Today President Bush was roused from his slumbering slouch to Babylon with the news that Americans are really mad about the price of gasoline for their vehicles. On the same day, the New York Times reported on the Army Corps of Engineers and KBR's astounding failure to build critical oil pipelines from the Iraqi oil fields to the shipyards. It is important to point out that the reason the pipelines had to be re-built is that the Air Force bombed a bridge, and the Army randomly decided not to re-build it. Meanwhile, terrorism is coming home to roost in Egypt, where over 30 people were killed in a bombing attack.
If I were a cynical neo-con, my plan for Iraq would be rebuild the oil pipelines, give all contracts exclusively to US companies, and lock down the US' own private dedicated oil colony for good. Depending on who you ask, Iraq has the second largest or the largest untapped reserves in the world. That could have helped the right wing machine stay in power. As I've pointed out before, this Administration is incompetent to carry out any task which it seeks to undertake. They can't even carry out their own sinister plans to capture a private oil bank. They can't get their own cronies in KBR to do their bidding. As far as I can tell, they can't seem to do anything except make absurd pronouncements about sexual activity and anything that might be scientifically verifiable.
After 9/11, American elected officials ranging from Congress to the White House had an unprecedented mandate to launch a war on terrorism. To those of us who identified petro-dictatorships as the single largest source of terrorist support (Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, etc.) 10 years ago, it is mind boggling, just earth-shatteringly stupid that the opporutnity to remove the stick from the petro-dictator's hand was not taken. Again, as I've pointed out before, if we had spent 500 billion on alternative energy, we could safely cut off all relations with the entirety of OPEC and then some.
Mr. Bush's utterly useless and pathetic offering, withholding government deposits to the strategic oil reserve is, just, well it's hard to find more ways to say stupid and pathetic. I think Sen. Barbara Mikulski said it best: "You said Iraqi oil would pay for the war. Ain't seen no money. Ain't seen no oil."
Chutzpah is the Jewish art of having one's cake and eating it. Mr. Bush has chutzpah in spades -- but not really. It's that awful WASP derivative of chutzpah known as hubris. All the pain and none of the laughs. Even though people are rioting for the wrong reason (gas prices), hopefully the American people will figure out that it is time to THROW THE BUMS OUT!
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