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Sorry, it's true. Get over it.
--
"What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Surely, He that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and God-like reason to fust in us unused."
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 8, 2008 4:35 AM
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> Sorry, it's true. Get over it.
>
> --
> "What is a man, if his chief good and market of his
> time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
> Surely, He that made us with such large discourse,
> , looking before and after, gave us not that
> capability and God-like reason to fust in us unused."
brdo,
200 watts a what, hon? minute? day?
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 8, 2008 2:01 AM
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> Really, I don't know much about how much energy
> windmills generate. Or how much they cost.
way inefficient. about $1000 for panels that generate 200 watts.
--
"What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Surely, He that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and God-like reason to fust in us unused."
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 8, 2008 1:56 AM
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Yes, they're pretty in Holland. And I suppose if you live in areas where you can fit a windmill in your yard, that's fine. But here in NJ.....in some areas......or in major cities.....I just don't see windmills being the thing.
I have a fairly large five bedroom home, 4.5 baths and a finished basement, 3 zone heat. I can't imagine how many windmills I'd need to run this place or how big they would have to be. I'd have to excavate my woodland back yard to get them in there or the branches would get caught up in the thing or block the wind from even working it.
Really, I don't know much about how much energy windmills generate. Or how much they cost.
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 8, 2008 1:41 AM
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CBaz,
uhh...lol....I'm in Kansas, hon. We have a little decorative aluminum windmill in the yard...
They're pretty in Holland!
We could make them prettier. Industry always resists beauty until consumers force the issue. I'm typing on a drab gray plastic computer as we speak...lol
But agree, hon, it's idiotic that our car companies are going belly up because even after the 70s gas prices they kept cranking out gas hawgs and by now solar panels for roofs should be super cheap.
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 8, 2008 1:38 AM
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I think I saw something tonight on tv about Toyota installing solar panels on the roof of one or some of it's car models to run the air conditioners. Clever.
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 8, 2008 1:00 AM
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It bothers me that solar panels are being manufactured outside the US and they're popping up all over Europe, but we invented the technology. Right now, what average American can afford to put solar panels on their home? I wish I could. They're sure as hell better looking than friggin' windmills on the roof. I really don't see windmills as becoming a big selling point, do you? They're really not aethestically pleasing.
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 8, 2008 12:53 AM
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That bill is H.R. 6049 ? ?The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008,? which extends for another eight years the investment tax credit for installing solar energy and extends for one year the production tax credit for producing wind power and for three years the credits for geothermal, wave energy and other renewables.
These critical tax credits for renewables are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year and, if they do, it will mean thousands of jobs lost and billions of dollars of investments not made. ?Already clean energy projects in the U.S. are being put on hold,? said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.
People forget, wind and solar power are here, they work, they can go on your roof tomorrow. What they need now is a big U.S. market where lots of manufacturers have an incentive to install solar panels and wind turbines ? because the more they do, the more these technologies would move down the learning curve, become cheaper and be able to compete directly with coal, oil and nuclear, without subsidies.
That seems to be exactly what the Republican Party is trying to block, since the Senate Republicans ? sorry to say, with the help of John McCain ? have now managed to defeat the renewal of these tax credits six different times.
CBaz,
Doesn't that just seem insane?
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 7, 2008 11:58 PM
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June 22, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Mr. Bush, Lead or Leave
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Two years ago, President Bush declared that America was ?addicted to oil,? and, by gosh, he was going to do something about it. Well, now he has. Now we have the new Bush energy plan: ?Get more addicted to oil.?
Actually, it?s more sophisticated than that: Get Saudi Arabia, our chief oil pusher, to up our dosage for a little while and bring down the oil price just enough so the renewable energy alternatives can?t totally take off. Then try to strong arm Congress into lifting the ban on drilling offshore and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
It?s as if our addict-in-chief is saying to us: ?C?mon guys, you know you want a little more of the good stuff. One more hit, baby. Just one more toke on the ole oil pipe. I promise, next year, we?ll all go straight. I?ll even put a wind turbine on my presidential library. But for now, give me one more pop from that drill, please, baby. Just one more transfusion of that sweet offshore crude.?
It is hard for me to find the words to express what a massive, fraudulent, pathetic excuse for an energy policy this is. But it gets better. The president actually had the gall to set a deadline for this drug deal:
?I know the Democratic leaders have opposed some of these policies in the past,? Mr. Bush said. ?Now that their opposition has helped drive gas prices to record levels, I ask them to reconsider their positions. If Congressional leaders leave for the Fourth of July recess without taking action, they will need to explain why $4-a-gallon gasoline is not enough incentive for them to act.?
This from a president who for six years resisted any pressure on Detroit to seriously improve mileage standards on its gas guzzlers; this from a president who?s done nothing to encourage conservation; this from a president who has so neutered the Environmental Protection Agency that the head of the E.P.A. today seems to be in a witness-protection program. I bet there aren?t 12 readers of this newspaper who could tell you his name or identify him in a police lineup.
But, most of all, this deadline is from a president who hasn?t lifted a finger to broker passage of legislation that has been stuck in Congress for a year, which could actually impact America?s energy profile right now ? unlike offshore oil that would take years to flow ? and create good tech jobs to boot.
That bill is H.R. 6049 ? ?The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008,? which extends for another eight years the investment tax credit for installing solar energy and extends for one year the production tax credit for producing wind power and for three years the credits for geothermal, wave energy and other renewables.
These critical tax credits for renewables are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year and, if they do, it will mean thousands of jobs lost and billions of dollars of investments not made. ?Already clean energy projects in the U.S. are being put on hold,? said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.
People forget, wind and solar power are here, they work, they can go on your roof tomorrow. What they need now is a big U.S. market where lots of manufacturers have an incentive to install solar panels and wind turbines ? because the more they do, the more these technologies would move down the learning curve, become cheaper and be able to compete directly with coal, oil and nuclear, without subsidies.
That seems to be exactly what the Republican Party is trying to block, since the Senate Republicans ? sorry to say, with the help of John McCain ? have now managed to defeat the renewal of these tax credits six different times.
Of course, we?re going to need oil for years to come. That being the case, I?d prefer ? for geopolitical reasons ? that we get as much as possible from domestic wells. But our future is not in oil, and a real president wouldn?t be hectoring Congress about offshore drilling today. He?d be telling the country a much larger truth:
?Oil is poisoning our climate and our geopolitics, and here is how we?re going to break our addiction: We?re going to set a floor price of $4.50 a gallon for gasoline and $100 a barrel for oil. And that floor price is going to trigger massive investments in renewable energy ? particularly wind, solar panels and solar thermal. And we?re also going to go on a crash program to dramatically increase energy efficiency, to drive conservation to a whole new level and to build more nuclear power. And I want every Democrat and every Republican to join me in this endeavor.?
That?s what a real president would do. He?d give us a big strategic plan to end our addiction to oil and build a bipartisan coalition to deliver it. He certainly wouldn?t be using his last days in office to threaten Congressional Democrats that if they don?t approve offshore drilling by the Fourth of July recess, they will be blamed for $4-a-gallon gas. That is so lame. That is an energy policy so unworthy of our Independence Day.
_________________
How true.
--
Edited by CBaz128 at 07/07/2008 8:59 PM PDT
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 7, 2008 12:58 AM
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CBaz,
Here is the original NY Times article referenced in the one I posted written on the Think Progress site this week. As you can see, Think Progress's article was indeed accurate.
Fears, Again, of Oil Supplies at Risk
By NEELA BANERJEE
Published: October 14, 2001
THEY are the nightmares, the worst confluence of misguided decisions and startling violence, that politicians and oil executives ponder briefly and then shoo away:
That sympathizers of Osama bin Laden sink three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and choke off the narrow, bow-shaped channel that funnels 14 million barrels a day from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. That the United States attacks Iraq, and Israel launches a huge strike against the Palestinians, driving them from their camps and staking out more land -- all of which spurs the Persian Gulf states to cut off oil for the West. Or perhaps that a popular uprising, led by sympathizers of Mr. bin Laden, topples the ruling Saud family in Saudi Arabia, by far the world's largest oil producer.
''If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he'd turn off the tap,'' said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. ''He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel'' -- about six times what it sells for now.
The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the subsequent battering of the global economy have stretched the edges of imagination. Most Western politicians and oil industry experts say they believe assurances from the Middle East that oil supplies will stay stable as the American-led attacks on terrorist groups continue. But in such a profoundly changed world, they concede, anything is possible.
If there is a serious disruption of oil supplies, it will probably not be in Venezuela or in the North Sea, but in the countries of the Persian Gulf. Those countries have taken the politically risky position of siding with the West, however quietly, in the campaign against Mr. bin Laden, thereby alienating many of their own citizens. And the proof of their support for the West is in the oil that OPEC nations continue to ship, recently forgoing a production cut even as they faced falling prices that rob them of revenue.
By attacking oil supplies or the Middle East regimes themselves, Mr. bin Laden's supporters would strike a powerful blow against the West.
The United States' own oil production and that of its allies in the Western Hemisphere could not take up the slack. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a stockpile created in 1975 to deal with such emergencies in the United States, could cover the lost oil for a time, but its efficacy would depend on the length and size of the disruption. Congress is looking for ways to add to the reserve, but it remains unclear whether the money could be found to acquire the oil quickly. New oil fields could not begin pumping fast enough to make up for the shortfall, and they would not produce enough anyway. The United States has only 3 percent of the world's known oil reserves.
The country's ability to navigate such a rocky period, industry experts said, ultimately depends on how much American society scales back its prodigious consumption of oil. High prices and lower supplies pushed the United States to trim its use of oil in the 1980's, but the country now relies more than ever on imports. Imports account for 60 percent of daily American oil consumption, up from 47 percent a decade ago. ''We can't just blame Detroit for higher oil consumption,'' said Jay Hakes, the former director of the Energy Information Administration, the analytical arm of the Energy Department. ''We're all in this. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.''
As far back as the Truman administration, when automobile use started to soar, the United States has grappled with where to get oil and how much to pay for it, Mr. Hakes pointed out. The nation has always faced a choice. It could rely on its own small output but pay much higher prices for it and for alternative energy sources. Or it could open itself up to imports from places like the Persian Gulf, increasing its economic and political vulnerability. It chose the latter.
The United States gets only about 13 percent of its daily dose of oil from the Persian Gulf states, and that is down from 23 percent a decade ago. But those countries produce 18 percent of the world's oil, and a significant disruption in their output would set off price spikes, if not outright shortages. The turmoil in the region during the last three decades frequently aroused fears, sometimes well-founded, of oil supply disruptions.
BUFFETED by repeated wars, the Persian Gulf states have long been aware of the need to protect their pipelines and oil fields, and industry experts familiar with the region say those countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, have heightened security since Sept. 11.
No system, however, is impregnable. Terrorists in a dinghy in the Persian Gulf could launch missiles at offshore rigs or Saudi fields, some of which are just a few miles inland. They could rupture a pipeline. They could attack the string of oil loading docks along the Persian Gulf, or on the Red Sea to the West, from which 500,000 to 6 million barrels a day are shipped. An attack could disable an oil processing facility, which separates the hydrocarbons from other liquids, and remove 200,000 to 400,000 barrels a day from the market.
But while a successful attack on the Middle East's oil infrastructure could rattle the markets, most analysts say it would have little impact on global supplies. ''They are likely to be nuisances rather than major disruptions because there are multiple redundancies in the system,'' said Lawrence J. Goldstein, president of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, an industry-supported group that runs a consulting business in New York. ''There are other loading, storage and shipping possibilities to get oil in and out. The real trouble would be only if countries cut off oil supplies, and that won't happen.''
The chances are slim -- for now. But Mr. bin Laden has long made clear that his ultimate goal, more than wreaking havoc in the West, is toppling the Saud family. And Saudi Arabia would be a crucial target for anyone seeking to cut deeply into the world oil flow.
''The Saudis are the linchpin,'' said Ronald E. Minsk, an energy adviser to former President Bill Clinton. ''It's because they have so much more oil than anybody.''
Saudi Arabia exports about eight million barrels a day and is the biggest single supplier of oil to the United States, accounting for 1.7 million barrels a day. The world's No. 2 exporter, Russia, which is not a member of OPEC, exports only 2.9 million barrels. The Saudis are the only ones with enough spare oil-field capacity to call on if there is a severe disruption elsewhere. Although Saudi Arabia led the 1973 oil embargo to protest American support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, it later stepped in to make up shortfalls of millions of barrels a day caused by conflicts in the Middle East, including the Iranian revolution, the Iran-Iraq war and the Persian Gulf war.
Even over the past year, as Iraq intermittently curtailed its exports of two million barrels a day to demand changes in the United Nations sanctions against it, Saudi Arabia acted as the ''swing producer,'' making up much of the difference.
Short of withering in the grip of a coup d'état, Saudi Arabia's oil exports could be cut if its rulers decide that they no longer can afford to support the United States-led campaign against terrorism. If the bombings kill many civilians or if the war expands quickly, the Saudis may feel that they have no choice but to veer away from the United States and reduce the flow of oil.
''The only way I see that happening is if the U.S. would continue to pick targets that would include Middle Eastern oil-producing countries -- and how many it picked -- and if it were done in a unilateral way,'' said Marianne Kah, chief economist at Conoco. ''But if it continues its multilateral approach, and includes friendly Arab countries, that won't happen.''
Even in the case of state overthrow somewhere in the Middle East, she said, the flow of oil would be likely to continue. ''Usually anyone in power wants oil revenues,'' she said, ''though that may not be true for Osama bin Laden, who wants to live in a cave.''
If oil supplies from the Middle East dwindle, the impact on the United States would not be acute shortages, at least for a few months. Less of its oil comes from the Persian Gulf now, and more from Canada, Mexico and Venezuela.
Instead, a sharp drop in oil supplies would set off a steep rise in prices. How long they stay high would depend on the length and the severity of any cuts. The United States has few options to increase supply and damp a price surge. Oil fields in the United States and most of the rest of the world are running close to full capacity, except, as luck would have it, in the Persian Gulf. New fields, regardless of the promise they hold, take several years to bring on stream.
''There is a big lag time between when you drill exploratory wells and when you get production,'' Ms. Kah said. Although the Bush administration and the oil industry have long pushed to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, delivering oil from there would mean ''expanding the oil pipeline in Alaska to handle the extra volume, and then you would be sending the oil down at the soonest in three or four years.''
DURING the Persian Gulf war, the government tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to make up for expected shortages. The United States now has less oil in the reserve than it did then, and it would not go as far in the event of a supply disruption, explained Mr. Goldstein of the Petroleum Industry Research Foundation. In the early 1990's, the reserve, stored in underground caverns in Texas and Louisiana that can hold up to 700 million barrels, contained about 590 million barrels. At the time, that would have lasted about 82 days with no imports.
The reserve has nearly as much now -- about 545 million barrels -- but today that would last just 53 days, according to the Department of Energy. That is because the United States consumes more oil now, and imports much more of it. Elsewhere in the industrialized world, including countries like Germany and Japan that have no oil fields, imports have remained flat, largely because of conservation and high fuel taxes, Mr. Diwan of the Petroleum Finance Company said.
The United States, with just 5 percent of the world's population, has an enormous appetite for oil: it goes through 19 million barrels a day, or nearly one-quarter of the world total of about 76 million barrels. Imports increased about 4.5 million barrels a day in the last decade. To put it in perspective, Mr. Diwan pointed out, Germany and France together consume 4.7 million barrels a day.
The dependence on foreign oil and the lack of a backup plan, either in the form of a bolstered reserve or conservation, evolved in large part because the United States thought Saudi Arabia would again make up for any supply disruption. ''In the 90's, we let a lot of things slide,'' said Mr. Hakes, the former Energy Department official. ''We quit improving the efficiency of automobiles. We quit buying oil'' for the reserve.
''It's not anything that would have made us fully independent,'' he said, ''but every little bit helps, so you get a full slap in the face.''
The price shocks from a serious disruption in oil supplies would course through every quarter of the United States economy. Prices for gasoline and jet fuel would jump, hamstringing commuters and businesses alike. Heating-oil prices would climb. The drain on people's incomes and companies' revenue would further sap a weakened economy.
Most major oil companies, like Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch/Shell, and large independent refiners like Valero Energy get substantial amounts of oil from Saudi Arabia. Oil companies declined to comment officially on the impact of a disruption, but some industry executives said privately that if the Saudis continued to ship oil elsewhere, American oil concerns could buy it through third parties, although at higher prices. If an embargo turned global, American companies could get some oil from the petroleum reserve before that ran out.
The House of Representatives recently passed a nonbinding resolution that urges the Energy Department to procure more oil for the reserve, but it appropriates no money for the effort. That, in effect, will do nothing to fill the reserves fast. Mr. Goldstein estimated that if Congress allocated about $1.5 billion for buying oil for the reserve, an additional 60 million barrels would flow into the caverns by April -- on top of the 20.7 million the reserve already expects to receive by the end of the year. Oil prices are lower than they have been in two years, and as the global economy stalls and demand drops, they could go even lower.
''We could buy the oil from OPEC, and because it is not a commercial sale, the members would not be violating their production quotas,'' Mr. Goldstein said. ''It wouldn't push up prices, because oil demand is so low. It buys us flexibility, because none of us know what tomorrow will look like.''
IF prices surge in response to a break in oil supplies, American political leaders and consumers will have to think about lifestyle changes needed to cope with supply disruptions. Most fuel used in the United States is for transportation, as people buy bigger cars and travel farther daily. If the pain is bad enough, the government may dust off old ideas like enforced carpooling or a return to the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit.
But more than anything else, consumers would be likely to react on their own. In 1981, during the Iran-Iraq war, oil prices hit $40 a barrel. By 1986, they had dropped to $12, largely because of reduced demand. ''Prices go up, people consume less,'' Mr. Diwan said. ''The market really does work.''
--
Edited by RainyKincaid at 07/06/2008 9:59 PM PDT
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 7, 2008 12:51 AM
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LOL
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 7, 2008 12:43 AM
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> The Center was often featured prominently on the Al
> Franken Show on the Air America Radio network, where
> Christy Harvey and Franken discussed at length
> alleged dishonesty and incompetence in the Bush
> Administration.
Bullshit. To know that someone would have actually had to listen to Air America and we know that didn't happen.
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 7, 2008 12:39 AM
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Think Progress is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The Center for American Progress Action Fund (supposedly) is a nonpartisan organization. With the blog, CAPAF seeks to provide a forum that advances progressive ideas and policies. However, ThinkProgress was voted ?Best Liberal Blog? in the 2006 Weblog Awards. http://thinkprogress.org/about/
Faiz Sakir is is the Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Editor-in-Chief of ThinkProgress.org and The Progress Report.
Now, The Center for American Progress publishes a daily email newsletter entitled The Progress Report, which is a recap and analysis of major political news in the United States, providing a progressive perspective on the day's stories. The authors are Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matthew Corley, Ali Frick, and Benjamin Armbruster. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_American_Progress
The Center was often featured prominently on the Al Franken Show on the Air America Radio network, where Christy Harvey and Franken discussed at length alleged dishonesty and incompetence in the Bush Administration.
The Center has no information on its Web site about its funding, but the Washington Post reported that "seed money pledged by such deep-pocketed Democrats as regular liberal financier George Soros (and mortgage billionaires Herbert and Marion Sandler)" assisted its formation. The authors of Her Way, a biography of Hillary Clinton, also assert that the Democracy Alliance, a liberal donors collective, has funded the Center. They also assert that the Sandlers and Soros provided seed money.
So, connecting those dots and considering the source, not sure I trust the information coming out of that site. More importantly, however, it goes back to what I said before, RK, about your research preferences being biased.
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 6, 2008 1:11 PM
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US oil company profits were 6.5 billion in '02, last year they were 30 billion.
CBaz,
Don't you see, hon??
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 6, 2008 1:04 PM
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CBaz,
Try to put the pieces together in your mind, hon.
from Think Progress:
FLASHBACK: Ten Years Ago, Bin Laden Demanded Barrel Of Oil Should Cost $144»
In a 1998 interview, Osama bin Laden ? the terrorist organizer of 9/11 who still roams free ? listed as one of his many grievances against the U.S. that Americans ?have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims? by purchasing oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. The real price of a barrel of oil should be $144, bin Laden demanded.
Ten years ago today, the price of a barrel of oil was just $11. Heading into this holiday weekend, the price of a barrel of oil rested at $144 ? a thirteen-fold increase.
One month after 9/11, the New York Times wrote of possible ?nightmare? scenarios that would deliver bin Laden?s goal. Neela Banerjee warned that among the ?misguided decisions? that would put oil supplies at risk would be ?that the United States attacks Iraq.? The Times included this quote in its story:
?If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he?d turn off the tap,? said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. ?He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel? ? about six times what it sells for now.
Bin Laden didn?t have to become king of Saudi Arabia to achieve his goal; in fact, Bush?s policies delivered it for him. The Bush administration?s catastrophic decision to invade Iraq, sink the nation into debt to pay for that war, and consequently, weaken the dollar have all caused oil prices to soar astronomically.
Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee last May, Anne Korin, the co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, reminded Congress about bin Laden?s goal:
[A]bout ten years ago, Osama bin Laden stated that his target price for oil is $144 a barrel and that the American people, who allegedly robbed the Muslim people of their oil, owe each Muslim man, woman, and child $30,000 in back payments. At the time, $144 a barrel seemed farfetched to most. [?]
I would like to impress upon this Committee that $144 a barrel oil will be perceived as a victory for the Jihadist movement and a reaffirmation that the economic warfare component of its campaign against the West is a resounding success. There is no need to elaborate on the implications of such a victory in terms of loss of U.S. prestige and our ability to prevail in the Long War of the 21st century.
Indeed, ten years later, a mission accomplished for bin Laden.
************************************
NY Times article yesterday explaining how Bush let the current oil crisis happen:
American Energy Policy, Asleep at the Spigot
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/business/06oil.html?_r=
2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=
1215363670-oqZbpOiKMTreYgsHOBFptA
*************************************
It Was Oil, All Along
Iraq | War
by Bill Moyers | June 28, 2008 - 4:03pm
By Bill Moyers and Michael Winship
Oh, no, they told us, Iraq isn't a war about oil. That's cynical and simplistic, they said. It's about terror and al Qaeda and toppling a dictator and spreading democracy and protecting ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. But one by one, these concocted rationales went up in smoke, fire, and ashes. And now the bottom line turns out to be....the bottom line. It is about oil.
Alan Greenspan said so last fall. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve, safely out of office, confessed in his memoir, "...Everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." He elaborated in an interview with the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, "If Saddam Hussein had been head of Iraq and there was no oil under those sands, our response to him would not have been as strong as it was in the first gulf war."
Remember, also, that soon after the invasion, Donald Rumsfeld's deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, told the press that war was our only strategic choice. "...We had virtually no economic options with Iraq," he explained, "because the country floats on a sea of oil."
Shades of Daniel Plainview, the monstrous petroleum tycoon in the movie There Will Be Blood. Half-mad, he exclaims, "There's a whole ocean of oil under our feet!" then adds, "No one can get at it except for me!"
No wonder American troops only guarded the Ministries of Oil and the Interior in Baghdad, even as looters pillaged museums of their priceless antiquities. They were making sure no one could get at the oil except... guess who?
Here's a recent headline in The New York Times: "Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." Read on: "Four western companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power."
There you have it. After a long exile, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are back in Iraq. And on the wings of no-bid contracts - that's right, sweetheart deals like those given Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater. The kind of deals you get only if you have friends in high places. And these war profiteers have friends in very high places.
Let's go back a few years to the 1990's, when private citizen Dick Cheney was running Halliburton, the big energy supplier. That's when he told the oil industry that, "By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
Fast forward to Cheney's first heady days in the White House. The oil industry and other energy conglomerates have been headed backdoor keys to the White House, and their CEO's and lobbyists were trooping in and out for meetings with their old opal, now Vice President Cheney. The meetings are secret, conducted under tight security, but as we reported five years ago, among the documents that turned up from some of those meetings were maps of oil fields in Iraq - and a list of companies who wanted access to them. The conservative group Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club filed suit to try to find out who attended the meetings and what was discussed, but the White House fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep the press and public from learning the whole truth.
Think about it. These secret meetings took place six months before 9/11, two years before Bush and Cheney invaded Iraq. We still don't know what they were about. What we know is that this is the oil industry that's enjoying swollen profits these days. It would be laughable if it weren't so painful to remember that their erstwhile cheerleader for invading Iraq - the press mogul Rupert Murdoch - once said that a successful war there would bring us $20 a barrel of oil. The last time we looked, it was more than $140 a barrel. Where are you, Rupert, when the facts need checking and the predictions are revisited?
At a congressional hearing this week, James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist who exactly twenty years ago alerted Congress and the world to the dangers of global warming, compared the chief executives of Big Oil to the tobacco moguls who denied that nicotine is addictive or that there's a link between smoking and cancer. Hansen, who the administration has tried again and again to silence, said these barons of black gold should be tried for committing crimes against humanity and nature in opposing efforts to deal with global warming.
Perhaps those sweetheart deals in Iraq should be added to his proposed indictments. They have been purchased at a very high price. Four thousand American soldiers dead, tens of thousands permanently wounded for life, hundreds of thousands of dead and crippled Iraqis plus five million displaced, and a cost that will mount into trillions of dollars. The political analyst Kevin Phillips says America has become little more than an "energy protection force," doing anything to gain access to expensive fuel without regard to the lives of others or the earth itself. One thinks again of Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood. His lust for oil came at the price of his son and his soul.
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Posts:
2,130
Registered:
4/11/08
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Re: Clark was right: Being a POW doesn't qualify you to be President
Jul 6, 2008 12:46 PM
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LOL. Obama in Tora Bora.....
You said: That's kind of a silly statement. We "don't know" where Osama Bin Laden is. But I'm willing to bet that he's in the basement of Crawford Ranch playing tennis on Bush's Wii.
I don't believe Bush ever had any desire to capture Bin Laden. He publicly announced, "I just don't spend that much time thinking about him." Bin Laden insured that Bush got everything he needed for his war, and a sufficient amount of terror to support his illegal and unconstitutional regime. In return, Bush has made sure that Bin Laden was never captured."
That's ridiculous shit. Really. And if we weren't interested in catching Bin Laden, then why have we caught so many of the #2s and #3s under his wing, like Sheik Mohammad? It's a pretty safe guess that Bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, surrounded by thousands of supporters and regrouping. If anyone is playing games in all of this, it's Pakistan.
It's also interesting to note here that according to Sayeed Ansari, Afghani Intelligence spokeman, it was Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence that were responsibile for the attempted assassination on Afghan Prez. Hamid Karzai in April.
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