Home > Jay Bookman > Archives > 2008 > July > 01
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Dr. Newt’s patent medicine
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I just got a Fourth of July email from Newt Gingrich, in which he claims that if Americans act now, we can immediately and dramatically lower gasoline and diesel prices just by taking “three simple steps.”
If you click through to a Youtube video, you learn that those things are 1.) Open the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; 2.) exploit “America’s vast reserves of shale oil” and 3.) open off-shore areas to drilling.
No mention of conservation or fuel efficiency, etc. All gain, no pain, with a dramatic drop in fuel prices almost guaranteed. It all sounds so easy.
The funny thing is, tagged onto the end of the Gingrich email is a paid commercial advertisement touting a “Breakthrough Announcement from Dr. Al Sears:”
“The Secret is out! Burn fat and drop pounds in as little as 10 minutes a day - without going to the gym!
At last! Dr. Sears’ patented PACE® program is available to you right now! … PACE© proves once-and-for-all that a great body and vibrant health does NOT have to be difficult, time consuming or boring. …..”
Exact same pitch, just a different product.
Permalink | Comments (50) | Post your comment |
Oil and the invasion of Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
From the beginning, oil played a critical role in drawing us to invade Iraq. As former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan says in his memoirs, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: The Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Iraq boasts the world’s second or third biggest oil reserves, depending on who you believe. Without that oil, Iraq would have been Sudan or Rwanda or Zimbabwe or Myanmar, another sad place where brutality and repression rule and the United States has no strategic interest.
However, I think it’s an exaggeration to claim that we invaded to simply seize Iraq’s oil and make it our own, although the U.S. military as far back as the ’70s has had plans to seize Arab oil fields and turn them over to some sort of international management. Our goal was a little less blatant, and a little more grand.
We went into Iraq in part to ensure that its oil kept flowing and to boost that flow if possible, and also to ensure the continued flow of oil from neighboring Kuwait and Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. We went into Iraq to establish permanent bases in that country, bases we could use to intimidate Iran into obedience and to turn the Gulf region into an American protectorate that looks to the U.S. for its security.
In such a situation, we would not own the oil in question nor claim the profits from its sale, but we would have a lot of strategic influence over how and to whom that oil was sold. And anybody who thinks that wasn’t the case is more than a little naive — maybe willfully naive — about how the world works.
Services »
