GUSHER OF LIES

**(Market note, they'll hold up market for FED meeting.....still in range)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/books/07book.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print excerpt from ‘GUSHER OF LIES”

Also
Oil For WarThursday, March 13, 2008 - Ron Smith
Earlier this week, I mentioned an article in The American Conservative that absolutely blew me away by revealing the astounding amount of fuel being used to continue our failed occupation of Iraq.

Robert Bryce, the author of the piece, informs us that after invading one of the most petroleum-rich countries on the planet, the mighty U.S. military is running on empty, using more than five thousand tanker trucks to haul JP-8 gas – a blended jet fuel used to run both vehicles and aircraft – into Iraq, mostly from a huge refinery complex in Kuwait, but with some that’s run in from Turkey.

Last year alone, says Bryce, who is the managing editor of “Energy Tribune” magazine, the American forces in Iraq burned through more than 1.1 billion gallons of fuel.

“In November 2006,” says Bryce, “a study produced by the U.S. Military Academy estimated that delivering one gallon of fuel to U.S. soldiers in Iraq cost American taxpayers $42 – and that doesn’t include the costs of the fuel itself.”

Bottom line: In the war that Paul Wolfowitz famously predicted would “pay for itself,” the U.S. is spending $923 million per week on fuel-related logistics.

Why is this important? Bryce says, “While the U.S. military chases its own fuel tail in Iraq, a country that sits atop 115 billion barrels of oil – about 9.5 percent of the world’s total – the global energy industry is racing forward with new alliances and deals, many of which would have been unthinkable before the invasion.”

The global balance of power is shifting dramatically according to his analysis, in ways that indicate the effectiveness of militarism in controlling global energy trends is declining. Far from being the sole superpower of recent legend, the U.S. is flailing about in a world where the balance of power is realigning itself in ways that will leave America’s influence substantially diminished.

So much for those best-laid plans, you know, the ones where we invade Iraq and demonstrate to the entire world the futility of opposing our imperial desires.

Unfortunately, “Oil for War,” the article in question, isn’t yet available Online. But we will be talking this afternoon with Robert Bryce about it and also about his new book, “Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence.”
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