The CIA, Russia, the Middle East and Peak Oil

[TennesseeWalker]

The Middle East boasts 70% of global proven reserves of oil. Saudi Arabia has the world's largest reserves (25% of the total), and most of the 9/11 hijackers are alleged to have come from that country. Osama bin Laden is a Saudi native, and his published statements center on the project of ejecting American influence from the nation of Medina and Mecca.

http://www.museletter.com/archive/cia-oil.html

-snip-

If, as the neoconservatives have repeatedly hinted, Iraq is only the first stage in a larger project of regional regime change, then the real prize must lie just to the south in the giant fields east of Riyadh. One cannot help but wonder if the long-coddled Saudi government is even now being set up for a fall.

As events unfold, it will be of more than passing interest to see whether the CIA and the Bush Administration reconcile their differences, or whether the neoconservatives' hubris and ideological monomania will be their undoing.

Meanwhile the real motives and long-term strategies of policy makers and intelligence gatherers alike will likely remain opaque to citizens who pay in blood and dollars for their government's military adventures. "The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis" gives us a rare, limited glimpse into the machinery of covert information analysis and decision-making that shape history as we live it.

[Kolesar]

1. Strategic Arms and Strategic Reserves

When Reagan became president, they ripped the solar array off the White House and removed the tax incentives for energy conservation. The Republican solution to energy crisis was to have strategic reserves to get us past the inevitable embargos and strategic arms to maintain hegemony in the Persian Gulf.

At this moment, we have lost control of Saudi Arabia. We had to fight to attain the oil reserves of Iraq. Whenever peak oil occurs, we are at least 22 years closer to it due to the lack of leadership in Washington. We could have been building houses that required about zero additional energy to heat them (through building standards), but we did not. We could have automobiles that get more than 40 mpg, but we don't.

We are now more committed than ever to maintaining military dominance of the Middle East. What are we going to do otherwise? Convert our supersonic jet fighters to run on biodiesel?

[glitch]

2. we fight wars for oil so we'll have oil to fight our wars

cuz we're rocket scientists.