Reposted from The Brattleboro Reformer.

A Runaway Train called America

Kathryn Casa

This country today is poised on the precipice of a war that could alter the world as we know it — a conflict that could fundamentally change who we are as a nation, the rights we enjoy and the way the rest of the world relates to us.

War’s curtain call shrouds pressing domestic priorities including jobs creation, environmental protection, health insurance and education.

In his State of the Union speech tonight, George W. Bush is expected to promote his new economic stimulus package. Doubtless we will also hear more arguments in favor of the push for war with Iraq, and rhetoric dismissive of the European position against such action.

What we are not likely to hear is the other state of the union — the one that a war with Iraq would so helpfully obscure.

Statistics compiled recently by the minority staff of the House Appropriations Committee reflect the precarious nature of our situation. They hold a mirror to the country George Bush does not want us to see.

For example, here is what we won’t hear the president say about the economy:

• 1.7 million jobs have been lost since January 2001, and 8.6 million Americans are actively looking for work.

• Between Dec. 29, 2000, and the end of the third quarter 2002, the total market value of all U.S. equities dropped by 38 percent, or $6.65 trillion.

• 1.3 million Americans slipped below the official poverty line in 2001, the first increase since 1993.

• In two years, the United States had the highest rate of bankruptcy cases in history, up 23 percent since 2000.

• Requests for emergency shelters increased some 19 percent in 2002, the largest annual increase since 1990.

More news from the domestic front that likely will go unspoken tonight:

• A budget surplus of $236 billion in 2002 has turned into a $157 billion deficit for 2002, and forecasters predict the Bush ’04 deficit at between $300-350 billion — a half-trillion-dollar negative change.

• Bush has cut programs within the “No Child Left Behind” Act by $90 million, and the ’04 budget for Title I, the main program targeting aid to disadvantaged children, is expected to fall more than $6 billion short of what was promised in the new education law.

• Nearly 40 percent of Bush’s first tax cut went to the richest 1 percent of the country, or those earning more than $373,000 a year. Under the second tax cut proposal, the same segments of the population would receive an average tax cut of $30,127, while the average working family would get about $289.

• The number of Americans without health insurance rose by 1.4 million in 2001, after dropping in 1999 and 2000.

• Monthly premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance went up by 12.7 percent between spring 2001 and spring 2002, the largest increase since 1990.

• Bush unilaterally withdrew the United States from the Kyoto Treaty, despite an EPA warning to the United Nations of significant environmental effects from climate change with, according to Associated Press reports, “changes over the next decades expected to put southeastern coast communities at greater risk of storm surges, prompt more uncomfortable heat waves in cities and reduce snowpack and water supplies in the West.” The president has suggested “voluntary action” by industry is enough to deal with greenhouse-gas pollution.

• The Bush administration in 2002 designated fewer toxic sites for restoration, and shifted the bulk of the cleanup costs from industry to the taxpayers. Bush’s EPA also denied requests from its own regional offices to continue cleanup actions at 33 sites in 19 states.

• In the first increase in serious crime in a decade, the FBI reports robberies were up 3.7 percent between 2000 and 2001, and murders increased 2.5 percent.

  Yet despite a focus on the “war on terrorism,” we are not likely to hear the president reveal that we are no safer now than we were on Sept. 11, 2001. That’s because:

• In August 2002 — just four months before he was to propose another tax giveaway to the rich — Bush vetoed a bipartisan package for port security, cockpit doors, border patrol, customs information systems, local first responder equipment, chemical weapons safety and other security concerns. Bush said the nation could not afford the additional homeland security expense.

• The Washington Post reported in December that the “threat of ‘Islamic terrorism’ toward Western countries was growing, as Islamic militants linked to al-Qaida successfully recruit young men for a “holy war” against the United States.

• U.S prestige in Europe, the Middle East and Asia is at perhaps an all-time low due to our perceived arrogance and belligerence.

Mr. Bush tonight will read his teleprompter; the Democrats will issue their response; the pundits will analyze the words. The rest of us should buckle our seatbelts. We are aboard the runaway train called America.

Read more from The Brattleboro Reformer.

Thanks for the link to Common Dreams.

The following is reposted from Geotimes.

Oil in Iraq

Greg Peterson

Of all the uncertainties in assessing world oil resources, one of the greatest is the future of Iraq. The oil reserves in Iraq are among the largest in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. More than 100 billion barrels of oil are known to exist within the country, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates an additional 45 billion barrels remain to be discovered. Yet war and sanctions have driven wild fluctuations in Iraq´s oil production over the past 25 years, and the crystal ball for future production is hazy at best.

ìIraq contains whole petroleum systems: world-class source rocks, overlain by excellent reservoirs and terrific evaporite seals,” says Thomas Ahlbrandt, a research geologist with USGS.

Many of the source rocks began forming in the Jurassic. Shallow seas periodically inundated the northeastern section of the Arabian plate, where Iraq currently sits. Those seas teemed with life, spurred by the warmth of the equatorial latitudes. Thick layers of organic-rich shales and marine carbonates accumulated in expansive basins and compressed into source rocks that remained little disturbed for millions of years.

In the Tertiary, subduction of the Arabian plate beneath the Eurasian plate drove the source rocks down into a ìthermal generating window,” Ahlbrandt says. High heat and pressure converted the shale and carbonate-rich rocks into oil and gas. Much of the oil migrated up into anticlines sealed by thick layers of salt and anhydrite left behind from the Jurassic seas as they dried out.

Despite its immense reserves, Iraq´s oil production is low. In 2001, Iraq produced 2.45 million barrels of oil per day, accounting for only 12 percent of the total oil produced in the Persian Gulf. The United States produced more than three times that much, even though its reserves are much smaller.

ìThey have the oil resources,” says Floyd Wiesepape, a petroleum geologist with the Energy Information Administration, a part of the Department of Energy. ìIt is a question of whether they have the wells or facilities to increase production.”

Low production reflects years of sanctions and deteriorating drilling infrastructure. On Aug. 6, 1990, four days after Iraq invaded Kuwait, the United Nations banned all oil exports from the country. Oil production dropped to 0.3 million barrels of oil per day, less than a tenth of what it was before the Persian Gulf and Iran/Iraq wars began. For five years, production barely exceeded what the country itself consumed. Wells and supporting facilities fell into disrepair.

In 1996, Iraq began exporting oil again under the U.N. Oil-for-Food program. The program set strict limits on the amount of oil that Iraq could export. All revenue from the sales had to go toward food, medicine or other humanitarian supplies for the people of Iraq. Oil production steadily increased for the first few years of the program.

However, production has leveled off in the past 3 years, even though the U.N. has removed the ceiling for the amount of oil that Iraq can produce under the
Oil-for-Food program. Sanctions continue to discourage international investment needed to boost production capacity. Russia, France and China have contracts to develop oil fields in the region, but sanctions have slowed fulfillment of those contracts.

Iraq claims production will increase quickly if the U.N. lifts sanctions, Wiesepape says. ìIraq anticipates producing up to 3 million barrels per day within a year or two, and up to 5 million a day within five years, assuming they are not limited by demand, OPEC or sanctions.” Yet the future of production is unclear, especially given the possibility of a U.S.-led war in Iraq.

The United States does import some oil from Iraq, although the numbers are low. In 2001, imports from Iraq accounted for only 5.5 percent of the total U.S. imports. In contrast, imports from the Persian Gulf as a whole added up to 20 percent – a significant contribution since the United States relies on imports for more than half of its oil consumption each year.

Read more from Geotimes.