Colin Powell: Oil Spill Is 'Beyond The Capacity' Of BP To Solve, Military Might Have Role

[laughingliberal]

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: " 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." <snip>

<snip> "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."

More at link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/30/colin-powell-oil-spill-is_n_594779.html

[Ozymanithrax]

1. Short of nuking the well, the military does not have the equipment or...

expertise to seal the well. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this.

[laughingliberal]

4. I believe there could be a role for them in the cleanup. Manpower if nothing else. nt

[backscatter712]

16. Is not the military already involved in this?

The Coast Guard and National Guard have already been deployed for these purposes, no?

[laughingliberal]

21. So far, cleanup efforts are weak & ineffective. That's the part where letting BP call the shots

Just having the military there does little good if we're letting the guys who don't care about the cleanup direct them.

[guitar man]

8. Not a nuke but

I've been wondering if they could do it with incinderaies. Lay enough thermite on top of the blowout preventer to melt into a big puddle and effectively "weld " it shut? :shrug:

[Ozymanithrax]

10. First, the pressure from the well would just blow any melted metal out of the way...

That is the same as cutting off the BOP.

Most of the heat form incendiaries would dissipate in steam and never heat anything hot enough to melt it.

The nuclear solution would drill a shaft under the ocean floor, detonate the bomb, and the subsidence cause by the hole created in the earth would destroy the architecture of the well and, hopefully seal it.

The only real solution is the relief well.

[NYC_SKP]

2. "...and that's what the president is now doing." Good.

Big clusterfuck that this is, nobody really knows how to address this, as if it's some everyday event.

Not BP, not FEMA, not the EPA, not the Military.

Learning curve, baby.

Hoping that this leads to more and more restrictions and a return to bans and increased oversight and regulation.

[laughingliberal]

7. One of the most important skills I learned as a nurse was to always look as if I was in control

No one ever faulted me for saying, "Let me check on that," or, "I'm going to run that past the doctor just to be sure," or even, "I need to get an extra pair of eyes on this," as long as I appeared in control. I believe that is what we are now seeing from the President. That's a good thing.

[Ian David]

3. I get the feeling we're going to use a nuke. n/t

[backscatter712]

18. A nuke probably won't work, and would just add radioactive fallout to the environmental problems.

Detonate on the surface, you'll blow away the BOP, may very well NOT seal the well, and end up now with a still-uncontrolled oil gusher, only now radioactive.

Drill down into the sea floor, you'll have to go very deep in order to get the desired effect, and when you're doing that, you might as well just drill the relief well - it's pretty much the only for-sure solution, and won't take much longer than drilling a shaft for a nuke.

[HughMoran]

5. We're taking advice from our Colon

:)

[The_Casual_Observer]

6. Sink an aircraft carrier on top of the god damn thing.

[Ozymanithrax]

9. That won't work. The oil would just gush around the hull.

The only real solution is to finish the relief well.

[marybourg]

11. "Let private industry take care of it." "Government is too big and

costs too much money." Government is the problem" Let's make sure the speakers and believers of those words have plenty of time to eat them. I say let private industry keep ownership of this thing. Government should just enforce reparations.

[Lasher]

12. Colin says there's WMDs down there somewhere.

That's why we have to send in the military.

[disndat]

13. The enormity of the catastrophe

was such that the WH must have known at the start that nothing could be done to fix it anytime soon. If Obama had gone down when it first happened he would have only ended up looking weak and ineffectual. If he had sent the military down there at the beginning, then BP could have shifted the blame for the lack of solution from themselves to the U.S. Military. Obama did the right thing by sending all the scientific and engineering experts to Houston. BP could have escaped blame, responsibility and liability, if Obama let the military intervened too early.

[disndat]

15. as Colin Powell once famously

said, "The Pottery Barn rule - BP broke it, BP owns it."

[spanone]

14. dear mr fucking powell, the President HAS been involved. pay attention or shut the fuck up.

[Owl]

17. The military is the answer for everything.

:eyes:

[Jennicut]

19. For the leak, the gov. don't have the equipment. But with the cleanup, the govt.

could help. BP is more worried about BP, as we see with them trying to shut the workers up.

[laughingliberal]

20. +1 nt

[UTUSN]

22. STFU, Colin. Yesterday he was preening on the tube, bragging about "his" DECISIVE FORCE concept. n/