Interesting. 5 personal attacks and not a single rebuttal. Come on guys, you should all be bright enough to do better than that. Here are the facts in sequence:
1. Both Bush and Cheney are past heads of O&G concerns where one of their largest overheads is the environmental hoops they have to jump through to engage in exploration activities. The easy money discoveries have been prospect short for at least the last 3 years as far as US exploration is concerned.
2. Approximately 4 months before Bush took office, his major campaign contributors were engaged in energy price manipulation scams that jacked O&G prices to record levels.
3. Almost the first thing Bush did once he got in office was to start pushing for access to environmentally protected reserves for O&G exploration.
4. By Summer of 2001 it was fairly obvious proposals to open up ANWR had been shot down in flames.
5. At about the same time Cheney was in regular, secret meetings with a number of energy concerns, including Enron, and it should have been obvious to those in the know that Enron was about to implode before the end of the year.
6. 9/11. Two jets hit the WTC, one crashes, and one chips the paint on the Pentagon. Over twenty foreign residents have been taking hijacking lessons, no questions asked. Damage to the WTC greatly exceeds the analysis of experts. No communications between the hijackers and the control towers are ever released to the public. No demands or threats were made prior to the event, and no chest pounding, credit taking claims were made afterward.
7. Bush again makes another push for opening protected reserves, without success, and begins his "war on terror".
8. Afganistan, a nothing country, with no assets to speak of, is bombed with impunity. George puts on his hero suit and spends a lot of time waving his sword while the American economy goes to hell in a hand basket.
9. Anthrax is very selectively mailed to a limited number of American politicians and media representatives. The anthrax was of American origin and is not something easily obtained at Safeway. No credit was ever claimed for the attacks, no suspect was ever detained, and it was highly publicized.
10. Out of the clear blue sky, and without any provocation whatsoever, the "war on terror" turns into a war with Iraq. As the country with the second largest oil reserves in the world, the only certain outcome of war is a serious disruption to their ability to produce in excess of 2 million barrels a day in oil, which is largely exported to non US countries.
11. Every concession made by Iraq in the past 4 months has been met with renewed threats and new demands by the White House. The White House has launched world wide advertising campaigns to promote war, and has made multi-billion dollar aid commitments to any country willing to support the war effort. And the American public has been bombarded night and day by a media blitz by the White House to brain wash the public into believing the only way to prevent 9/11's is to disrupt Iraqi oil production.
12. The obvious outcome of shutting down Iraqi oil production is public and political support to exploit exploration in the existing American reserves currently under protection for environmental reasons. A few months of $2+ regular will have even the most devoted tree hugger screaming for more oil, and George is just the guy to step up with a solution while pointing out how offering cheap leases to his oil buddies will help reduce the budget deficit.
13. The oil reserves in ANWR are estimated to be 16 billion barrels. At $30 per barrel, the oil is worth half a trillion dollars.
I like to keep things simple. If you want to know who did what to who, all you have to do is follow the money to see who cashes the check. George is the only clear winner. It would have been totally impossible for him to make as much progress toward his goal of shutting down Iraqi oil production and opening ANWR without 9/11. "Everything just sorta happened and just sorta fell into place for George" is a possible explanation, but Occam's razor cuts that theory to shreds. If you want to know where someone is going, watch their feet and not their mouth.
The consensus that the best way to deal with the facts is through the use of medication, I find interesting, but somewhat counter productive. Hopefully you'll all be able to do a little better than that on your next round of responses. |
