<![CDATA[Our addiction to oil was the centerpiece of the State of the Union address. But, it turns out the say-one-thing-do-another politics of the Bush Administration have accelerated even more. Just hours after the President talked about weaning the U.S. economy from oil, his lackeys started backing away from the position.
Here's Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post, What the President Meant to Say:
Kevin G. Hall writes for Knight Ridder Newspapers: “One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn’t mean it literally.
“What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025. . .
“Asked why the president used the words ‘the Middle East’ when he didn’t really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that ‘every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands.’ The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.”
So, just forget that State of the Union speech. It was a lie wrapped in a call for war and fearfulness, veiling the Administration’s real intent, to keep the U.S. oil-dependent for as long as there is money to be squeezed out of that disappearing commodity.
We really should be ready for the $262 barrel of oil, but don’t look to President Bush for leadership on that.
Technorati Tags: accountability, Bush, oil, SOTU
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