Green Neocons? Bizarre-Woolsey Driving 58MPG Prius-This is not Satire

[poe]

But a curious transformation is occurring in Washington, D.C., a split of foreign policy and energy policy: Many of the leading neoconservatives who pushed hard for the Iraq war are going green. James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and staunch backer of the Iraq war, now drives a 58-miles-per-gallon Toyota Prius and has two more hybrid vehicles on order. Frank Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy and another neocon who championed the war, has been speaking regularly in Washington about fuel efficiency and plant-based bio-fuels.

The alliance of hawks and environmentalists is new but not entirely surprising. The environmentalists are worried about global warming and air pollution. But Woolsey and Gaffney—both members of the Project for the New American Century, which began advocating military action against Saddam Hussein back in 1998—are going green for geopolitical reasons, not environmental ones. They seek to reduce the flow of American dollars to oil-rich Islamic theocracies, Saudi Arabia in particular. Petrodollars have made Saudi Arabia too rich a source of terrorist funding and Islamic radicals. Last month, Gaffney told a conference in Washington that America has become dependent on oil that is imported from countries that, "by and large, are hostile to us." This fact, he said, makes reducing oil imports "a national security imperative."

Neocons and greens first hitched up in the fall, when they jointly backed a proposal put forward by the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington-based think tank that tracks energy and security issues. (Woolsey is on the IAGS advisory board.) The IAGS plan proposes that the federal government invest $12 billion to: encourage auto makers to build more efficient cars and consumers to buy them; develop industrial facilities to produce plant-based fuels like ethanol; and promote fuel cells for commercial use. The IAGS plan is keen on "plug-in hybrid vehicles," which use internal combustion engines in conjunction with electric motors that are powered by batteries charged by current from standard electric outlets.

They aren't the only Iraq hawks who have joined the cause. The Hudson Institute's Meyrav Wurmser also signed the IAGS plan. In 1996, she was one of the authors—along with Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, of a famous strategy paper for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and military assaults against Lebanon and Syria. (Wurmser's married to fellow neocon David Wurmser, an adviser to Dick Cheney, former AEI fellow, and enthusiast for the Iraq war.) Clifford May, the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, endorsed the IAGS scheme, too. And the Committee on the Present Danger is about to join the Prius-and-ethanol crowd, as well
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[DBoon]

1. Which Prius gets 58 mpg?

Mine only gets 44 mpg!

[Gabi Hayes]

2. really....and where were these AHOLES in 1977, when Carter

was trying to do precisely what they're coming to so much later

that's why his own party sabotaged his presidency (along with the fact that he was trying to put real teeth in legalized bribery--lobbyists/campaign contributions)

read about it in Liberty Under Seige, by Walter Karp

btw, Tip ONeill was one of the VERY worst. and we all know who his chief stooge was