This is, how you say, bullshit. Read down a little further, and you see: Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East. Well, duh. You think?

Why can't he be more explicit? Look, just once I'd like to hear someone tell it like it is: No blood to keep the lights going in the civilized world! No blood to keep your grocery shelves stocked! No blood to avert a catastrophic world-wide economic depression! No blood to avert millions dying in the famine that would follow even a temporary collapse of Western Civilization!

Seriously. EVERY time I see someone with a no blood for oil bumper sticker I want to push them off the road and give them a fast course in economics.

As a libertarian I don't even believe we should have public education as such -- the argument that it gives us a uniform culture isn't persuasive -- but if we're going to have it I do believe people should be taught economics. Really economics, not wishful socialist fairytales. Nothing comes from nothing. The economy is all inter-related. Distribution does matter -- which makes salesmen important. It's not all production and consumption. That leads to five thousand left shoes, size 50. If you keep us from having nuclear power, then we must be dependent on that nasty oil you abhor. If you are so smitten with the Alaskan wilderness that you saw once on a cruise that you won't let us drill for oil there, then we will have to pay Saudis for oil (and yes, ultimately fund the repugnant blood cult of wahhbism.) No matter how often you click your heels three times and say "environmentally friendly energy" solar isn't going to cut it just yet, and neither is wind. It costs too much to produce what we need. It's not a plot of big oil, it's just the way it is.

Look -- I'm sure if our pain over oil became strong enough we would find other means of fueling civilization. I'm also sure, for a while at least, if we bought less as we would after an economic slump prices would come down. I doubt it would be instant, though. And it would hurt. really hurt.

Right now, Greenspan might as well have said "Western Civilization is all about oil." Why didn't he? HE knows economics, doesn't he? Then in whose name is he spouting?

Yes, economics should be taught. Supply and demand. The law that value is what someone is willing to pay for something, not how much work you put into it. AND that to be able to provide for the current world population requires such a fine-tuned, massive technological civilization (the same one that has brought more prosperity to the world than any other one ever) that for the governments to "fine tune" "oversee" or otherwise tamper with it is about as likely to obtain the "right" results or to "solve" anything as it is to do so to the weather. (Which, of course, they also think they can fine-tune.)

The chances of unwashed college freshmen - or even deodorized ones -- to change that fact with cutsey bumperstickers is even more far fetched.

Economics should be taught -- with a horsewhip. And Mr. Greenspan should NOT try to play tiddly winks with politics.

Okay fine. I need coffee. And possibly estrogen.

P.

Great natural resources almost without exception lead to a civilization devoid of accomplishment, character or ambition. It is like kids with trust funds; write them off because they will rarely contribute anything positive to society.

Saudi Arabia is a gigantic, dysfunctional trust fund baby. If we actually did wean ourselves off of oil, they'd implode.

I blame Andrea Mitchell. If Mr. Greenspan wanted to keep on getting some of that sweet, sweet Andrea Mitchell lovin', he was forced to adopt a few moonbatty talking points.

Either that, or it's DC Dinner Party Chatter Syndrome. That stuff is deadly to thinking. Hearing the same ideas echo in a tiny chamber causes normally independent thinking folks to imagine that the echoes they hear are a reflection of their own thoughts.

"Why can't he be more explicit?"

I have a hunch Greenspan WAS more explicit... in the full context of his remarks, as was pointer out be other posters. But if journalists started reporting on things in complete context, the public might start to come to their own conclusions and not the ones journalists know is best.

For example, if they reported that ice at the North Pole is shrinking, AND that ice at the South Pole is GROWING, we might conclude that there evidence for global warming is somewhat mixed, diluting the absolutely clear campaign issue that journalists have obliged themselves to deliver to the Democrats.

Thus it is necessary to omit metion of contradictory evidence to the outcome desired by the party journalists overwhelmingly favor.

There is a technical term for when journalists do this... it is called "lying"!

Does that mean we weren't attacked?

And to think I had thought we were attacked by al-Qaeda, not Saddam Hussein. What a fascinating world you must live in.

jpe: our esteemed host did not say that we were attacked by Saddam. What a fascinating world you must live in.

Here's my whole question on this opinion held by Mr. Greenspan: If waging this war was for oil security only, would it not have been easier for us to cut a deal with Saddam Hussein and avoid the whole thing? I'm sure we could have found a way for Iraq to become a foreign aid recipient along the lines of Egypt and put all the "past unpleasantness" behind us. Cutting deals would have been ultimately much cheaper. I wonder how much Mr. Greenspan knew, or if he's just talking out his backside on this. It seems kind of odd to throw this out this late in the game.

Greenspan, what a hypocrite! He gains his reputation at the teat of Ayn Rand, and then proceeds to betray every principle he supposedly learned.
The Gold Standard that he once advocated? Gone in a flash of expediency.
As he flitted off to Moscow and Peking to be flattered by the communist dictators still in charge, he forgot that globalism benefits THEM, not us.
Capitalism as advocated by him more resembles the fascist model than the libertarian.
And he dares to call himself a libertarian?
When confronted in congressional hearings by Ron Paul, he backs off into double-speak.
His current apologia is little more than a tome of praise to Bill Clinton, his "soul mate" as he says.
The war in Iraq is about oil? Oh this sounds so much like the Berkeley crowd circa 1970 talking about Viet Nam.
Does he mention 9/11? Probably not, since he's removed himself from the day to day capitalist trading near ground zero, and placed himself safely at conferences in Jackson Hole. Never mind that he narrowly escaped death in a skyscraper fire.

I was once, many lifetimes ago, close to his intimates. I knew Allan Blumenthal and Joan Mitchell. It was a musical and objectivist connection.

I have nothing but contempt for this man. He sold his soul for political acceptance.

Portia:
"Okay fine. I need coffee. And possibly estrogen."

I, for one, like you angry, sweetie. (It might also be pointed out that there are plenty of things manufactured from petroleum--it doesn't all go to transportation and energy supply.)

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