We're heading into Qandahar, supposedly on the basis of results of a "test" in Marja, which, you may recall, was an area calculated to be easier, and therefore provide a propaganda boost for the Qandahar failure-to-be. I say that confidently, because, although we don't get news of it, Marja is still not done.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
WHAT HIS JOB RIGHT NOW IS: “And so my job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about.” That is how Bush used to answer every question about Iraq and/or terrorism.
And speaking of Bush…
From Oliver Stone's documentary, "South of the Border".
I'm sure you can guess.
Media organizations say they are being allowed only limited access to areas impacted by the Gulf oil spill through restrictions on plane and boat traffic that are making it difficult to document the worst spill in U.S. history.[...]
A CBS news story said one of its reporting teams was threatened with arrest by the Coast Guard and turned back from an oiled beach at the mouth of the Mississippi River. The story said the reporters were told the denial was under "BP's rules."
"A week ago Sunday the first research vessel ... was commissioned by NOAA to scour the area" [...] "They found 'a gigantic plume' growing about five to seven miles from the site of the original leak." Matt Simmons, founder of energy investment bank Simmons & Company, known for predicting the oil price spike of 2008 says sending a small nuclear bomb down the leaking well is "probably the only thing we can do" to stop the leak.[...]
His idea echoes that of a Russian newspaper that earlier this month suggested the US detonate a small nuclear bomb to seal the oil beneath the sea. Komsomoloskaya Pravda argued in an editorial that Russia had successfully used nuclear weapons to seal oil spills on five occasions in the past.
Click the picture to change the location of the oil spill outline to your city.
And it's only getting bigger.
“After three full days, we have been unable to overcome the flow from the well, so we now believe it is time to move on to another option . . . This scares everybody — the fact that we can’t make this well stop flowing or the fact that we haven’t succeeded so far.” -- BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles
Right. So that's why they haven't already tried it? That's why they chose the top kill method over this?BP Managing Director Bob Dudley says they will shift strategy from stopping the spill to containing it. He says they will rely on undersea robot maneuvers to help capture the oil on the sea floor and move it to the surface for collection.[...]
Dudley told the NBC television program Meet the Press this plan is simpler than "top kill," and more likely to succeed.
And then we'll have two BP oil wells out there instead of one. Much better.The top White House advisor on energy and the environment is Carol Browner. She told Meet the Press there is a likelihood oil will keep pouring out of the deep water well until late August, when work is completed on two relief wells.
Oh, well, maybe it won't matter – after the one we have gushes for 6 months, the Gulf may be dead.
The much smaller Exxon-Valdez spill killed billions of salmon and herring eggs and as many as 250,000 seabirds. Only ten percent of the oil was recovered, with most of the rest infesting the underwater sand, being degraded by only 4% a year.[...]
The best estimates of independent scientists for the amount of petroleum being released [into the Gulf] daily is now north, possibly well north, of 25,000 barrels a day.
[...]
Every 1000 Americans consume roughly 68 barrels a day of petroleum. This statistic means that what is gushing up from the BP well equals the daily amount of oil used by 367,000 Americans per day, that is, by cities the size of St. Louis or Minneapolis. Imagine all the cars and trucks filling up in such major cities every day, and the buildings using heating oil, and imagine taking all that oil and gasoline and dumping it in the Gulf of Mexico. Every day.
[...]
If there is a silver lining in the scary and depressing Great BP Gulf Catastrophe of 2010, it is that it may finally get state and federal legislators off their duffs and legislating sane energy policy for the health of the earth.
Only if alternative companies start making really big campaign contributions.
...if it weren't so pathetic, obvious, and predictable.
Guerrillas fired mortar shells and used small arms to attack the major US military base in south Afghanistan, Qandahar Airfield, on Saturday. The operation was the third major attack by insurgents during the past week.[...]
The bold attacks come as President Barack Obama addressed West Point cadets, declaring victory in Iraq and predicting a similar positive outcome in Afghanistan. Obama alleged that the US was withdrawing from a now-democratic Iraq that would not be a platform for attacking the US, implying that Afghanistan would be brought to a similar end-state.
Of course we could have declared victory years ago –that "Mission Accomplished" moment would have been a good point.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
"From where I sit, the entire Republican Party should head to OZ – looking for a brain, a heart and a pair of testicles." -- Helen
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
"Everything in that marsh is dead as we speak," [Louisiana] Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said after touring the clogged marshes. "Had you fallen off that boat yesterday and come up breathing that stuff, you probably wouldn't be here, either."
...before the oceans are smothered in oil.
Hillary says it's beyond doubt that North Korea torpedoed a South Korean ship in March, and there will be consequences.
Why not? Things are totally FUBAR anyway.
North Korea denies the charge, and hey, it's not like we haven't experienced the Tonkin affair, the sinking of the Maine, and who knows how many other phony provocations in between.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Kentucky's Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul is criticizing President Barack Obama's handling of the gulf oil debacle as putting "his boot heel on the throat of BP."Paul says Obama's criticism of the oil company sounds like an attack on business and "really un-American."
Corexit: More toxic than the oil
IVAW: Iraq Veterans Against the War
