Following the terrorist attacks in September, the environmental movement, in the interest of national "unity," muted its message and even its criticisms of the man who has been dubbed "the most anti-environmental president in American history."

Environmentalists’ patriotic efforts, however, have not been reciprocated. Indeed, one of the more remarkable aspects of the "war on terrorism" is how the Republican party is opportunistically manipulating the public’s feelings of unity to advance a highly partisan (and anti-environmental) agenda, and to reward its biggest donors.

The GOP’s actions range from holding up airline security legislation (to prevent workers from being unionized), to passing multibillion-dollar corporate tax cuts (tilted especially toward Texas-based energy companies), to protecting the insurance industry from the costs of future acts of terrorism, by guaranteeing taxpayer bailouts. Also in the works are rollbacks of Clinton-era environmental regulations of the mining industry and restrictions on road- building in national forests.

Among the incidental beneficiaries of "America’s new war" are the pharmaceutical, security, armaments and defense industries -- all of whose campaign contributions skew to the Republican party. However, the industry with the most to gain from our current war in Afghanistan is the one closest to George W. Bush’s heart: the oil industry.

Republicans are already using the war as an excuse to try to put the Bush energy plan on a congressional fast track, and get approval for oil-drilling in America’s last remaining pristine wilderness, the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. This initiative, which most Americans opposed before September 11th, had little chance of passage until the terrorist crisis transformed our national politics.

But the limited supply of oil to be found in ANWR is small change, compared to the bonanza the petroleum industry will reap if America and its rogues’ gallery of allies are successful in "taming" Afghanistan.

In a 1998 speech to his fellow oil industry executives, Vice President Dick Cheney, then CEO of Halliburton, Inc., the world’s largest oil services corporation, said, "I can’t think of a time when we’ve had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian" -- referring to the central Asia region east of the Caspian Sea. The American Petroleum Association estimates there are $4 trillion worth of oil reserves in the Caspian region.

The problem, because of the region’s geography and politics, is transporting the oil to emerging markets and shipping points in eastern Asia. Until 1998, a consortium of oil companies, led by an American firm, Unocal, had been negotiating with the Taliban to build a pipeline across Afghanistan. As award- winning British journalist John Pilger has noted, "Only if the pipeline runs through Afghanistan" --as opposed to alternate routes through Iran or Russia – "can the Americans hope to control [the Caspian oil]."

Halliburton, which had built several Asian pipelines for Unocal (including one in Burma that was internationally condemned for widespread human rights abuses associated with its construction) had a big stake in the Afghan project. But after the US launched cruise missiles against terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, in retaliation for the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Africa (which were also attributed to Osama bin Laden’s network), Unocal decided to at least temporarily suspend negotiations on the pipeline. According to a public statement, the company was waiting until Afghanistan has "the peace and stability necessary to obtain financing from international agencies, and a government that is recognized by the United States."

Another American firm with financial links to the Afghan pipeline project is the Carlyle Group, the nation’s most highly capitalized private equity company and, by virtue of its investments, the eleventh-largest defense contractor. The Carlyle Group is dominated by veterans of the Reagan and Bush I administrations, including former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, who serves as chairman, former Secretary of State James Baker, and former budget director Richard Darman, among others.

(In a rather bizarre twist, another major investor in the Carlyle Group is the wealthy Saudi Arabian family of Osama bin Laden, whose connections to the Bush family go back decades. In fact, one of the earliest investors in George W’s first oil business, Arbusto Energy, was Osama bin Laden’s late brother.)

Under the present circumstances, however, the most notable investor and member of the board of directors in the Carlyle Group is former president George H.W. Bush, who also serves as senior adviser to the group’s Asian Partners Fund. The ethical ambiguities this raises has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum.

Judicial Watch, the arch-conservative watchdog group that initiated the Paula Jones lawsuit and led the charge in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, has labeled the association of the senior Bush with Carlyle a "conflict of interest," and called for him to resign. On the progressive side of the spectrum, Charles Lewis, president of the Center for Public Integrity, which monitors campaign financing, said recently, "In a really peculiar way, George W. Bush could some day benefit financially from his own administration’s decisions, through his father’s investments. That to me is a jaw-dropper."

In light of recent events, an op-ed piece written by Marjorie Cohn, and published in the Chicago Tribune during last year’s presidential campaign, seems eerily prescient.

"As George Bush’s Secretary of Defense," she wrote, "Dick Cheney was chief prosecutor of Operation Desert Storm, [which] was primarily aimed at keeping the Persian Gulf safe for US oil interests. Shortly after Desert Storm, the Associated Press reported Cheney’s desire to broaden the United States’ military role in the region to hedge future threats to gulf oil resources...Because of the instability in the Persian Gulf, Cheney and his fellow oilmen have zeroed in on the world’s other major source of oil -- the Caspian Sea."

Cohn’s column ends with this conclusion: "Chosen by George W. Bush to bring foreign policy expertise to the GOP presidential ticket, we can expect a Republican administration to increase US intervention in regions when it suits Dick Cheney’s oil and other corporate concerns."

Not long after the September 11 attacks, the New York Times reported that George W had told his communications adviser, Karen Hughes, "Through my tears, I see big opportunities."

Can there be any doubt what he meant by that?