Why be an evangelist?

Because the children of today expect that of us.

"Russia is behaving in a very erratic way," said James Woolsey, the former director of the CIA. "There is a risk that they might do something like cutting oil to hurt the world's democracies, if they get angry enough."

Mr Woolsey said the rapid move towards electric cars and other sources of power in the US and Europe means Russia's ability to use the oil weapon will soon be a diminishing asset. "Within a decade it will be very hard for Russia to push us around," he told The Daily Telegraph.

While this is not the "old woman in the woods" circa Kosovo emailed to news rooms by Dee it is nonetheless a genuine reason to get our energy policy correct. I'm proud of good work performed under pragmatic assumptions. (The witch in the woods.) I don't think we have the Osettia "home field advantage momentumn" with us on this go-around.



And this is where I differed from the Neocons, really a term to broadly used now, and in some respects, unfairly used. I object when it is applied to Woolsey by others as I consider him a classic 'realist-pragmatic.' Incidentally you cannot find a reference to Putnin by myself, with the exception of calling him a 'Neocon' where I did not first notice his similarity to Woolsey.. that said.. where I depart with the 'Neocons' was where they departed from the trite.. as in logistics, they were like a dog chasing a car, and now that they caught it?? what to do with it?? So similar as an analogy to post invasion Iraq. Troops??? an afterthought.. energy needed to sustain a conflict?? in the national oil reserves one imagines.

The neocons are right, this is the first time stateless actors with no territory to protect, no interest in protecting individuals, capable of using modern technology, let alone, let alone nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction -- take a chlorine filled train tanker and blow it up in the tunnel underneath the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Fully within the range of possibility. You don't need weapons of mass destruction. That tunnel runs from Union Station under the Supreme Court and under the Rayburn Building. Do it under the Rayburn Building. You have a hole as big as a little mini Hiroshima. And it's not like running a plane into the Pentagon or running a plane into the Capitol. It's much more damaging. So the combination of technology, sophistication, laptop computers in a cave in Tora Bora. They could orchestrate that. Now that, we've never faced that before.

M: Can I ask you a question? It seems that one of the shortcomings of the neoconservative worldview is precisely their focus on states.

B: Exactly right, bingo.

M: Okay.

B: You're one of only three goddamn guys that've gotten this.

M: Well, can you --

B: No, I really mean it, ask Norm [communication director Norm Kurz]. I mean Norm's had to sit through, listening to me in all these things. This is the point that I was trying desperately to make to my colleagues and I tried to articulate it on Stephanopoulos' show. The fundamental flaw in the neo -- forget flaw, the fundamental difference between Joe Biden, John Kerry on the one hand, and the neoconservatives on the other is that they genuinely believe -- I'll put it in the negative sense -- they do not believe it is possible for a sophisticated international criminal network that will rain terror upon a country, that has the potential to kill 3,000 or more people in a country, can exist without the sponsorship of a nation state. They really truly believe -- and this was the Axis of Evil speech -- if you were able to decapitate the regimes in Iran, Iraq, North Korea, you would in fact dry up the tentacles of terror. I think that is fundamentally flawed reasoning. If every one of those regimes became a liberal democracy tomorrow, does anybody think we wouldn't have Code Orange tomorrow in the United States? Rhetorical question. Does anybody think we don't have to worry about the next major event like Madrid occurring in Paris or Washington or Sao Paulo? Gimme a break. But they really believe this is the way to do it.

..............

So here's the other little piece to -- not confuse you, but I don't know how you write it. See the other piece that came in here, we had a split among the neoconservatives, between the nation builders and the guys who said, No we don't build nations. So we had Cheney and Rumsfeld among others finding it convenient to say, consistent with neocon principles, We're going to move on to Iraq, but also I don't give a crap about rebuilding.


Yes there was a split of sorts.. But reality has it's way of pushing folks back together, or apart, or in accordance with the facts.

Point here is that I always liked Biden, thought him one of the smartest people in the Senate, and I'm considering voting Democrat the first time in my life this fall.

But reality should be the basis for our military, energy, and foreign policy decisions. There should be plans that are accomplishable, artculated, and like an apollo project statement, or a corporate mission statement.

Wayne Slater, senior political writer for the Dallas Morning News and co-author of the book Bush’s Brain: “My Dad said a fool with a plan will beat a genius with no plan. We are like a fool with no plan.”

The Cheney faction of neocons let us down, after a secret energy meeting, we got no fucking plan. Lets call this a fact, EIGHT YEARS later and after a secret meeting we have no fucking plan.

So you better listen to the realists, the people who remember to pack their sleeping bag before committing themselves to a "LONG HARD SLOG." Amen you better start listening to people like Pickens and Woolsey. You need to ask yourself will tough talk or a plan be a better defense strategy?

I guess you can call somebody the 'N" word, if of course your a N~

I think Biden and Obama with a smarter sort of national security can meet a ten year challenge to energy independence. God help us if we don't. And G-damn the fools who pissed away eight solid years. History will not be kind and I write history also.