Condoleezza Rice
National Security Advisor sponsored by Chevron Texaco

Condoleezza shows up in all the right places: State Department, Rand Corporation, Hoover Institute, Strategic Nuclear Policy advisor to the Joint Chiefs, Chevron and Transamerica Corp. boardrooms. Chevron even named an oil tanker after her. Truly.

"I am a realist," Condoleeza Rice once told the National Review. "Power matters. But there can be no absence of moral content in American foreign policy, and, furthermore, the American people wouldn't accept such an absence."

The woman who tutored George Bush Jr. in foreign policy is often recognized for her velvet-gloved forcefulness and her charming personality. Her name, in Italian, means "with sweetness." The press reigns praise on her for her many firsts, her grace under pressure, and her political savvy.

In fact, her charm is such that her former employer, Chevron, named a 130,000-ton oil tanker named after her. And her savvy is such that she had the tanker's name swiftly changed when she took a leave of absence from Chevron and the Hoover Institution to join the Bush administration as National Security adviser.

Her biography verily glows. But we'll leave that for you to look into. What's important here is her corporate connections: She was a Chevron Director from 1991 until January 15, 2001 when she was transferred by President George Bush Jr. to National Security Adviser.

Another Chevron Corporation giant in the Bush administration is Vice President Dick Cheney, ex-Chairman and CEO of Halliburton Corporation, the world's largest oil services company. Halliburton has multi-billion dollar contracts with numerous oil corporations including Chevron. Cheney himself was instrumental in negotiating a Caspian Sea pipeline for Chevron. The crude oil pipeline is a 900-mile project stretching from western Kazakhstan to the Black Sea that will primarily benefit Chevron by connecting the Tengiz oil field to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk in Russia. Chevron, the largest oil company member of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium, holds a 55 percent ownership interest in Tengizchevroil with the Republic of Kazakhstan. The $20 billion joint-venture company was formed in 1993 to develop the Tengiz field. Tengiz is one of the world's largest oil fields with 6 to 9 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

Why is this important? Because of allegations that the Bush Administration declared war in Afghanistan not to combat terrorism, but to make it possible for U.S. oil interests to construct gas and oil pipelines from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to Pakistani harbors on the Indian Ocean.

In fact, if the war in Afghanistan succeeded in anything, it was in securing this pipeline potential.

And if Condi's savvy and charm serves for anything, it is to hide her massive corporate conflict of oil interests.

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