One day before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, the detestable Dick Morris was interviewed for the Fox web site. Hold your nose and read it, because he makes a very convincing case.

‘Nuff said.

Chalmers Johnson observes that “60 years of enormous military spending is taking a dramatic toll on the rest of the economy.”

That is increasingly obvious. But why has the once-reliable US strategy of wasting money ceased to create prosperity? For that matter, how could such a plan ever have succeeded?

To the naive observer, the idea that demand can sustain an economy sounds paradoxical. It is true that, under the assumption that all demand will be satisfied, net demand is equal to net production. But that assumption can only hold when there are abundant natural resources available to the economy in question. Under those happy circumstances, demand for goods and services does indeed have an apparently beneficial effect, in that the rate of utilization of natural resources increases. As those resources flow through the economy, they leave behind a trail of buildings, roads, houses, consumer products and all the other accoutrements of prosperity.

But suppose there are not sufficient natural resources to satisfy demand? At that point the habit of stoking the economic furnace simply by turning up the thermostat fails to work its expected miracle.

Oil, in particular, has supplied the powerful and conveniently deployed energy to create goods and services. The US was a net exporter of oil until some time in the 1960s, due to enormous discoveries of black liquids beneath Texas, Oklahoma and California. The rate of extraction of domestic petroleum was always able to increase to fuel the automobiles, tanks and airplanes necessary to satisfy any level of demand.

But for any mineral resource, the pace of extraction eventually slows, as poorer veins of ore or deeper deposits of oil must be mined. In 1971 the US rate of extraction of domestic petroleum reached a maximum and then began to decline.

At that moment, the era of US prosperity based on unlimited availability of cheap fuel came to an end. Large-scale imports of petroleum began to arrive on our shores from various parts of the world, particularly from the Persian Gulf countries. The US gradually transformed itself from a wealthy producer to a poor but militarily powerful consumer.

In the new era, as long as cheap oil could be pried from the hands of client regimes throughout the world, the US lifestyle could be maintained and expanded. Essentially our economy began to thrive only by theft of other countries’ resources. This is of course the colonial model.

Colonial-style exploitation (also known as empire building) as a method of gaining one’s living never lasts for very long. For the US, that wondrous period has now decisively come to an end. The old laws of economics no longer function. But our government does not yet fully comprehend that the rules have changed.

The paradox of reliance on demand to generate prosperity has finally been resolved. Now we must somehow begin to earn our living rather than simply extract it from underground deposits of unexploited wealth.

For a country of 300 million human inhabitants spread over a vast continent, and dependent on cheap transportation for its extravagant way of life, that transition must usher in an era of harsh necessity. How well the US will succeed in coping with this scary new age is as yet unknown.

But U.S. leaders won’t admit it. That’s the gist of a new study by World Public Opinion .org, a project of the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland.

A new WorldPublicOpinion.org poll finds that majorities in 15 of 16 nations surveyed around the world think that oil is running out and governments should make a major effort to find new sources of energy. Most think that future oil prices will be much higher.

Only 22 percent on average believe that “enough new oil will be found so that it can remain a primary source of energy for the foreseeable future.” Only in Nigeria does a majority (53%) endorse the view that governments can rely on oil in the long term.

Instead, an average of 70 percent takes the position that governments should assume that “oil is running out and it is necessary to make a major effort to replace oil as a primary source of energy.”

So far so good! Most people around the world are perfectly capable of reading the handwriting on the oil well. That is a great relief, and as a bonus, that 70% common-sense majority worldwide lets us know that the persistently Bush-loving 30% of our populace has much in common with the same percentage of the rest of the uninformed schnooks on the planet. However…

A majority in the United States (57%), the world’s biggest consumer of oil, believes their government is acting on the assumption that oil can remain a primary source of energy. This is also true in Nigeria (63%). However, while most Americans believe their government’s assumptions are incorrect, most Nigerians think it is correct.

After all the aggressive propaganda spread by the Bush administration and their enablers in the broadcasting industry, people in the U.S. believe that their government is being fooled.

That brings lucky USAmericans back to the eternal question of whether our top thinkers are criminals or merely fools. I vote “both.”

What a travesty!* Alan Greenspan now admits to a fifty percent chance of recession. He is really talking about a fifty percent chance for one of those life-changing catastrophes economists like to call a “depression,” presumably because a falling standard of living pushes most people into a gloomy state of mind.

As Greenspan knows, an economic day of reckoning has been inevitable since trade and budget deficits became structural features of our economy. Over long periods of time not even the mighty US of A can procure everything in return for little. Once imported oil became necessary for the functioning of a vast and scattered network of American towns and cities far from amber waves of anything, no other long-term outcome was possible.

The signal crime of Greenspan, along with all the other happy-days economists who have been buzzing around since the Nixon administration, was that of concealing this wretched reality from the citizens, and presumably also from their Congress.

It is very natural for the Majesty’s viziers to hide an awful truth from the monarch, lest they suddenly lose their heads in the telling of it. What our mighty Lears lacked was the honest Fool to whom they might listen with a third ear. Though several brave fools have presented themselves to occupy such a perilous post, none has fared better than any everyday whistle-blowing Cassandra, always right, never heeded.

Who wants to announce that a mighty power, fresh from victory in two major wars, transported in a passionate flush of world leadership, is doomed to slow decline as its underground treasures dwindle? There arises a temptation to look away, to bargain with the twin devils of domestic concealment and overseas conquest, in search of additional pools of a crucial black liquid.

When riding high and fast, it is inadvisable to look too hard at the ground beneath. Yet ignore the landscape entirely and soon one has wandered into desert, or storm, or hostile territory without considering the chance of real danger, probability fifty, sixty, seventy percent and rising.

Since the Bush/Blair Iraq comedy act first staggered onto the stage, news from the UK has remained only mildly skeptical about US policy and success in Iraq. Now from BBC, this blunt assessment portends an uptick in reality testing.

People the world over have been repelled by things that have been done here: things that are now associated with place-names like Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and Falluja.

Above all, we have seen how hard it is for the Americans to deal with a few thousand lightly armed volunteers.

Germany’s 19th-Century Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, said that great powers had to be very careful when they put their military strength to the test. Unless they are overwhelmingly successful, he meant, the perception will be that they have been defeated.

In spite of the new successes on the ground here, that is the long-term danger America faces.

Spoken like a real ally, not just another yes-friend.

This first fragment of a manuscript, part of a stack of yellowing papers, was found in an ancient abandoned dwelling deep within the ruins of Old Baltimore. Strange and unknown words are used, and it is not known from what time period this document may have survived.

For these and certain other reasons, the publisher cannot suggest reading this tale, or history, as it may prove to be, at any hour near to midnight, in the gray shadows of a dark and drafty house. An unhealthy nervous state might follow.

Nor, perhaps, should any person having a fragile or morose mental constitution read these words at all—even in the full light of noon—lest early insanity result! Reader, proceed with caution greater than the usual.

This paper examines scientific and government studies in order to provide reliable conclusions about Peak Oil and its future impacts. Independent studies indicate that global oil production peaked in 2006 (or will peak within a few years) and will decline until all recoverable oil is depleted within several decades. Because global oil demand is increasing, declining production will soon generate high energy prices, inflation, unemployment, and irreversible economic depression.

Regardless of the time available for mitigating Peak Oil impacts, alternative sources of energy will replace only a small fraction of the gap between declining production and increasing demand. Because oil undergirds the world economy, oil depletion will result in global economic collapse and population decline. As oil exporting nations experience both declining oil production and increased domestic oil consumption, they will reduce oil exports to the U.S.

Because the U.S. is highly dependent on imported oil for transportation, food production, industry, and residential heating, the nation will experience the impacts of declining oil supplies sooner and more severely than much of the world.

North American natural gas production has peaked, importation of natural gas is limited, and the U.S. faces shortages of natural gas within a few years. These shortages threaten residential heating supplies, industrial production, electric power generation, and fertilizer production. Because U.S. coal production peaked in 2002 (in terms of energy provided by coal), the U.S. will experience significantly higher coal and electric prices in future years.

The U.S. government is unprepared for the multiple consequences of Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, and Peak Coal. Multiple crises will cripple the nation in a gridlock of ever-worsening problems. Within a few decades, the U.S. will lack car, truck, air, and rail transportation, as well as mechanized farming, adequate food and water supplies, electric power, sanitation, home heating, hospital care, and government services.

Only this and nothing more.

Political blood for political sex? Following are excerpts of John McCain’s statement given in closed session during the Senate trial of President Bill Clinton on Articles of Impeachment arising from Clinton’s sworn denial of any sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona):

Mr. Chief Justice, I intend to vote to convict the President of the United States on both articles of impeachment. To say I do so with regret will sound trite to some, but I mean it sincerely. I deeply regret that this day has come to pass. …

Indeed, I take no satisfaction at all from this vote, with one exception – and an important exception it is – that by voting to convict I have been spared reproach by my conscience for shirking my duty.

The Senate faces an awful choice, to be sure. But, to my mind, it is a clear choice. I am persuaded that the President has violated his oath of office by committing perjury and by obstructing justice, and that by so doing he has forfeited his office. …

I do not desire to sit in judgement of the President’s private misconduct. It is truly a matter for him and his family to resolve. … But we are not asked to judge the President’s character flaws. We are asked to judge whether the President, who swore an oath to faithfully execute his office, deliberately subverted – for whatever purpose – the rule of law. …

Were an ordinary citizen accused of perjury in a civil proceeding he or she would in all likelihood not be prosecuted or forced out of political necessity into a perjury trap.

No, an ordinary citizen would not be treated as the President has been treated. But ordinary citizens don’t enforce the laws for the rest of us. Ordinary citizens don’t have the world’s mightiest armed forces at their command. Ordinary citizens do not usually have the opportunity to be figures of historical importance.

Presidents are not ordinary citizens. They are extraordinary, in that they are vested with so much more authority and power than the rest of us. We have a right; indeed, we have an obligation, to hold them strictly accountable to the rule of law. …

It is self-evident to us all, I hope, that we cannot overlook, dismiss or diminish the obstruction of justice by the very person we charge with taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. It is self-evident to me. And accordingly, regretfully, I must vote to convict the President, and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Plausibly, John McCain violated his oath as a Senator in the course of his relationship with an employee of a lobbying firm. Might a thoroughgoing investigation of Senator McCain’s relationship with Vicki Iseman lead to his being questioned under oath about sexual relations in connection with political favors? I wonder how well Senator McCain might fare if he, like Bill Clinton, were “forced out of political necessity into a perjury trap.”

If the Bush administration gets away with killing six Guantanamo prisoners, we will certainly never learn the truth about the events of September 11, 2001. Here’s a good indication why the despicable Neocons want to kill these people: the government insists on having the ability to instantly cut off anything a defendant might say which would “violate national security.”

[The new court] also has a 30-seat adjacent room, behind a tempered-glass window, where observers can hear the proceedings on a broadcast basis – and a kill-switch where a security officer or the judge can cut the sound in case someone divulges a state secret.

There is no blackout capacity or curtain, meaning the media, legal observers, dignitaries and family members who might attend a trial could watch but not listen.

Such measures could be necessary if the Pentagon presses ahead with plans to try alleged 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed or any of the other 14 high-value detainees who arrived at this base in September 2006 from three-plus years of secret CIA custody.

The agency has classified the interrogation techniques it used on the men – in secret sites, somewhere overseas – as national security secrets. Were one to blurt out his treatment at trial, the judge or security officer could simply stifle their voices.

When in the whole history of state judicial proceedings has a criminal defendant been silenced because he might supposedly blurt out top secret government information? Probably such rules were invoked against the Salem witches, or in Stalin’s show trials, or to hide the abuses of secret courts during the Inquisition.

This crude stratagem is obviously designed to conceal either the innocence of the defendants, the repugnant nature of the tortures used against them, or government culpability in allowing the attacks to occur.

If such proceedings are allowed to proceed as planned, the United States will inevitably be remembered for centuries as a place whose justice system was irrevocably tainted by the greed and cowardice of a corrupt junta. Such farcical “trials” must ultimately guarantee the dissolution of the United States as we now understand it, as surely as the Nazi’s inhuman crimes ensured that the edifice of pre-WWII Germany would cease exist after Hitler’s downfall.

I can’t count the newspaper columns I’ve read lately in which the author professes to be puzzled… mystified… wonders why… just can’t understand the Democrats’ unwillingness to speak up (never mind doing something) about Republican crimes and the looting spree going on in Washington.

Guys and gals, please. There is nothing incomprehensible here. Remember that every criminal organization throughout history has used bribery and blackmail as powerful instruments of control. For example…

Mister Senator, would you like to accept our new arrangement and lay your hands on a truckload of money, plus all the sex, wild parties and captive bird shooting you could wish for?

Or would you rather have a few of your darkest secrets exposed to the world, so that TV anchors laugh at you, your spouse divorces you, and you must resign your job under a dark cloud?

Which will it be?

Anyone who thinks such techniques can only be used on Republicans, never on Democrats, is a fool. So there is your explanation, friend columnists! Democrats are tolerating these crimes for the same reason Republicans have been enabling them for the last seven years. Both teams are being bribed and blackmailed by the same big players.

And of course our politicians are easy to persuade. There is no need to arrange a horse’s head under their sheets. They only need to be shown one or two embarrassing documents, ready to be “leaked” to the press by one of the “opposition research” teams currently operating in Washington.

So, members of the press, now that I have cleared up your long-standing confusion, I’m sure you will be passing these insights along to your readers in tomorrow’s columns and news shows… won’t you?

Uh, journalists? Writers? TV pundits?

Strange, it appears that most members of the press have suddenly left the room. I just don’t get it. Why would someone with the integrity of, say, Chris Matthews, Maureen Dowd or Wolf Blitzer feel queasy right now? Is it something in the air here? Something I said?

I am just so puzzled.

From Consortiumnews, the following is an edited transcript of Daniel Ellsberg’s speech delivered at the American University in Washington on September 20, 2007.

I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state.

If there’s another [attack similar to] 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? … They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they’re not now they will be after another 9/11.

And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran – an escalation – which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps.

It’s a little hard for me to distinguish the two contingencies; they could come together. Another 9/11 or an Iranian attack in which Iran’s reaction against Israel, against our shipping, against our troops in Iraq above all, possibly in this country, will justify the full panoply of measures that have been prepared now, legitimized, and to some extent written into law. …

This is an unusual gang, even for Republicans. [But] I think that the successors to this regime are not likely to roll back the assault on the Constitution. They will take advantage of it, they will exploit it.

Will Hillary Clinton as president decide to turn off NSA after the last five years of illegal surveillance? Will she deprive her administration her ability to protect United States citizens from possible terrorism by blinding herself and deafening herself to all that NSA can provide? I don’t think so.

Unless this somehow, by a change in our political climate, of a radical change, unless this gets rolled back in the next year or two before a new administration comes in – and there’s no move to do this at this point – unless that happens I don’t see it happening under the next administration, whether Republican or Democratic.

Let me simplify this and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9/11. That’s the next coup, that completes the first.

The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution, … what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world – in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.

There have been violations of these principles by many presidents before. Most of the specific things that Bush has done in the way of illegal surveillance and other matters were done under my boss Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against Americans.

I could go through a list going back before this century to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in the Civil War, and before that the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 18th century. I think that none of those presidents were in fact what I would call quite precisely the current administration: domestic enemies of the Constitution.

I think that none of these presidents with all their violations, which were impeachable had they been found out at the time and in nearly every case their violations were not found out until they were out of office so we didn’t have the exact challenge that we have today.

That was true with the first term of Nixon and certainly of Johnson, Kennedy and others. They were impeachable, they weren’t found out in time, but I think it was not their intention to in the crisis situations that they felt justified their actions, to change our form of government.

It is increasingly clear with each new book and each new leak that comes out, that Richard Cheney and his now chief of staff David Addington have had precisely that in mind since at least the early 70s. Not just since 1992, not since 2001, but have believed in Executive government, single-branch government under an Executive president – elected or not – with unrestrained powers. They did not believe in restraint.

When I say this I’m not saying they are traitors. I don’t think they have in mind allegiance to some foreign power or have a desire to help a foreign power. I believe they have in their own minds a love of this country and what they think is best for this country – but what they think is best is directly and consciously at odds with what the Founders of this country and Constitution thought.

They believe we need a different kind of government now, an Executive government essentially, rule by decree, which is what we’re getting with signing statements. Signing statements are talked about as line-item vetoes which is one [way] of describing them which are unconstitutional in themselves, but in other ways are just saying the president says “I decide what I enforce. I decide what the law is. I legislate.”

It’s [the same] with the military commissions, courts that are under the entire control of the Executive Branch, essentially of the president. A concentration of legislative, judicial, and executive powers in one branch, which is precisely what the Founders meant to avert, and tried to avert and did avert to the best of their ability in the Constitution.

Now I’m appealing to that as a crisis right now not just because it is a break in tradition but because I believe in my heart and from my experience that on this point the Founders had it right.

It’s not just “our way of doing things” – it was a crucial perception on the corruption of power to anybody including Americans. On procedures and institutions that might possibly keep that power under control because the alternative was what we have just seen, wars like Vietnam, wars like Iraq, wars like the one coming.

That brings me to the second point. This Executive Branch, under specifically Bush and Cheney, despite opposition from most of the rest of the branch, even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war against Iran which even by imperialist standards, standards in other words which were accepted not only by nearly everyone in the Executive Branch but most of the leaders in Congress. The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our right to control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and many other places. That is consensual in our establishment. …

But even by those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that quietly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it’s not only aggression and a violation of international law, a supreme international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane in terms of the consequences.

Does that make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn’t, it doesn’t even make it unlikely.

That is because two things come together that with the acceptance for various reasons of the Congress – Democrats and Republicans – and the public and the media, we have freed the White House – the president and the vice president – from virtually any restraint by Congress, courts, media, public, whatever.

And on the other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power are crazy. Not entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.

And the question is what then, what can we do about this? We are heading towards an insane operation. It is not certain. It is likely. … I want to try to be realistic myself here, to encourage us to do what we must do, what is needed to be done with the full recognition of the reality. Nothing is impossible.

What I’m talking about in the way of a police state, in the way of an attack on Iran is not certain. Nothing is certain, actually. However, I think it is probable, more likely than not, that in the next 15, 16 months of this administration we will see an attack on Iran. Probably. Whatever we do.

And … we will not succeed in moving Congress probably, and Congress probably will not stop the president from doing this. And that’s where we’re heading. That’s a very ugly, ugly prospect.

However, I think it’s up to us to work to increase that small perhaps – anyway not large – possibility and probability to avert this within the next 15 months, aside from the effort that we have to make for the rest of our lives.

Getting back the constitutional government and improving it will take a long time. And I think if we don’t get started now, it won’t be started under the next administration.

Getting out of Iraq will take a long time. Averting Iran and averting a further coup in the face of a 9/11, another attack, is for right now, it can’t be put off. It will take a kind of political and moral courage of which we have seen very little…

We have a really unusual concentration here and in this audience, of people who have in fact changed their lives, changed their position, lost their friends to a large extent, risked and experienced being called terrible names, “traitor,” “weak on terrorism” – names that politicians will do anything to avoid being called.

How do we get more people in the government and in the public at large to change their lives now in a crisis in a critical way? How do we get Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for example? What kinds of pressures, what kinds of influences can be brought to bear to get Congress to do their jobs? It isn’t just doing their jobs. Getting them to obey their oaths of office.

I took an oath many times, an oath of office as a Marine lieutenant, as an official in the Defense Department, as an official in the State Department as a Foreign Service officer. A number of times I took an oath of office which is the same oath office taken by every member of Congress and every official in the United States and every officer in the United States armed services.

And that oath is not to a Commander in Chief, which is not mentioned. It is not to a fuehrer. It is not even to superior officers. The oath is precisely to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Now that is an oath I violated every day for years in the Defense Department without realizing it when I kept my mouth shut when I knew the public was being lied into a war as they were lied into Iraq, as they are being lied into war in Iran.

I knew that I had the documents that proved it, and I did not put it out then. I was not obeying my oath which I eventually came to do.

I’ve often said that Lt. Ehren Watada – who still faces trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war – is the single officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously in upholding his oath.

The president is clearly violating that oath, of course. Everybody under him who understands what is going on and there are myriad, are violating their oaths. And that’s the standard that I think we should be asking of people.

On the Democratic side, on the political side, I think we should be demanding of our Democratic leaders in the House and Senate – and frankly of the Republicans – that it is not their highest single absolute priority to be reelected or to maintain a Democratic majority so that Pelosi can still be Speaker of the House and Reid can be in the Senate, or to increase that majority.

I’m not going to say that for politicians they should ignore that, or that they should do something else entirely, or that they should not worry about that.

Of course that will be and should be a major concern of theirs, but they’re acting like it’s their sole concern. Which is business as usual. “We have a majority, let’s not lose it, let’s keep it. Let’s keep those chairmanships.” Exactly what have those chairmanships done for us to save the Constitution in the last couple of years?

I am shocked by the Republicans today that I read in the Washington Post who yesterday threatened a filibuster if we … get back habeas corpus. The ruling out of habeas corpus with the help of the Democrats did not get us back to George the First it got us back to before King John 700 years ago in terms of counter-revolution.

We need some way, and Ann Wright has one way, of sitting in, in Conyers office and getting arrested. Ray McGovern has been getting arrested, pushed out the other day for saying the simple words “swear him in” when it came to testimony.

I think we’ve got to somehow get home to them [in Congress] that this is the time for them to uphold the oath, to preserve the Constitution, which is worth struggling for in part because it’s only with the power that the Constitution gives Congress responding to the public, only with that can we protect the world from mad men in power in the White House who intend an attack on Iran.

And the current generation of American generals and others who realize that this will be a catastrophe have not shown themselves – they might be people who in their past lives risked their bodies and their lives in Vietnam or elsewhere, like [Colin] Powell, and would not risk their career or their relation with the president to the slightest degree.

That has to change. And it’s the example of people like those up here who somehow brought home to our representatives that they as humans and as citizens have the power to do likewise and find in themselves the courage to protect this country and protect the world. Thank you.

For more information on Daniel Ellsberg’s role in revealing the hidden nature of the U.S. war in Vietnam, please see the article at Consortiumnews, from which this post was drawn.

To understand why the U.S. marched into Iraq in 2003, please read this short article from Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. Here’s the key paragraph, slightly condensed for clarity:

By 2010-2015 it will become incrementally more difficult to keep U.S. oil imports flowing, because Algeria and Russia will reach a state of declining production, and because production in Angola, Nigeria and Brazil will no longer increase at a rapid pace. The decrease in production can be offset, but only by large increases from Iraq. It is the only country where, with sufficient effort, oil production could rise rapidly in a timeframe of five years.

Of the approximately 850 million gallons of crude oil which the U.S. consumes each day—yup, that’s our daily dose—about 500 million gallons are imported, every day of the year.

Without a lot more oil from Iraq, the U.S. and many other countries will start to experience significant shortages of gasoline and other petroleum products within five years, possibly sooner. It’s a grim scenario that might be held off for a while, but only if additional crude becomes available soon.

That’s why the U.S. invaded Iraq, and that’s why Cheney now insists on remaining there and subduing the Iraqis, who naturally want to kick the U.S. out of their country.

But Cheney and his Neocon thugs will never gain exclusive control over Persian Gulf oil. Their cruel and destructive attempt to conquer Iraq has failed. That outcome was predictable from the start, not least because Iraq is an 8,000 mile airplane ride from the Pentagon.

Hint to future power-mad U.S. administrations: if you suddenly feel a strong, irrational urge to conquer something, pick a small country closer to home, maybe a tiny Caribbean island. With persistence and luck, you might nail down the future supply of coconuts.

From Mark Kleiman, via Digby:

Anything that can be ridden on the Defense Appropriations bill (or on a continuing resolution) doesn’t need 60 votes in the Senate. It needs 51 votes in the Senate, or 218 in the House, that will stand firm.

Kleiman is trying to get around the problem of a potential Republican filibuster against any bill that would force an end to the war. He points out that an amendment cannot, as a practical matter, be filibustered, and so requires only a simple majority in the Senate.

Take, for example, the Webb Amendment, forbidding troops from being required to serve tours in Iraq longer than the spells between tours. If passed, it would force a troop drawdown by spring.

The Democrats should offer the Webb Amendment when the Defense Appropriation comes up. If the Republicans want to filibuster, fine. Don’t pull the amendment. Just let them keep filibustering.

Here a commenter called ronin makes a good point:

What is the likelihood Lieberman or conservative Dems would stand behind such an amendment?

This goes to the core of Reid’s problem: he can’t rely on his own party’s senators for 51 votes, and it’s making the majority leader look awful. Nancy and Harry don’t want to reveal any cracks in the facade of party unity, and so don’t set up votes in which those cracks might become obvious, or even widen. But at the moment that caution is pointless. For the Democrats, there is no face left to save. They can’t pass anything of substance. After all the high hopes for a Democratic legislature, that lack of results is making voters angry.

The next step is to realize that we need to stop talking about “spineless” Democrats in general, and focus in on which particular Democrats are stopping progress on ending the war and how to embarrass them enough to make their continued support of the war cost them dearly. We bloggers can snipe at anyone, because we don’t have the Dem leaders’ job of creating a sense of unity.

This reasoning in turn illuminates why Reid keeps talking about “compromise.” He is trying to lure Republicans over to accomplish what the Bush Dog Democrats are stopping him from doing within his own party.

Reid, in his own way, is talking in code. He believes he cannot reveal in public that the Democrats are deeply divided. But by now it’s far too late for that charade. Voters want to see some substance. If the message has to be about bad Democrats impeding progress, so be it. That is better than no message at all, and the resulting impression that all Democrats are cowards.