You are a good friend...and you got lots a oil too.

If you don't think our government puts oil and money first by now you didn't read this. Our Friend Teodoro Equatorial Guinea’s leader visits the Beltway Posted on Tuesday, April 18, 2006. By Ken Silverstein. On January 12, 2004, George W. Bush issued a presidential proclamation that bars corrupt foreign officials from entering the United States. So why was Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the blatantly corrupt dictator of the West African nation of Equatorial Guinea, in Washington, D.C., last week? The answer is oil. Tiny Equatorial Guinea (pop. 540,109) is the third-largest oil exporter in sub-Saharan Africa. Ever since large energy reserves were discovered there in 1996, American firms have invested some $5 billion in the territory, propping up Obiang—who came to power by whacking his own uncle in a 1979 coup—in the process. Obiang treats Equatorial Guinea's national treasury like his personal checking account. While his official monthly salary is equivalent to roughly $5,000 a month, a 2004 Senate investigation found that Obiang and his wife had personal accounts worth at least $13 million at Riggs Banks (now PNC Bank) in Washington. I once asked a member of the House Subcommittee on Africa if he thought such wealth suggested gross corruption on the part of Obiang. “Either that,” the congressman replied, “or he's an assiduous saver.” ........................ “Thank you very much for your presence here,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said to Obiang at a press conference last week. “You are a good friend and we welcome you.” Rice didn't mention that her own department's 2006 human rights report on Equatorial Guinea, released 35 days before the press conference, laid out a laundry list of abuses that included torture, arbitrary arrest, judicial corruption, child labor, forced labor, and “severe restrictions” on freedoms of speech and press. “In 2004,” the report stated, “senior government officials [of Equatorial Guinea] told foreign diplomats that human rights did not apply to criminals and that torture of known criminals was not a human rights abuse.” Read More at: Harpers