Bush oil buddy despot saved from Mercenaries -"Kuwait of Gulf of Guinea"

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/story.jsp?story=501017

Mercenaries aimed to topple oil-rich despot
The inside story of the ties that bind President Obiang and powerful American interests
By Paul Lashmar
14 March 2004


The tale of the 67 men of assorted nationalities now in a Zimbabwe jail accused of being mercenaries continued to unfurl yesterday like the plot of a lurid airport novel.

A bit too much like fiction, in fact, involving as it does a cast that includes the despotic leader of a little-known West African state, the Eton-educated son of an English cricket captain, fake passports, and a shadowy company registered in the Channel Islands that is linked to SAS old boys. All this, plus talk of CIA, MI6 and Spanish secret service activity, and a plane now impounded at Harare airport that contained equipment more suited to burglary than seizures of power.

Officially, it was announced yesterday that the men will be formally charged on Monday. Unofficially, The Independent on Sunday has been told by security sources that the men were intending to mount a coup in Equatorial Guinea and were in Zimbabwe to buy the arms that would help accomplish that. But then on Tuesday, tipped off by South African intelligence that the team led by Briton Simon Mann was landing to pick up arms bought from Zimbabwe Defence Industries, the Harare authorities arrested them.

But if who paid whom for what services has not yet been revealed, the intended target is not in doubt: President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, leader of a country whose lack of renown belies its strategic significance. And for "strategic" read oil. Not for nothing is this land known in US government circles as the "Kuwait of the Gulf of Guinea". Not without reason has President Bush welcomed President Obiang, a confirmed if not convicted corrupt despot, to the White House. He may be a despot, but as presider over an oil-rich state, he is their despot.<snip>

there's OIL to be had there...
Amazing how "terrorists" and "WMDs" appear right above the ground
where oil reserves are known to exist...
Coincidence? :eyes:

On edit... OMFG!

All this, plus talk of CIA, MI6 and Spanish secret service activity, and a plane now impounded at Harare airport that contained equipment more suited to burglary than seizures of power.

Spanish SS! How many want to bet that the "terrorists" that blew up
the trains in Madrid will be "traced back to" Zimbabwe...?

Oh man...this is just too friggin obvious!