THE HUFFINGTON POST
Sam Stein | HuffPost Reporting
05/30/2010
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested on Sunday that the United States military has a role to play in helping contain the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, saying that the problem now was “beyond the capacity” of BP to stop.
“The president has to get involved as quickly as possible,” Powell told ABC’s This Week. “If you don’t, then public opinion starts to drag you in the media, and pushes you. And so when something like this clearly is going to get beyond the capacity of whoever caused it, get beyond the capacity of local authorities, I think the federal government has to move in quickly and move in with, to use my favorite expression, decisive force and demonstrate that it’s doing everything that it can do.”
Powell continued: “[This] is a major problem that can only be dealt with by the federal government and all the resources of the federal government and that’s what the president is now doing.”
The statement by the revered military and political figure is a reflection of a growing discouragement over the failure of the Obama administration — in practice or in perception — to play a hands-on role in resolving the crisis. Asked whether he’d been satisfied with the extent of the president’s response to this point, Powell was moderately critical.
“I think the president directly said the other day that he’d been monitoring it, following it, and … been on top of it from the beginning,” he said. “But that impression was not conveyed to the American people. And the comprehensive speech he gave the other day, I think he would have been better served — and the nation would have been better served — if he had given it a few weeks earlier. But I think the federal government is now fully engaged.”
Did he agree with the notion put forth by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fl.) that the response in the Gulf should be federalized with the even military units sent in? …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/30/colin-powell-oil-spill-is_n_594779.html
Big oil has enjoyed a cozy relationship with the neocons for twenty-some-odd years. And that relationship came at someone’s expense. That’s always the way it is – somebody pays. Having America pay for the profits of big oil is not a new neocon concept.
America paid for Big Oil’s acquiring the second largest oil reserves – right behind Saudi Arabia’s. To get that prize to Big Oil cost America billions of dollars and 6000 American soldiers lives. But the neocon press followed the neocons’ party line. The neocons motivation for attacking Iraq was WMDs and democracy. It matters not about any secret energy meetings held by the neocons before attacking Iraq. And it matters not that the name of a Big Oil company that was in Iraq before Saddam Hussein now seems to be back. Did that big name oil company have an idea of how big the prize would be if Saddam Hussein was out of the way? If America is addicted to oil, could its behavior toward oil be similar to a drug addicts behavior toward recreational drugs?
Tags: capacity of bp, colin powell, military, oil spill
