The Truth Leaks…
Finally, a Repug tells the truth straight up. Ohmygawd, Iraq is about oil! Go figure.
How much better would Iraq have played if Bushco had the integrity and vision to proffer the following argument in 2001:
We’re in a period of Peak Oil where our entire way of life will be dramatically altered within the next 50 years.
We will work collaboratively with Saddam Hussein to work out a mutually beneficial arrangement for the drilling, processing and distribution of Iraqi oil. Because of the fact that Iraq’s oil is a critical strategic resource, if we cannot reach a mutually beneficial arrangement with Saddam, we will do what’s necessary to protect our national interest, up to and including seizing and operating Iraq’s oil fields.
Simultaneously, we will create and fund an all-out energy independence program on a level unseen since the Manhattan Project which will reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 35% in five years and eliminate it completely within 15 years.
Had Bush done this instead of waging this insane quasi-religious war on terrorism, I think a number of things would have happened. Saddam would have played ball and we would not have gone to war at all. He was more Tony Soprano than Osama bin Laden and knew a good deal when he saw it. We’d have 4,000 more soldiers alive and well, 25,000 more walking around healthy and happy. We’d be a trillion dollars more solvent than we are now. We’d have had a technology explosion that would have perpetuated our economy and global leadership for generations. George W. Bush would have had that smarmy what-me-worry doofus grin sculpted on Mt. Rushmore.
Posted: September 12th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 2
Comments
Comment from Max von Schuler-Kobayashi
Time: September 13, 2007, 8:27 am
I think that this will come out as President Bush’s greatest disservice and dishonesty to the Nation. I have linked to this before and will again.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency
This is a description of what life in America will become without oil. People will work as feudal serfs on mega farms for food. The main form of transportation will be the horse. This story is still fiction of course, but I fear it has all too much chance of becoming reality.
One thing that the article does not mention. Two thirds of Americans are obese. They will not survive a walk to look for food when the gas runs out, nor will they survive strenuous farm work. Many will die.
In Japan, we have electric trains that cover the country. John McCreery of this board lives in Yokohama, and I live in Tokyo, but I think that he will agree with me that the 30 million people of the Tokyo/Yokohama metropolitan area live within 1 kilometer or less from an electric train line. That is walking distance. Also, we have electric train lines that join all the cities of Japan into a net. Electric trains can be run from nuclear generated electricity.
In Japan, if internal combustion vehicles disappeared tomorrow, there would be difficulty, but the Japanese nation could survive. Goods and people could still travel.
I am afraid that this is not the case for America. America is totally dependent on fossil fuels to move goods and people from place to place. And it would take some years even with a crash program to build electric rail nets across the country.
Along with Global Warming, I do fear that this is the great danger facing the USA.
Yet rather than address and mobilize the American people, the Bush administration took the cowardly way of starting a war under false pretenses, with the objective of gaining controi over most of the world’s oil. the problems that I mentioned above would be put off for a generation or two.
The very unfortunate thing is, the war is lost, and America has failed to gain control of the oil, and now we are really in trouble.
The concept of Peak Oil is rearing it’s head again. If you go to Tomdispatch, the author Tom Englehardt, has an excellent article called Trouble oil. Most oil left is in politically unstable nations, or very deep geologically. Yes, new oil fields have been found in the Gulf of Mexico. But they are very deep, it is going to a huge engineering challenge to get to them. We will need trained scientists and engineers if this is to succeed. Yet too many American Science courses now seem to written according to what some feel are Biblical principles. Praying is not going to get the oil out. And merely getting a few more sources is not going to solve the problem.
We have to change the way we live. Or perish from the face of the Earth.
Comment from Max von Schuler-Kobayashi
Time: September 13, 2007, 8:49 am
Here that link to the Tomdispatch article.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174829/michael_klare_tough_oil_on_tap
It is called Tough oil, not Trouble oil, but you get the picture. Not good any way you look at it.
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