First time I ever wrote a diary, so I hope you find it interesting.
Looking through the news I found some interesting connections between Bob Woodward's 60 Minutes interview about his book Plan of Attack which as you know details the president and his cabinet in the months before and during the Iraq war.
This from Bob Woodward's interview on 60 Minutes (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/15/60minutes/main612067.shtml):
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But, it turns out, two days before the president told Powell, Cheney and Rumsfeld had already briefed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador.
"Saturday, Jan. 11, with the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, `Top secret. No foreign.' No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this," says Woodward.
"They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who's skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, `So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?' And Cheney - who has said nothing - says the following: `Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.'"
After Bandar left, according to Woodward, Cheney said, "I wanted him to know that this is for real. We're really doing it."
But this wasn't enough for Prince Bandar, who Woodward says wanted confirmation from the president. "Then, two days later, Bandar is called to meet with the president and the president says, `Their message is my message,'" says Woodward.
Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.
Woodward says that Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: "They're [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.
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And this from Reuters VIA yahoo (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040517/bs_nm/markets_oil_dc_5):
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OPEC, which controls half of world crude exports will convene informally later this week on the sidelines of an Amsterdam conference and again in Beirut on June 3 for a full ministerial meeting.
Ministers will discuss a proposal from Saudi Arabia to raise the group's official production limits by at least 1.5 million bpd to cool prices.
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Saudi Arabia has already allocated higher June supply for U.S. and European customers, and state tanker firm Vela booked extra super tankers to the United States for June loading.
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