than invading his country. Has he ever said as much?

That is hardly Wyatt's only Democratic connection, though. Over the years, the rich Texas oilman has sent more than 70 percent of his campaign contributions to Democrats including presidential candidate Bill Richardson, West Virginia senator John Rockefeller, and Texas House member Gene Green. Not only have the media mostly ignored this important trial (in stark contrast to their obsession over the more Republican-oriented Enron), when they have covered it, they've very rarely mentioned Wyatt's Democratic ties.

This is something that in the interest of fairness needs to be fixed.