(Above graph is family income and oil prices in 2005 dollars)

Continued from Wide Open Ohio postings on Peak Oil:

Now you finally have the probable answer to the question of the century, which is: What was Dick Cheney discussing in those closed meetings with energy executives, you know, the meetings for which he has refused to release the meeting minutes even after several freedom of information requests were filed and a lawsuit followed, which has so far been unsuccessful?

Energy Task Force
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

...In his second week in office George W. Bush created the task force, officially known as the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG) with Dick Cheney as chairman. This group was supposed to develop an energy policy for the Bush administration...

...On 5 March 2002 the US Government was ordered to make a full disclosure; this has not happened, pending appeal. In the Summer of 2003 a partial disclosure of these materials was made by the Commerce Department. This resulted in the release of documents, maps, and charts, dated March 2001, of Iraq's, Saudi Arabia's and United Arab Emirates' oil fields, pipelines, refineries, tanker terminals and development projects...

The Washington Post reported on November 15, 2005 that it had obtained documents detailing how executives from major oil corporations, including Exxon-Mobil Corp., Conoco, Royal Dutch Shell Oil Corp., and the American subsidiary of British Petroleum met with Energy Task Force participants while they were developing national energy policy. Vice President Cheney was reported to have met personally with the Chief Executive Officer of BP (formerly British Petroleum) during the time of the Energy Task Force's activities. In the week prior to this article revealing oil executive involvement, the Chief Executives of Exxon-Mobil and ConocoPhillips told members of the US Senate that they had not participated as part of the Energy Task Force, while the CEO of British Petroleum stated that he did not know. Regardless of whether the executives were under oath, if these statements were knowingly false they may have been illegal, as per the The Fraud and False Statements statute (18 U.S.C. 1001) [2]. In response to questions regarding the article, Cheney spokesperson Lea Ann McBride was quoted as saying that the courts have upheld "the constitutional right of the president and vice president to obtain information in confidentiality." [3]

On July 18, 2007, the Washington Post reported the names of those involved in the Task Force, including at least 40 meetings with interest groups, most of them from energy-producing industries. Among those in the meetings were James J. Rouse, then vice president of Exxon Mobil and a major donor to the Bush inauguration; Kenneth L. Lay, then head of Enron Corp.; Jack N. Gerard, then with the National Mining Association; Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum Institute; and Eli Bebout, an old friend of Cheney's from Wyoming who serves in the state Senate and owns an oil and drilling company.[1]

Probable answer, to all those of you who are too timid to come out and say it: They were most likely discussing, among other things, Peak Oil, the invasion of Iraq, and how they were going to divvy up the proceeds. Notice that the map of Iraq was dated just 6 months before September 11th 2001.

I have heard claims that Bush and Cheney originally wanted to go into Iraq immediately after September 11th, but realized that they needed to at least make an appearance of getting back at Bin Laden, so they invaded Afghanistan instead, impatiently driving Bin Laden into Pakistan where he would be safe from further attacks, and that his perpetual press-released videos just in time for the presidential elections are just too coincidental. I have not seen any credible evidence to either support or refute these claims and I am too tired to pursue since it is peripheral to the topic at hand and highly speculative. I believe that Karen Kwiatkowski of the Office of Special Plans was the one who originally leaked the story, but I have not checked this.

Personally, I just do not know what to believe, but in an age when our own government is forcibly deporting Canadian citizens to torture camps I suppose anything is possible. This is not the same country as the one I grew up in.