In another demonstration of confounding simplicity, Bush has treated the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as strategic.
The enlightened (just ask them) humanists just can't grasp that Bush says what he means and means what he says. It can't be simplicity, it must be duplicity or complicity. But whether a master of bottom-line synthesis or a simpleton, I love how often he turns out to be right at the expense of all the self-assured geniuses. Being right overcomes lack of nuance.
During last year’s campaign Kerry suggested the federal government “stop diverting oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve until gas prices get back to normal.” Since “normal” apparently translates to a number unconnected to the laws of supply and demand, it is safe to say once the oil was diverted it would not soon be replaced. If Kerry was hoping for China or India to suddenly de-industrialize, it could take a good long while to get back to “normal.”
Kerry was not alone or even the most extreme of the bunch. Throughout the campaign Carl Levin, Charles Schumer, and several other key Democrats openly endorsed using the nation’s strategic oil reserves to flood the market and drive down oil prices. Bush was ridiculed relentlessly by Schumer for refusing to budge from his November 2001 pledge to fill the reserves to capacity.
“That petroleum reserve is in place in case of major disruptions of energy supplies to the United States,” Bush told reporters when the idea of using it as a mechanism to lower gas prices began steadily gaining steam with Democrats eager to have a domestic issue — any domestic issue — to run on. “The idea of emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would put America in a dangerous position in the war on terror. We face a tough and determined enemy on all fronts, and we must not put ourselves in a worse position in this war, and playing politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would do just that.”
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, housed in underground salt caverns in Texas and Louisiana, was created in 1975. It was bandied about Washington, D.C. for decades beforehand, but it took the final straw of the 1973-74 Middle Eastern oil embargo to force the issue. At the time of the September 11 attacks, the reserve held 540 million barrels. With uncertain times ahead, Bush ordered the reserve filled to its 700 million barrel-plus capacity, releasing only a minor amount to combat disruptions during Hurricane Lilli in 2002 and Hurricane Ivan last year.
Now Hurricane Katrina hits, and suddenly there is a real emergency crippling a quarter of the nation’s refining abilities. Democrats might argue that with 700 million barrels in storage we could have afforded to deal with both Katrina and flood the market. What else could Sen. Schumer have meant when he called Bush’s decision to release millions of barrels of oil from the reserve, “a tiny baby step when a giant step is required”?
These are supposed to be the forward-thinking vanguard of the country? Imagine if Katrina had been coupled with an opportunistic terrorist attack on another refinery. Or if Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, smelling blood in the water (murderous brutes have
good noses for that sort of thing), decided to make good on his oil-embargo threat. An Iranian newspaper editorial recently described oil as “the most potent economic weapon for settling scores with neocolonialist countries.” (That’s us.) Democrats’ idea of thinking ahead is apparently throwing away the one shield we have against that weapon.
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