Bush Admin Backs Off Vow to Break “Addiction to Oil”

[kerrygoddess]

Bush Admin Back Off Vow to Break “Addiction to Oil”
February 2nd, 2006 @ 9:03 am

Bush didn’t really mean it when he said during the SOTU that we need to break the addiction to Middle East oil. “This was purely an example,” Bush was using said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman.

Yesterday, just one day after “Bush vowed to reduce America’s dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025,” his energy secretary and national economic adviser said “that the president didn’t mean it literally.”

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that’s where the greatest oil supplies are. The president’s State of the Union reference to Mideast oil made headlines nationwide Wednesday because of his assertion that “America is addicted to oil” and his call to “break this addiction.”

Bush vowed to fund research into better batteries for hybrid vehicles and more production of the alternative fuel ethanol, setting a lofty goal of replacing “more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”

He pledged to “move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.”

Not exactly, though, it turns out.

MORE & LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=1833

[donheld]

1. "Bush didn’t really mean it when he said during the SOTU"

This SOTU or any other SOTU he's ever given.

[kenny blankenship]

4. Sort of like the long detailed description of Iraqi WMDs he gave in 2003

Surely we didn't take that LITERALLY?

[tulsakatz]

2. that didn't last long!!!

[kenny blankenship]

3. By using language of "addiction" Bush seeks emergency basis for actions

without any pesky questions from the electorate and their representatives. Normally policy is debated until compromise or consensus is reached, but addictions are medical emergencies and justify radical actions, not debate. "Interventions" are sometimes required, and the addict has his or her right to continue under their own free will interrupted and questioned by family members. They are not "in control", they are told, and therefore someone else must be placed in control. The addict is often severed from their substance abusing past by being put under a doctor's care. They may be hospitalized or sent to a sanitarium where their whole day is planned out for them and decisions down to what to eat are made by others in their interest: addiction we all understand calls for extreme actions. Bush's actions would include of course drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Area Reserve and accelerated drilling elsewhere, along with expedited construction of dirty coal burning power plants. Will America really break its addiction to foreign fossil fuels in exchange for these debasements of its environmental standards, and in exchange for granting the Executive a free rein to remake energy and environmental policy without questions?
Of course not. The idea is nonsense.
Of course not--they're already weaseling away from that pledge. Nobody's breaking any addiction to anything. They still want your acquiesence in overturning decades of sound policy, but as for any benefits you might have thought were promised to you, well you should forget about that right now.

[Benfea]

5. Wow, that was fast!

Don't Bush supporters get whiplash from his constantly shifting positions?

[ncteechur]

6. And he didn't really mean it when he said he was done with dope and booze.

[Mark5]

7. Duh, he meant cooking oil!

Americans are addicted to cooking oil, we must tap into our lard reserves, starting with Rove's 5th Chin. :p

[guidod]

9. lol!!

[politicat]

8. Flip-flopper!!!

If a Democrat had done that, it would be all over the news.

Bush does it, so he gets a pass.

Effin useless media.