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12/09/2005:

"How Many Lives Should Be Spent To Keep America From Economic and Social Collapse?"

12/08/05 "ICH" -- -- "(I)t will take much more than the death of a few thousand soldiers and the addition of a few hundred billion to the U.S. government debt (200B adds 2.5% to America's debt load) to make them walk away from access to the hundreds of trillions of dollars, at current prices, worth of hydrocarbons that the region will extract over the next 50 years. (likely thousands of trillions at future prices)

Their financial if not moral calculus becomes even more understandable when you consider that even this amount is literally tiny when you compare it to the economic multiplier effect that having oil and gas allows to the industrialized world. The money multiplier is nothing to it. Consider. By some calculations every barrel of oil carries the equivalent of 23,200 man-hours of work in the physics sense of the term. Oil and natural gas are like air, water or soil, in that they are easy to take for granted until you lack them. (1) . . . Jeff Berg, Canadian political and peak oil analyst.

Using this thought provoking analysis for George’s motivations, it is easy to see why George relegated Afghanistan to second place in “The War on Terror”. Raising poppies for illegal heroin production, as profitable as it may be, is no match for the long-term profitability of Middle Eastern Oil. So, while we are counting bodies in the thousands, George, Dick and Donald may be preparing for body bags in the tens of thousands and may be in the process of reducing the Iraqi ownership of this oil using genocide. With fortunes this size at stake, it is no wonder the Iraqis needed a “good dose of democracy”. It is no wonder Iran and Syria are suddenly found to be in the sights of our “democratic” leader. It is no wonder George doesn’t appear to feel much remorse over the loss of a relatively small number of American soldiers nor pangs of guilt in asking Congress for relatively modest sums to maintain his war machine – and pay off campaign debts.

The reader may well ask, “Where will the military come up with the manpower necessary to maintain and/or supplement our present military force since recruitment is down to perilous levels for even the Pentagon’s present comparatively modest troop requirements - to say nothing of expanding or prolonging our manpower requirements? Of course the obvious answer is another military draft. However, that avenue is not without its perils to the Administration if one considers the rebellion of the American people toward the draft during Viet Nam and their actually having stopped the Viet Nam War partly because of the draft. Today, there is a vast difference in the American environment. Today, thanks to George’s war effort and its hysteria, America has set in place an atmosphere of “security” or suppression of freedom that was unknown during Viet Nam. George has now set in motion a precedent for suppressing dissent unparalleled in our American history.

Another expanding source of manpower might be the use of mercenaries – even considering their cost. If money is no object and monies spent on war are to be considered a long-term investment, then American and third world mercenaries present a virtually limitless supply of fighting personnel.

It has been calculated that our present American economic life style involves importing 6.36 million barrels of oil per day at a cost to our GNP of $426 million dollars per day – calculated on $67 per barrel oil. If oil goes to $100 per barrel, soldiers’ lives become even cheaper. We see how cheap life becomes if we consider:

”Its (Iraq’s) oil reserves were equal to those of Saudi Arabia; its reconstruction was estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars to American firms; while its strategic position made it an ideal place from which to project U.S. military power to the oil-rich Gulf and to a vast region beyond”.( 2)

This is the view that drove the Bush Administration to “retaliate” against Iraq for its non-existent participation in the 9/11 attacks on the US. However, it is unlikely that this is the view that allowed the Pentagon to send our troops into Iraq without body armor or proper vehicle armor. This unpreparedness of our troops for battle points to a much deeper weakness (or sickness) within our country’s defense establishment. One wonders if even corruption is sufficiently comprehensive to describe what should surely be considered a national disgrace, a national tragedy and a war crime. One wonders if even “politics” is a sufficiently offensive word to describe these “oversights”. If “stupidity” is the proper descriptive for what we have seen, we Americans are in even worse trouble than we thought.
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