2007-05-01

It takes oil to take oil

Whether the US invaded Iraq to gain access to oil supplies remains a topic of some debate, with this blog forming a bunker of opposition to the idea. Whether in taking and holding Iraq, the military is burning through a whole lot of oil -- that question is settled. Yes, it is -- and more intensively all the time.

In World War II, the United States consumed about a gallon of fuel per soldier per day ... In the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, about 4 gallons of fuel per soldier was consumed per day. In 2006, the US operations in Iraq and Afghanistan burned about 16 gallons of fuel per soldier on average per day , almost twice as much as the year before.


Yes, a journalist committed treason by reporting these facts, but didn't dig them up. It comes from a study by a defense consultant commissioned by the DoD. Not that the journalist, as well as the traitor who leaked the report, wouldn't benefit from a stint in Gitmo. This sort of stuff hardly bolsters the war effort.

Said the consultant's president: ""We are at the edge of a precipice and we have one foot over the edge. The only way to avoid going over is to move forward and move forward aggressively with initiatives to develop alternative fuels. Just cutting back won't work."

Who does this punk think he is--Al Gore? Off with his head.

3 comments:

Paul Hue said...

I think it's preposterous to believe that Bush invaded Iraq to get the same oil deals for US oil companies that all the other Muslim world tyrants provide. Why doesn't Bush just invade all the other oil countries? I don't get it.

In any case, Tom, you seem to believe that I consider it treasonous for US reporters to reveal the facts of the war, or for people to dissent. I do not, though I do believe that these dispatches certainly to help the enemy and hurt the US war effort. I fault Bush for not accounting for the following: a modern democracy waging a war will have no secrets, and will have domestic reporters, politicians, and "activists" loudly behaving in ways that effectively serve the purposes of the enemy.

This does not mean that I advocate US presidents instigating any war that they want, and that all citizens should zip their lips and cheer the war until the bitter end. Rather, it means that I advocate US presidents taking this fact into account when they decide to launch a war, no matter how just they feel it is.

I share some of the criticisms from you devoted leftists (torture, etc.), and others absurd (Bush keeps changing the rationale for war). In either case, because this is a democracy, such criticisms hurt the war effort. If you and Nadir oppose the war, I think that you guys have an obligation as citizens of a democracy to loudly oppose it. Conversely, a war president of a democracy must account for that in all of his war strategies. I feel that one fallacy of Bush's war is that he failed to account for you domestic US-haters.

Tom Philpott said...

I know you don't grow apopoleptic at war criticism; I was thinking of Six, and his jeremiads against the press for daring speaking up against Israeli or U.S. excesses.

Paul Hue said...

Tom: I think that Six's view is close to mine, though his writing apparently doesn't communicate that to you. I don't think that he wants to engender US presidents with the capacity to declare any wars that they want, and then to expect all citizens to clamp their lips and support whatever Dear Leader has committed US troops to.

Six?