Permanent Oil Crisis: Whose Using All The Oil?

[chlamor]

-U.S. Navy uses 16% of the worlds diesel fuel each year

-A fighter jet consumes as much fuel per hour as the average US motorist uses in two years

-An aircraft carrier uses 150,000 gallons of fuel per day

-Every year the U.S. military uses enough energy to run all U.S. mass transit for 22 years

-The U.S. military will use 7.5 billion gallons this year in Iraq

-Abrams tank gets 4 gallons to the mile-That is not a misprint


The U.S. military generates a ton of toxic pollution every minute

[kenny blankenship]

1. Hey we need it

To protect the oil!

[cthrumatrix]

29. the US "uses 25%" of the world oil production every Year !

and we are 5% of the world population

[K-W]

2. Meanwhile the US is as safe as a country has ever been.

This is assuming we stop poking Islamic militant groups with a stick.

[wuushew]

3. I am for the complete elimination of the armed forces

it could argued that truly defensive requirements to protect American soil could be handled by extensions of law enforcement agencies. The false pretense that military might is a national requirement is a fabrication of various corporate interests and their need to justifying killing for material wealth.

[Tux]

4. No

We need to divorce corporations from Congress and WH. We need our military for defense. We could research hybrid or some equivalent for jets, etc.

[chlamor]

10. Standing military unnecessary and a threat

to all life on earth. There is no greater threat to your health and well being than the US military. Not only is it the worlds greatest polluter by far-not even a close second- but it steals from food programs, social programs and damages our psyche as we drift into (already are) a complete authoritarian militareized state.

The real budget of Pentagon is about 900 billion dollars.

Also, no country on earth is even contemplating invading the US. And if they were they coudn't even take over Arkansas or Idaho. Two places I have lived. These are well armed people.

-14,000 contaminated military sites in US alone.

-Four days of military spending could create a five year plan to protect remaining tropical forests



• Demonstrate and leaflet during tax season and on the last day of filing, Friday, April 15, 2005, at the IRS or a post office.

• Bring the Stop the Merchants of Death Speakers Tour to your community to learn more about corporations profiting from the war and military occupation, paid for by your tax dollars. See www.warresisters.org/merchants_death.htm or call [phone].
• Write the President and your representative and senators and demand that the military budget be cut.
• Write letters to the editor of your local paper. Send all of them copies of this flyer.

• Refuse to pay all or part of your income tax. Though illegal, thousands of Americans are openly participating in this form of protest. You can take control of your paycheck and avoid contributing to the military. Contact us for information or referral to a war tax resistance counselor near you, and check out www.warresisters.org/wtr.htm.

• Contribute resisted tax money to an organization working to help people (e.g., day care centers, health clinics, food banks, housing programs, human rights organizations) or to an alternative fund that pools tax money from resisters and gives grants to human needs and peace groups.

• Contact the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee, PO Box 150553, Brooklyn, NY 11215, [phone]; email: [email protected]. Support the Peace Tax Fund bill to allow 100% of your taxes to fund nonmilitary programs: [phone]

[wuushew]

11. Why do we need armed forces?

What countries are planning on attacking us?

Terrorism is crime like any other. We can try to catch or prevent those within our own country or ask those harboring them to extradite them to America. A classic hypocrisy is the way we destroyed Afghanistan vs.the sanctions we put on Libya.

Once oil is depleted no other equivalent mineral resource has sufficient value to counterbalance the sanctions the rest of the world would impose on hostile nations who invade other countries. WWII was the last war fought over the desire to control land and resources. The wars of the future we be the standard religious and ethnic conflicts that should be dealt with both diplomatically and economically. Foreign aid provides a return far greater than any amount of military spending in the lives and improvements to civility and humanitarian causes. It is shame that per capita the United States gives the least among developed nations.

[K-W]

13. People will plan to attack us if we have no armed forces.

It would only be a matter of time. To trust that no nation on earth would ever take the opportunity is to be blindingly niave.

[wuushew]

17. "people" may but the list of nation states would be rather short

that list would include nations who have sufficient industrial and military capability to ensure that any initial attack could be followed up with additional attacks aimed at damaging or destroying industrial or population centers. All other nations possessing sufficient industrial capacity most likely would share similar enough cultural values with the United States to make war a non-starter. A war-hungry European Union?, I don't think so.

It is possible that hatred for America could rise to levels in the third or Islamic worlds to make possible a legitimate military threat, but the lead up time to a viable military threat could easily meet by a rapid military call up much like military conflicts of the 19th century such as the war of 1812, Spanish American War or later WWI. All these wars involving non-existent or small standing armies were won by the United States, A powerful and rising force in the 19th century and most likely the dominant or a near dominant economic force in the 21st. You may argue that nuclear weapons make such disarmament suicide but "Irrational" Pakistan has not wiped off the map by India nor has yet Iran by nuclear superpower Israel. Given the apparent success of MAD even among non-rational countries which nations would seek conflict with the United States? As rogue state North Korea implied non-assembled nuclear weapons could be deployed in short order. A nuclear free United States would literally have to be at the mercy of a truly unexpected attack with a country with which we have no diplomatic communications. Even North Korea does not fit this bill.

In the opening years of the 21st century I can only think of two countries would fit my logistic requirements for war with a non-belligerent United States of America, the countries of China and/or Russia. The Empire building of both Czarist Russia and the former Soviet Union were factors in their eventual collapse. Other than the Mongols, empires founded by the Chinese have not sough ethnic hegemony over non-Chinese or non-neighboring regions. Remember it was Yankee greed that played large parts in opening that by up both China and Japan to western trade.

Perhaps I am naive, describe your scenario on the Risk board. I can certainly think of better uses of the money like paying down the national debt, providing national health-care or developing alternative energy sources. In the long run these may provide a net good far greater than any military force that may or may not be used for "defense".

[megatherium]

15. I used to be purely pacifist

but then I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by Shirer. It details how the weakness and vacillation of the west encouraged and strengthened the Nazis. When the war finally did happen, it was far more destructive than it would have been had the west met Nazi aggression with military force earlier. For example, had the west decided to help defend the Czechs when the Nazis moved against the Sudatenland (in 1938), the Nazis wouldn't have been able to defeat the Czechs in their mountainous territory -- according to the German generals, testifying after the war. Instead, the west sold the Czechs out: "Peace in our time", according to Neville Chamberlain, who arranged the transfer of Czech territory to the Nazis.

But I don't believe we should have a belligerent foreign policy either. The Iraq war was unjustified and unnecessary. We should only go to war when the entire nation is united, understands why we are at war and agrees that it is necessary and moral. Those conditions were present in WWII. They sure as hell are not present now.

[Solon]

18. Here are some reforms that come to mind that don't involve pure...

pacisifism.

Number 1: Cut the budget of the United States Military by at least 60%, NOT TROOP LEVELS OR NECESSARY EQIPEMENT, but instead pork barrel projects with dubious necessity(Osprey, F-22, etc.).

Number 2: Actually enter into contracts with companies like Lockheed and Halliburton where if they defraud the government, their CEO's get shot for treason, no excuses anymore(This is one of the few times I support the death penalty, egregious circumstances ect.). Also make them PAY severe penalties for overbudget or late projects that are deemed necessary by a semi-independant board of Military Officers.

Number 3: Audits, this board of military officers mentioned above that will be formed, outside the purview and influence of the Department of Defense will be audited by the GAO every year for every expense on a checklist. This audit is to be made publically availuable.

Number 4: Constitutional Amendment time! A Constitutional Amendment that states the President of the United States MAY NOT call for any military action that lasts 90 days. Only Congress may declare War and call for Military Action in any theatre outside the United States. OR a valid international treaty obligation or organization may call for our troops, and with congressional approval they will be sent under an international military authority such as NATO.

These four points could drastically reduce the budget as well as restrict military adventurism for the United States. Not to mention reducing bloat and making the military more effective in both peacekeeping and real defense.

[chlamor]

14. It is the War Department

The name was changed to the defense dept. for PR purposes to obscure the reality that the corporate war machine is entirely offensive-double entendre intended. Keeps profits rolling into Lockheed as well as protects Corp. interests abroad. This game is not a recent development.

[Egalitariat]

6. What about intervening in Kosovo, Somalia, etc?

Would you leave that sort of thing up to somebody else? I'd love to do to that. Who would step up to the plate?

[chlamor]

12. Wrong question wrong answer

Hope this thread doesn't lapse into debates on the smokescreens of heroic US military interventions stopthink.

Both of the cases you cited are wrapped in a ton of disinformation.

[chlamor]

19. Kosovo was about Trepca mining complex

not the do-gooder US intervention disinformation that even many on the Left bought into. Here's more:

According to Hedges, «The sprawling state-owned Trepca mining complex, the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans, is worth at least $5 billion.»

According to the mine's director, Novak Bjelic, «The war in Kosovo is about the mines, nothing else. This is Serbia's Kuwait-the heart of Kosovo. ... In addition to all this, Kosovo has 17 billion tons of coal reserves.» The whole world knows and observed firsthand in the war against Iraq to what horrendous extent the Pentagon was willing to go in order to guarantee control of the oil wealth of Kuwait.

But the enormous mineral wealth of Kosovo is never publicly discussed by U.S. United Nations Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, President Bill Clinton or the Pentagon generals. They speak only of «self-determination» of the Albanian population of Kosovo. Of course, they never mention what U.S.-imposed «self-determination» means. It means colonization under the guise of «liberation,» like what the U.S. did to Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines a hundred years ago.

An Internet search for reports on the mines of Kosovo-the Trepca mining complex or Stari Trg-turned up only the one article by Hedges and a small piece in the June 22 Wall Street Journal. All other mentions are in metallurgical journals.

<snip>

Hedges describes the mining complex: «The Stari Trg mine, with its warehouses, is ringed with smelting plants, 17 metal treatment sites, freight yards, railroad lines, a power plant and the country's largest battery plant.» The labor power of millions of workers throughout socialist Yugoslavia built this mining complex into the powerhouse it is today. It was their wealth that was invested in developing the complex. It belongs not just to those who live in Kosovo, but to the workers of all Yugoslavia.

The Yugoslav web site www.yugo slavia.com describes Trepca as the «richest lead and zinc mines in Europe.» Lignite deposits in the Kosovo mines are, according to experts, sufficient for the next 13 centuries. The capacityof the lead and zinc refineries ranks third in the world. Miners work round the clock, day and night, in six-hour shifts. According to the mine director, «In the last three years we have mined 2,538,124 tons of lead and zinc crude ore and produced 286,502 tons of lead and zinc and 139,789 tons of pure lead, zinc, cadmium, silver and gold.» Although the average person watching the news in the evening has never heard of Stari Trg, it has been a prize changing hands for two thousand years.

The wealth of Stari Trg is legendary. Precious metals were mined there more than 2,000 years ago, first by the Greeks, then by the Romans. These mines were the grand prize in the Nazi occupation of the Balkans after Germany grabbed control from the British. The mines have great industrial and military importance. The Nazis used batteries produced there to power their U-boats. Today submarine batteries are still made there. Profits from these mines are helping to keep the Yugoslav Federation afloat. U.S. and UN sanctions imposed on Serbia and Montenegro, the two remaining republics of Yugoslavia, have taken an enormous toll

The progressive movement in the U.S. and throughout Western Europe must be at the forefront in explaining that the billions of dollars spent on the U.S./NATO occupation of the region is not in the interests of any of the people of the Balkans. Nor is it in the interests of poor and working people in the U.S. or Europe. The war is destroying all that was built through collective ownership and collaboration in the Balkans. This war will mean higher taxes and even more cuts in social programs in the U.S and Europe.

But the billions of dollars in profit will go to a few wealthy stockholders in the U.S. or in Western Europe.

http://www.eroj.org/urbiorbi/Yugoslavia/mines.htm

[Inland]

5. Think how much burned in failed attempt to steal Iraq oil.

Thanks, Bush.

[K-W]

7. mispost ignore

[whistle]

8. "The U.S. military generates a ton of toxic pollution every minute"

...does that include all of the DU material they have irresponsibly lobbed into Iraq and other countries?

[chlamor]

16. 630,000 DU rounds

-1991 Gulf War US fired 630,000 DU rounds

-During bombings in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq (again) US fired DU from A-10 Warthog, Tomahawk missiles, tank shells and bullets.

Current Military, $558B:Military Personnel $109B, Operation and Maintenance $154B, Procurement $81B, Research and Development $68B, Construction $7B, Family Housing $4B, Retired Pay $46B, DoE Nuclear Weapons $17B, NASA (50%) $8B, International Security $8B, Homeland Sec. (50%) $16B, Ex. Off. Pres. $78, Misc. $4B, “Allowance for Anticipated Supplemental” (Iraq) $25B
UNBUDGETTED: $85B (est.):Most of the spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is not included in the President’s Budget but the Administration has announced it will seek this money as supplemental appropriations later in year as it has in the past two years

Past Military, $384B: Veterans’ Benefits $70B; Interest on National Debt (80% estimated to be created by military spending) $314B

[enid602]

20. defense spending

$558 billion!!! And that is no doubt minimized by the effect of modern accounting. I recall that the military received $150 billion in Clinton's last year in office. Of course, we have the war on terror now, but the Government can't seem to find enough shekels to protect the infrastructure (mass transit, ports) that are most vulnerable to terrorism. I read that this year $30 billion will go to Star Wars, but less than $1MM to protect the Ports of LA. The Ports of LA are now the 3rd largest in the world in terms of tonnage, and are surrounded by one of the largest petroleum refining operations in the US, not to mention an industrial base whose output is greater than that of Chicago, Detroit and New York combined. God help us if anything ever happens there.

[LynzM]

9. This war is awfully wasteful...

Not just in terms of lives or money (though those, of course, moreso) but also in terms of using up fuel. I didn't have the numbers to look at before, but it ought to be pretty obvious that moving that many people around by plane, boat, tank, truck, and using trains and trucks to move other trucks uses up a LOT of fuel.

[Sirveri]

21. Some of these figures are pretty misleading.

"-An aircraft carrier uses 150,000 gallons of fuel per day"

No, Aircraft Carriers run on Nuclear Power, of the 12 currently in Service, all but 2 run on Nuclear Power, and the next CVN comming online is the GHW Bush. So when you say 150,000 gallons, is that for the two CV's that aren't nuclear? And does that figure include the already stated figure of "-A fighter jet consumes as much fuel per hour as the average US motorist uses in two years"?

Also, "-Every year the U.S. military uses enough energy to run all U.S. mass transit for 22 years" I noticed you said energy and not oil, currently the US navy operates nearly half of the nuclear reactors currently operating inside the US, that's a substantial ammount of energy, but it's not all oil.

Also could you source this out better next time?

[Joe the Revelator]

22. I was about to make the same post....

We won't win by lying to each other.

[acmejack]

23. Will these do?

It may be counterproductive calling someone a liar, just because you take exception to their information. The military says tanks get .56 mpg and carriers get 17 ft/gal. (admittedly only the conventially powered units)

[chlamor]

25. You are right-The figures are understated

I purposefully understated the amount of fuel the US military uses so as not to be seen as exaggerating. Later I will provide several links if you wish.

Seems some don't want to face the BEAST.

The US military is the main culprit, by far, in the destruction of planet earth. Followed by the US 'consumer'.

-US WAR MACHINE IS THE WORLDS GREATEST POLLUTER_GENERATES MORE TOXIC POLLUTION THAN THE FIVE LEADING CHEMICAL COMPANIES COMBINED
-Two days of Military spending could halt the spread of deserts
-Five minutes could protect endangered species and combat ocean pollution for one year
-200 tons of hazardous wastes have been dumped in the Philipines
-Global military spending=1.9 million dollars per minute
-DoD Budget exempts the Armed Forces from the Endangered Species and Marine Mammals Protection Acts.

THE US MILITARY RUNS THIS COUNTRY.

If you want to look into this further here is a start:
www.miltoxproj.org
www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/index.html
www.fas.org
www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org
www.envirosagainstwar.org

[Sirveri]

26. I'd like to see military funding rolled back as well.

But at the same time we do need some of it. Ideally we would drop the standing army and just have a small Navy and Air Force with some decent Detterant capabilities. Where that money should be spent is likely another question, I personally would rather see us pay down the debt and improve the education and health system. But hey, that's just me.

[Auntie Bush]

30. "could you source this out better next time?" You forgot your source.

Did you get that information over a XU?

[shadowknows69]

24. I still say NASCAR has to go

<shadow ducks and dodges the various pit tools being thrown at him>

J/k peace. #3 forever and all that. :hide:

[SammyWinstonJack]

27. And SUVs

You forgot gas guzzling SUVs. :eyes:

[n2doc]

31. just change it

Imagine if NASCAR had a rule where you could only have 10 gallons of fuel for the whole race? They already have many performance restricting rules. It could be a real tech driver and showcase for fuel economy WITH power...:shrug:

[Auntie Bush]

28. Air Force I

We better find a new way to run our (I mean their...I take no responsibility) military without gas and oil. Maybe we will have to go back to horseback, shields and swords. ( Back to Jesus Days)

[chlamor]

32. We all drink the water

[chlamor]

33. And what is done in our name with all these weapons