Put down the willow branches, all you self-flagellators! Okay, your SUV contributed to the rise in oil prices but no one, says Robert Scheer, is more responsible for price volatility than Our Glorious Leader, George W. Bush.
Sure, in the long run we consumers, particularly the most wasteful ones who happen to reside in the good old USA, and who have become accustomed to consuming many times our population's worth of the world's resources, do need to shape up. But that has little to do with the five-fold rise in the price of oil since George Bush became our President. Yep, he did it; Bush's deliberate roiling of world politics is the key variable in the run-up of oil prices. No President has been more brilliant in destabilizing the politics of oil-producing countries from Venezuela to Russia and on to the key oil lakes of Iraq and Iran. This last will go down in our nation's history as one of the dumbest escapades ever, rivaling even the madness of the Vietnam War. But this time the neoconservatives bet their smart money on oil as the decisive missing ingredient for success.
What would really help right now is for membership, agenda, and record of the proceedings of Cheney's Energy Task Force to be leaked. Right now.
