Back in Black (Goo)

It took three months, but Iraq finally has a government. And it seems they've internalized the Bush Administration concept of No Accountability:

BAGHDAD, April 28 (Reuters) - Iraq's parliament approved a cabinet of ministers on Thursday, forming Iraq's first democratically elected government in more than 50 years.

By an overwhelming majority, the 275-seat National Assembly approved the list of names put forward by Shi'ite Islamist Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari.

However, several of the 36 ministries will be occupied by acting ministers until final names are decided. Jaafari will be acting defence minister and Ahmad Chalabi will be acting oil minister, the parliamentary speaker said.

I prefer to call him Ahmad Rasputin. Because when you lie about intelligence, whip up the US government into an unncessary frenzy about WMD, practically single-handedly start a war on false pretences, all the while spying for Iran and revealing US secrets to them, and you wind up with the oil ministry job... well, you just can't be defeated. Forget training Iraqis, just send Ahmad Chalabi out against the insurgents. All their car bombs would stop working. The guy's indestructible.

And for those who thought the neocons would have to eat crow after Iraq turned out so poorly, well, think again. Crow is never served in the Bush White House. Their darling Chalabi will now mete out the oil to private companies or have his buddy Wolfowitz' World Bank hold it as collateral on all their debts. That oil money that was to pay for reconstruction will instead pay for extra "summer yachts" for Royal Dutch Shell and Exxon Mobil executives. AS David Sirota notes, the oil companies now have more money than they know what to do with, thanks to rising oil prices. Nearly all of the big oil companies are posting record profits at a time when gas for ordinary Americans is at an all-time high. This is profiteering run amok. And with Ahmad Rasputin in charge in Baghdad, the profiteering will just get profiteerier.

...one thing I forgot to mention: Sirota points us to a Fortune magazine articel that mentions how Exxon's biggest problem these days is that it has TOO MUCH cash:

Exxon's "soon-to-retire CEO suddenly has a new anxiety: how to spend the windfall wrought by $55-a-barrel oil. By the end of April, Exxon will have a cash hoard of more than $ 25 billion. And if crude prices stay where they are, this geometrically growing bonanza could soon give Exxon more cash on hand than any other U.S. company...the cash is building at a remarkable rate. Each dollar jump in the price of a barrel of oil adds another half billion in earnings. Based on current prices, Exxon is accumulating more than $1 billion a month - even after allocating for dividends, share repurchases, and capital spending. If oil simply stays where it is now, Exxon's cash could approach $40 billion in 12 months. By then [Exxon's CEO] is expected to have handed off the top job--and the headache of what to do with all that cash."

That reads like an Onion article.