One more time: the Bush administration is a criminal organization guilty of grand theft, hiding behind the mask of legality.
Usually the items that I write up for my blog are things that jump out at me on the TV news or in the LA Times, as I do a double take over the latest Repug chicanery and get steamed up. Yesterday, however, I was listening to Randi Rhodes on Air America (1150 AM in Los Angeles, a Clear Channel [!] station). Randi was talking about Executive Order 13303, which I had never heard of. This got me to wonder just what an Executive Order really is and what color is it and does it have feathers.
I had thought that these directives were just that, either proclamations ("I declare this day Pet Goat Day!") or executive orders straightening out some befuddled agency ("No more assassinations!"), as defined here. Sadly, I was mistaken.
Executive Orders Defined
An Executive Order (EO) is a directive issued to executive-level agencies, department heads, or other employees from the President under the President's statutory, or constitutional powers. In many ways, the EO is similar to written orders, or instructions the president of a corporation might send to department heads or directors. Thirty days after it is officially published in the Federal Register, an EO becomes law. While the EO does bypass the U.S. Congress and the standard legislative law making process, no part of an EO may be illegal or unconstitutional. The first EO was issued in 1789 by none other than George Washington. Not until 1907 were EOs given official numbers. (italics mine)
Executive Orders are in actuality (note the use of the capitals) royal decrees disguised as helpful hints, except when they aren't hints, and then they're declared Top Secret and locked in a vault.
Executive Orders have a long history, starting way back there with George Washington. Initially they were issued to the various Cabinet agencies, as necessary, to clear up muddled legislative (or lack of) action. Occasionally they were used to make an end run around Congress, as when Presidents have declared various chunks of the landscape to be National Parks. In this century, however, the President has used his proclamation powers to declare laws. This is outside his constitutional authority. The source of his authority is derived from from Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution, and also Section 3 of Article II further directs the President to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." A pretty clear explanation of Executive Orders can be found here.
Take EO 13303, for example. In it, carefully buried in legal mumbo-jumbo, is the directive that Iraqi oil belongs to us, and nobody else, not even Iraq, and we can confiscate this oil because we are in a "national emergency."
Executive Order 13303 decrees that "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void," with respect to the Development Fund for Iraq and "all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products, and interests therein."
In English:
In other words, if Exxon-Mobil or Chevron-Texaco touch Iraqi oil, it will be immune from legal proceedings in the United States. Anything that could go, and elsewhere has gone, awry with U.S. corporate oil operations will be immune to judgment: a massive tanker accident; an explosion at an oil refinery; the employment of slave labor to build a pipeline; murder of locals by corporate security; the release of billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The president, with a stroke of the pen, signed away the rights of Saddam's victims, creditors and of the next true Iraqi government to be compensated through legal action. Bush's order unilaterally declares Iraqi oil to be the unassailable province of U.S. corporations.-from
Tom Paine
Whoa, wait a minute. I assume that the "emergency" is related to 9/11, so how do we make the jump to invading Iraq and confiscating their oil? And how do we make the jump from proclaiming an emergency and immunizing Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco from legal proceedings against them as they suck the petro out of the desert sands?
This is bullshit, and takes us right back to the real reason for the invasion of Iraq. EO 13303 is dated May 22, 2003. We had already invaded the fucking place and "victory" had not been declared yet. Yes, I know, the Shrub was nullifying one EO with another and modifying still others, but the whole thing was just a 3 card Monty trick no matter how you slice it. And when you get right down to it, that part about EOs becoming law is a whole bag of shit all by itself. Even the Cato Institute thinks thinks so.
In the case of EO 13303, we have the executive issue an order that simultaneously confiscates another, sovereign nation's assets and also immunizes ab initio the oil companies from prosecution as they steal the oil and jack up all costs associated with said theft.
As I write this, regular gas at the no-name gas station on my block here in So Cal is $2.549. Cui bono?