Oil Is Still More Important Than Democracy

Ted Rall goes on holidays with Dick Cheney:

Two prominent critics of the Kazakh government have been found shot to death since last fall. The death of one of those men, Zamanbek Nurkadilov, was ruled a suicide even though he had been shot three times, twice in the chest and once in the head."

Nurkadilov's body was discovered shortly after Bush wrote Nazarbayev to ask him "to make sure that economic reforms are backed up with bold democratic reforms" in time for the upcoming 2005 presidential election. Even though Nazarbayev won a Saddam-esque 91 percent of the vote in polling universally declared fraudulent by international observers, Bush didn't say a word...

Cheney showed up to kiss up less than three months after the killings.