May 11, 2004
Buenos Aires, Argentina

I just saw the news about the american man who was beheaded in iraq.  they showed everything up right to the last minute, and they played the sound so you could hear him screaming even though they didn't actually show that part of the video footage.

it made me cry.  it was so incredibly sad, so brutal.

however i feel about our being in iraq, and how terrible so many of our own people have been to them.... nobody ever deserves to die in that way.

i have a terrible feeling deep in my heart that we will never leave iraq.  we can't. 

read the following ending lines to the 1975 sydney pollack CIA spy thriller "three days of the condor".  it is a movie that foretells the peak oil situation, and explores the obvious consequences of what would happen.  turner and atwood are CIA operatives.  It's the last line that is the interesting one.

Turner (Robert Redford): "Do we have plans to invade the Middle East ?"

Higgins (Cliff Robertson): " Are you crazy?"

Turner: "Am I?"

Higgins: "Look, Turner?"

Turner: "Do we have plans?"

Higgins: "No. Absolutely not. We have games. That's all. We play games. What if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That's what we're paid to do."

Turner: "Go on. So Atwood just took the game too seriously. He was really going to do it, wasn't he??

Higgins: "It was a renegade operation. Atwood knew 54-12 would never authorize it. There was no way, not with the heat on the Company.?

Turner: "What if there hadn't been any heat? Supposing I hadn't stumbled on a plan? Say nobody had?"

Higgins: "Different ball game. The fact is there was nothing wrong with the plan. Oh, the plan was alright. The plan would have worked."

Turner: "Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?"

Higgins: "No. It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 10 or 15 years - food, Plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?

Turner : "Ask them."

Higgins: "Not now - then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who've never known hunger start going hungry. Do you want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it for them."

 

We are watching the reality of this right now.  The gas hasn't stopped flowing to the pump yet, but things are close enough to the edge that we are taking steps to keep it from going there.  After all, it wouldn't be terribly bright to wait until the crisis is upon us, would it.  Is there any doubt left in any rational, thoughtful, caring person's mind that this is what is driving our policy and our actions in the middle east? 

Is there any doubt in your mind?

When there's no food on the grocery store shelves, and no gas in your gas tank, what will you want? 

You still don't quite think it can go down that way, do you?