Priming the Pump
Some years ago when Paul Wolfowitz was asked why we went to war in Iraq but not North Korea, he noted that Iraq “swims on a sea of oil.” [Update: Note worldwidehappieness‘ comment that the Guardian’s reporting on this–and therefore this syntax–took Wolfowitz’ quote out of context.] And while less obviously a war for oil, our presence in Afghanistan promises to keep the US in the “Great Game” in central asia fighting for oil. More recently, former US officials Zal Khalilzad and Jay Garner are cashing in on their Iraq experience to win oil contracts there.
Yet, as a Deloitte report lays out, our giant war machine requires more and more oil every year to go to war to control these oil resources. (h/t Danger Room)
Deloitte conducted a study of energy use in wartime from World War II (WWII) through the current Middle East wars, and found that there has been a 175% increase in gallons of fuel consumed per U.S. soldier per day since the Vietnam conflict. In today’s conflicts, fuel consumption is 22 gallons used, per soldier, per day, for an average annual increase of 2.6% in the last 40 years, with an expected 1.5% annual growth rate through 2017. This has been driven by several factors: the increasing mechanization of technologies used in wartime, the expeditionary nature of conflict requiring mobility over long distances, and the rugged terrain and the irregular warfare nature of operations.
The increase has occurred despite the significant increase in fuel efficiency in internal combustion and jet engines used with armored vehicles, tanks, ships and jet aircraft, and the use of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines. However, these significant improvements in efficiency are vastly overshadowed by the higher number of vehicles and increasing rate of use. Furthermore, the increasing number of convoys required to transport an every increasing requirement for fossil fuels is itself a root cause of casualties, both wounded and killed in action.
There is, hopefully, an ironic teleology here: the military is being forced to use more and more alternative fuels. But the use of those alternative fuels will, to a large degree, make this giant oil-sucking war machine less critical.
Anyway, perhaps we can use this stat to put more federal money into alternative fuels.
Did you see that the EU will be petro-free/ all aternative fuel much sooner than expected? Over the last three years their outlook has gone form 2021, to 2018 to most recent 2012.
We will have the EU smiling at us as we continue the debt of war for oil while they sink their money into a better quality of life. We will experience the biggest brain drain ever. If we do not move in a big way now, we are sunk.
If the growth in fuel consumption per soldier per day does rise by 1.5% over the next five years, that would match almost exactly the recent increases in fuel consumption per civilian per day of 1.6%.
(Baselines can be useful when interpreting stats.)
Sounds like a DARPA task. Create a military that doesn’t require the use of fossil fuels.
It was coal (thank you Admiral Mahan) that drove a significant amount of the European conflict and global imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century. Especially among countries seeking naval power. Hawai’i and other Pacific Islands were claimed by the US for use as trans-Pacific coaling stations.
Today, other militaries are beginning to seek fuel alternatives. Norway has already successfully tested a non-conversion use of biodiesel as fighter jet fuel. (Wags complain that stealth aircraft would not be able to use this technology because the enemy could smell the french fries.)
The first military to become independent of fossil fuels (or better said fuels with localized sources) will have an advantage. It will also likely have less reason to be bloated.
Horses in the Atomic Age?
Somewhat OT, but TPM Muckraker reports that Condelezza Rice and Stephen Hadley are forming a “strategic consulting” firm. All I have say about that is anyone stupid enough to hire Rice and Hadley deserve what they get. Those two are arguably the worst strategists on the planet.
Ya beat me to it! Just imagine the possibilities if only we could afford to hire that dynamic, prescient, talented duo!
You beat me to it.
And Maddow had Jeremy Scahill on in the past 48 hours discussing how Condi basically told Maliki to ‘stand down’ and not make a fuss about the Blackwater murders in that square in Iraq. What a way to ‘win friends’, eh?
Meanwhile, I did have a momentary ‘head slams against keyboard’ moment while reading at the FT link how Garner and Kalilizad are ‘leveraging’ their (experience, contacts) in Iraq. Why, my goodness heavens, those two ‘entrepreneurs’ are even opening new offices in Baghdad and Erbil (the Kurdish region, where the richest oil reserves happen to be). Coinkeydink, I’m sure…
Were both of them involved in Iran-Contra?
Or only Khalilizad, as far as we know….?
Cheering thought: maybe they’ll hire Condi and Hadley?
After all, old ties and all…
And it seems Scahill and Ackermann are wondering if Obama may be afraid of Blackwater. Shudder.
If he’s not at least wary, then he’s a damn fool.
And I don’t think he’s a damn fool.
Any member of Congress, the FBI, and the military who doesn’t rein in those contractors is not acting in their own best self-interest.
The same guys having children service their sexual desires?
Paying for dollar blow jobs?
Why would any sane person hand power to people who have sex with children while their execs are swapping wives in North Carolina?
And didn’t we read reports about Eric Prince being on real-time video to Baghdad while that incident in the square was happening?
Personally, I will not be one single bit surprised if I read that many of them end up with forms of brain cancer for too much steroid use (see Alzado, Lyle). Or brain cancers from too much cell phone use. Here’s one quick, simple visual, should you be interested.
I’m too old and set in my ways, I rekkin, so I don’t have a cell phone. Actually, some of the symptoms mentioned in the video are the same ones I get from the Bush Administration–reddening of the face, migraine headaches, etc.
Me neither on the cellphone. But what about the hours I spend carefully pondering every last word written by EW and friends on my compy? I get some of those symptoms too sometimes, although some might say they have something to do with the sauvignon blanc …
I dunno what to tell you, I’ve never had a problem with EW and single malt.
Boxturtle (Just got a new cellphone. Does everything. Telephone function is hidden somewhere, still looking)
Sauvignon Blanc, eh ?!!
I’m well into Chianti and Single Malt mode …
and skdadl @18. Chianti and single malt mode? Oh, man! Do you mix them or is one the chaser after the other?
Yeah, I wanna hear the answer to that one meself.
The picture TPM posted with the article is hilarious. Perhaps Condi is still looking for an intelligence warning about 9/11. Hadley is looking like a dork.
Caption:
Sly humor indeed.
OT: See this photo from EFF (they tweeted link). Good news — it looks like more text than redaction black boxes.
Continuing with Jim White’s OT, here’s the first of the new EFF docs:
Correspondence about amending FISA released under the FOIA
National Security Division correspondence, part 01 (75 page PDF)
Ok, now EFF has 9 more FISA Retroactive Immunity correspondence documents up at:
Correspondence about amending FISA released under the FOIA
And now there is a total of 18 FISA Retroactive Immunity correspondence documents up at:
Correspondence about amending FISA released under the FOIA
EFF now has two separate sections of Retroactive Immunity correspondence documents up at:
96 at Draft legislation to amend FISA released under the FOIA
24 at Correspondence about amending FISA released under the FOIA
The documents released include those from:
The DOJ’s National Security Division (NSD)
The DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)
And the Office of the Director of National Intelligence
And another further update – the EFF has updated this again:
Now 30 documents of Correspondence about amending FISA, bill summaries, and other documents
Geez, and its not even Friday yet.
Bob in AZ
As Veteran’s Day is a Federal holiday, they’re assuming this is just like a Friday. *g*
From page 29 of this first 75 page PDF
And there’s this on page 31 of that first 75 page PDF:
I don’t know if any of our Legal Eagles are hanging around right now, but I’d like to ask them a question.
The correspondence I referenced in my comment # 28 comes from a “John Demers” of the DOJ’s OLC. He’s the one who wrote:
My question is whether the SOL truly expires if members of the DOJ explicitly conspire to delay past the “apparent” SOL.
Isn’t this an obstruction of justice?
And from the N.S. Sherlock file, we have this:
Yoo’s lawyers warn of flood of political suits
Link.
Actually, it was my understanding that the oil and energy companies were waiting to tie up patents, so not sure what that means in the bigger picture. Nor can I cite a source, so file under ‘gossip’.
One reason that I’d love to have access to Cheney’s Secret Energy Task Force data was to determine whether (actually, ‘how’) they were planning to tie up electricity networks and fix rates, along with strategizing long term patent control. I always figured that was part of what they were up to, but SCOTUS evidently didn’t think it was public business.
Interesting – and important – that this report was released prior to the Global Warming legislation sludging its way through Congress. I’d say Deloitte may be betting on newer technologies, eh?
I certainly hope so.
In the “Price of Loyalty” former Secretary of the Treasury under 43 Paul O’Neil said that Wolfowitz and Cheney were the ones focused on Iraq at the very first cabinet meeting that O’Neil attended. He claimed that Wolfowitz was one of the big war pushers.
People who do coke will tell you when you score an 8 ball the first lines are some nice rails and when you get to the bottom of the bag it’s amazing how little you need for a bump.
Oil’s a drug. We were burning 3 million gallons a day invading Iraq.
Should I mention the required military flyovers at major sporting events?
Our kids will look back on this time and wonder how we could squander the dwindling oil reserves like that.
But, but, tjbs, what the hell we gonna go to war on if not oil?
Marcy wrote:
Sorry, Marcy, but that story was invented by The Guardian. Sorry, also, to send you to Little Green Footballs to explain:
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/6906_Another_British_Attack_on_Wolfowitz
So perhaps you could write an update.
Nevertheless, the war with Iraq was obviously about oil. There are plenty of tinpot regimes in the world, and the obvious difference was that Saddam’s had oil, so Bush and co wanted to show force in the region. As Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and co said in the infamous PNAC letter (http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm):
Nice folks in the office of DNI. From Office DNI part 81-1 (currently at the bottom of the list) on page 24 of 63:
Negotiation was never, ever on the table for these jerks. It’s all about throwing their weight around…
Nice for them.
Meanwhile, with respect to the post’s main topic, they threw their weight around and now the Chinese are in the international biz news as ‘ahead’ of the rest of the world on clean technologies.
Short, quick read for those interested.
Gosh, all that US weight throwing… eye? ball?
Did someone take their eye off the big, global ball…?
US intel is throwing its weight around with Rockefeller and we now get to read about China’s renewed commitment to green technologies.
Pardon me, but just which ball(s) was intel tossing around…?
The Chinese are probably too courteous to laugh at our weight-tossing; besides, they’re busy like… you know… ummmm… making stuff. You’d almost take them for capitalist pigs if they keep this up.
Uff….
Dang, the Kathleen Turner in Mikey McConnell’s office is not sounding very romantic. This letter from the same pdf (page 58 of 63) I mentioned in my previous comment has a reference to a document we need to find. From a Wednesday, February 13, 2008 email from Turner to a number of redacted addresses at house.gov, subject line “FISA-related Information:
The “fact sheet” I’m pretty sure I saw (and it had precious few “facts” and lots of “booga-booga” if I’m remembering the right document). I don’t think I’ve seen the Feb 5 letter, and its pages on acting quickly sound very interesting. Note also the “carriers/partners” formulation–sounds like the office of DNI had a hard time distinguishing between the two.
From pages 1-2 the first Office of Legal Counsel document (75 page PDF):
That’s a wow. Dana Perino was calling in Steven Bradbury? Am I reading that correctly?
And Raven @ 40 is a wow. I think. Fool me once … how does that go?
Och, it’s pumpkin hour. Shall sleep on the wows.
I’m finding the OLC documents particularly interesting.
Gee, if you take that 22 gallons per soldier literally, considering we are spend $400 a gallon for fuel in Afgahnistan that’s $8800.00 per day per soldier. Now they want Obama to send 40,000 troops, that’s $352,000,000.00 a day for fuel, for just those soldiers. This is a very crude calculation but you can see that this war stuff costs us some serious cash. Thank god they kept that Health Care thing under a trillion otherwise it’d be cramping our war machine.
Rachel reports Obama has rejected all the options given on AFPAK
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.
That push follows strong reservations about a possible troop buildup expressed by the U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, according to a second top administration official. In strongly worded classified cables to Washington, Eikenberry said he had misgivings about sending in new troops while there are still so many questions about the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
Holy shit?
Or, a smoke screen somehow I can’t possibly decipher?
Wow.
I don’t trust the hope, not with THIS Obama, not in this regard.
Too much corporate/MIC/Bank/Fin interests institutionalized in our government and our elected offals.
Still, heady to just READ that, thanks for sharing, Raven.
Also interesting, in another browser window Jeremy Scahill is telling Ed Schultz about how dependent US efforts in AfPak are on Blackwater, et al.
So the question is this: is Obama privatizing the whole thing?
Or are there quiet, silent forces working to keep Obama’s back who are completely fed up with The Blackwater Gangsta influence in US foreign policy, and finding ways to wind it in?
And wow, JimWhite and MadDog… you two are just amazing.
Lots to consider, but one thing is certain.
AFPAK can’t be privatized, there aren’t enough privatized troops to get the job done.
I don’t THINK there are, not by many tens and tens of thousands.
If XE has one or two hundred thousand troops, AND the support to house and feed them, I’d be HUGELY surprised!
Perhaps someone with more knowledge than me of XE’s capability could speak to this?
One thing’s for sure, something’s up.
But I just can’t believe Obama would turn his back on the corporate big MIC interests or Wall St interests that all are involved with our overseas misadventures.
Not to mention Pentagon, military branches, and more. CIA, covert ops, on and on.
He’d be one seriously threatened President, if he did.
But something’s up.
Wonder what it is . . . .
Blackwater/xe is only one of the contracting companies, there are a lot of “soldiers of fortune” looking for jobs, all kinds and colors…Former Marines, Uzbekians, Israelis, Gurkas..
Facebook has some groups for hookups.
From the FT article ..
Jintao is an enlightened man with a progressive plan. What an embarrassment our leaders are.
Raven, is this the correct link? Wow!
Tis the same as this one.
Or this AP version over at WaPo.
Oh, thanks so much MadDog. And, would you please consider writing up an article on all the EFF docs? Sounds like a gold mine of info, and you have all the requisites to put together a fine write-up that I know most of us would very much like to read.
I certainly appreciate the compliment, but…No way José! *g*
There are just too fookin’ many for single person to digest in one or even a couple sittings. Gonna take more eyes than I’ve got to read through this ginormous pile of goodies.
I’ll continue to join in as best I can, but man, I’m still only at page 27 of that 77 page first OLC part and there are 5 more OLC parts to go.
And that’s not even counting the 96 documents regarding the Draft legislation to amend FISA released under the FOIA. *g*
Look at the bright side. We can always convert Russian nuclear bombs into fuel for US nuclear power plants.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/business/energy-environment/10nukes.html
Thanks for that NYT link. It stimulates the imagination…
While we may be stuck with fission fueled energy technology for some time to come, at least there’s a swords to plowshares methodology for retargeting the nukes.
The feel-good upside for fast breeder reactors of the future is that the reactor’s neutron flux is captured by a blanket of un-enriched uranium to create fissile uranium. So there is a kind of neutron recycling benefit if you can get ahold of the weapons grade fuel from the decommissioned nukes to burn in the reactor core.
The cooling technologies are pretty esoteric but a helium gas cooled reactor would be less dangerous to biological life should it fail.
Nonetheless, I’d feel better if the whole industry were shipped to Mars as part of a terraforming initiative which would absorb all of earth’s nuclear waste as a side benefit. The moon could host one or two reactors early on, but only as a temporary measure for transshipment outward.
Moving energy production into space would be alot less expensive than world war and might prove useful for human survival, especially if the Antarctic ice cap were to slide into the ocean again. Then earth can get back to using carbohydrates as the main source of energy like before.
Not that we are short of methane, given that conservatives like to shoot their mouths off so much. So natural gas will be considered politically correct for the near future.
It is well documented that the neo-cons and Wolfowitz were planning the Irak genocide from Jan. 20,2001. Wolfie said it would be easy and the Irakis would be delighted to pay for a military occupation of their country. Wolfie is at AEI, planning more wars. Wolfowitz told a congressional panel,
Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff for Colin Powell, explains that it is all about the Oil, and natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan.
It’s always been about the oil, gas, and the distribution routes of same.
Along with preventing those factors from being manipulated, funded or developed by Russia or China.
And of course, the drug trade and distribution lines and networks provide HUGES sums of cash/revenues that can’t be traced that can be used to pay people for what ever reason we decide we want to pay them.
We have ample history in SE Asia and Latin America to support my posits regarding the drug trade and routes.
http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
January 26, 1998
The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Washington, DC
Dear Mr. President:
We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War. In your upcoming State of the Union Address, you have an opportunity to chart a clear and determined course for meeting this threat. We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world. That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor.
The policy of “containment” of Saddam Hussein has been steadily eroding over the past several months. As recent events have demonstrated, we can no longer depend on our partners in the Gulf War coalition to continue to uphold the sanctions or to punish Saddam when he blocks or evades UN inspections. Our ability to ensure that Saddam Hussein is not producing weapons of mass destruction, therefore, has substantially diminished. Even if full inspections were eventually to resume, which now seems highly unlikely, experience has shown that it is difficult if not impossible to monitor Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons production. The lengthy period during which the inspectors will have been unable to enter many Iraqi facilities has made it even less likely that they will be able to uncover all of Saddam’s secrets. As a result, in the not-too-distant future we will be unable to determine with any reasonable level of confidence whether Iraq does or does not possess such weapons.
Such uncertainty will, by itself, have a seriously destabilizing effect on the entire Middle East. It hardly needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of the world’s supply of oil will all be put at hazard. As you have rightly declared, Mr. President, the security of the world in the first part of the 21st century will be determined largely by how we handle this threat.
Elliott Abrams Richard L. Armitage William J. Bennett
Jeffrey Bergner John Bolton Paula Dobriansky
Francis Fukuyama Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad
William Kristol Richard Perle Peter W. Rodman
Donald Rumsfeld William Schneider, Jr. Vin Weber
Paul Wolfowitz R. James Woolsey Robert B. Zoellick
———————————————————————-
http://www.israeleconomy.org/strat1.htm
A Clean Break: “Clean Break” report, was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu
A New Strategy for Securing the Realm
“Moving to a Traditional Balance of Power Strategy
TEXT:
We must distinguish soberly and clearly friend from foe. We must make sure that our friends across the Middle East never doubt the solidity or value of our friendship.
Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria’s regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which Asad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom, including using infiltrations. Syria recently signaled that it and Iran might prefer a weak, but barely surviving Saddam, if only to undermine and humiliate Jordan in its efforts to remove Saddam.
But Syria enters this conflict with potential weaknesses: Damascus is too preoccupied with dealing with the threatened new regional equation to permit distractions of the Lebanese flank. And Damascus fears that the ‘natural axis’ with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria’s territorial integrity.
Since Iraq’s future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq, including such measures as: visiting Jordan as the first official state visit, even before a visit to the United States, of the new Netanyahu government; supporting King Hussein by providing him with some tangible security measures to protect his regime against Syrian subversion; encouraging — through influence in the U.S. business community — investment in Jordan to structurally shift Jordan’s economy away from dependence on Iraq; and diverting Syria’s attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon.”
Afghanistan–Spencer’s got an article up right now. It’s on FDL front page.
What’s amazing to me is how much oil we use for our gargantuan military machine…to secure oil and resources…and how utterly incompetent our military is in securing those resources.
Maybe we aren’t fighting for oil after all, maybe we are fighting endless wars just because that is something we (err…old white men and gullible youngsters) can still do, even if we can’t win (not counting Grenada of course where we triumphed!)
No.
We fight this stuff because it’s HUGELY profitable for the big biz involved.
And it helps SPREAD the power and control of big biz.
Big biz meaning corporations, MIC, bank/fin, Wall St.
The oligarchy which RUNS this country.
The 1%.
Has NOTHING to do anything else.
It’s monopolized big business.
Acquire in any manner needed, in order to leverage and control and acquire more.
Ahem…I was attempting a bit of irony there. My point is that the vaunted US military machine is not as successful as some would have us believe.
But there is a connection between how we define masculinity in America and the wholescale violence poured down our throats since we were wee, little children. The forces that push the normalization of violence are the same who argue for American exceptionalism, and ignore scientific evidence that fossil fuels combustion is destroying the bisophere, and sentence any less-than-rich youth to prison if they don’t join the military or make it into college, that is, those forces are your 1%.
Reasons…confluence of oil, neo, theo con interest. The oil and neo con interest come first.
Gulp. Okay, I’ve moved on to OLC Part 2 since MadDog says there’s good stuff. This one nearly made me fall over, from an email July 30,2007 (page 87 of 127 in the pdf) from J. Livingston of SSCI staff to Stephen Bradbury and a few others:
EO 12333 is, of course, the Executive Order from 1981 that is most known for banning assassination. However, I suspect this reference is a bit more mundane, since 12333 also lays out basic rules regarding the collection of foreign intelligence. Oh well, it gave a moment of high drama to think of someone writing to Bradbury that 12333 was history…
For some good “booga booga” see the letter to Reyes from Crazy Pete and friends beginning on page 78 of this same file.
That’s gonna do it for me tonight…
At least until then, they were getting to probable cause through 12333 (I’ll point to my post proving it later.)
I’ll take a look at this tomorrow–fun stuff.
Ta for catching that EFF tweet and starting the ball rolling today!
So many good things Obama could accomplish while president were he so inclined.
There is already uranium on the moon and Mars which the fast breeders could convert for additional fuel supplies for “Project Bootstrap”… a series of permanent extraterrestrial colonies for a space-faring race.
Hear there is lots of uranium ore in Afghanistan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium_mining
Marcy,
In comment 25, I pointed out that the Guardian story you linked to was false. Could you comment or update your article? If you don’t, then it makes me fear your other work might be biased.
If you read through all that, Wolfowitz still distinguishes NK from Iraq because of oil. Because of the presence of oil in Iraq, we went to war. Wolfowitz said that. The Guardian headline was not cited by Marcy, the Wolfowitz statement was. He made the statement. Your “fear” is bogus hyperbole.
Wow! Someone linking to LGF using hyperbole? Whoever could have imagined…?
bmaz and dakine01,
Sorry, you’re wrong.
bmaz wrote:
I read it. The Guardian said that Wolfowitz admitted the US invaded Iraq for oil. In fact, Wolfowitz said Iraq’s oil meant Iraq couldn’t be pressured financially like North Korea could.
Marcy and you are manipulatively trying to claim that The Guardian’s article or Wolfowitz’s comments prove that the US went to war for oil.
You are being disingenuous.
This is pure crap you are pitching.
bmaz wrote:
That’s not an argument. People here expect better from you.
Even the Guardian printed a correction.
Over to you.
Thanks Leen, Those are the directions on the back of the Kool-Aid packet!
And the very next day (Jan 27, 1998) HRC issues her wake up call…
Boy, was she right. And write about it, we continue to do.