linkage
The author will be releasing a 25 year plan on how to get out of this mess next friday. Someone remind to dig it up and post it.
The author will be releasing a 25 year plan on how to get out of this mess next friday. Someone remind to dig it up and post it.
War critics have made much of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's recent upward revision of the price tag for maintaining 150,000 U.S. troops in Iraq to around $1 billion a week. That sounds like a lot, but if it results in a more stable region and a reduction in the continuing need to defend Persian Gulf oil, it could prove to be quite a bargain indeed.
As the 30th anniversary of the 1973 Arab oil embargo approaches, the United States finds itself even more vulnerable than it was three decades ago. In 1972, the year before the embargo, U.S. oil imports were 27.6 percent of consumption. Last month, they stood at 56.8 percent, more than twice the 1972 level.
...
For the past year, the National Defense Council Foundation has been engaged in a detailed analysis of the "hidden" cost of imported oil. The analysis looked at three elements: military expenditures specifically tied to defending Persian Gulf oil, the cost of lost employment and investment resulting from the diversion of financial resources and the cost of the periodic "oil shocks" the nation has experienced.
When these three elements are combined, they total $304.9 billion annually, nearly six times what we are spending in Iraq.