Regarding "plan war," here is a quote from the 1975 thriller movie Three Days of the Condor. A middle-management CIA officer (Higgins) is explaining to a lowest level CIA neophyte book reader Joe Turner (Robert Redford), who has discovered a scenario involving America's deliberate war over energy resources in a fiction book he read and has become alarmed at the possible scenario. Higgins, older, wiser, and more steeped in CIA thinking than the young idealist Turner, explains why Redford must accept the unacceptable "plan war" because the American masses will not object when they discover in the future that there are only two alternatives - either go to war to take oil from others (acceptable) or freeze and go hungry in the next winter (unacceptable).
Higgins: "It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then? Ask them?"
Joe Turner: "Ask them?"
Higgins: "Not now - then! Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em!"
Turner is still young and idealistic, and he thinks the CIA should ask the American public to make the decision - either international war to steal other nations' oil or domestic suffering from not enough heat to keep warm in the next winter and running low on food.
In a previous post Wade said that the world reached its peak oil moment in 2006. G.W. Bush became US President in early 2001, and within 6 months the White House began holding an almost daily series of secret discussions of what to do about the world energy situation. Many oil executives in the USA were invited to these meetings which were chaired by US Vice-President Dick Cheney, also a previous oil executive until he was promoted to VP. A very few months later the 9/11 events happened and the White House began planning, as were told later and as a response to this attack, to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, probably the nation-states which at that time had the weakest governments and a vast amount of oil reserves (Iraq) that could be seized and controlled after a military take-over which could then be blamed on payback for 9/11.
Which came first, the attack that resulted in the invasions or the plan to invade Iraq that needed only a national event to justify its occurring to the emotionally stirred up American public who were salivating for some kind of pay-back? Was the USA simply doing exactly what Higgins had prophesied to Turner in this 1975 movie? We didn't want war because we were freezing, we wanted war because we were angry. What difference did it make?
Thanks Bill. Yes, that speech at the end of that movie was pretty stark. What was left out, of course, is that hydrocarbon energy became obsolete before I was born. Not that that character played by Cliff Robertson would been privy to that, as he played a ways down that food chain.
Regarding "plan war," here is a quote from the 1975 thriller movie Three Days of the Condor. A middle-management CIA officer (Higgins) is explaining to a lowest level CIA neophyte book reader Joe Turner (Robert Redford), who has discovered a scenario involving America's deliberate war over energy resources in a fiction book he read and has become alarmed at the possible scenario. Higgins, older, wiser, and more steeped in CIA thinking than the young idealist Turner, explains why Redford must accept the unacceptable "plan war" because the American masses will not object when they discover in the future that there are only two alternatives - either go to war to take oil from others (acceptable) or freeze and go hungry in the next winter (unacceptable).
Higgins: "It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then? Ask them?"
Joe Turner: "Ask them?"
Higgins: "Not now - then! Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em!"
Turner is still young and idealistic, and he thinks the CIA should ask the American public to make the decision - either international war to steal other nations' oil or domestic suffering from not enough heat to keep warm in the next winter and running low on food.
In a previous post Wade said that the world reached its peak oil moment in 2006. G.W. Bush became US President in early 2001, and within 6 months the White House began holding an almost daily series of secret discussions of what to do about the world energy situation. Many oil executives in the USA were invited to these meetings which were chaired by US Vice-President Dick Cheney, also a previous oil executive until he was promoted to VP. A very few months later the 9/11 events happened and the White House began planning, as were told later and as a response to this attack, to invade Afghanistan and Iraq, probably the nation-states which at that time had the weakest governments and a vast amount of oil reserves (Iraq) that could be seized and controlled after a military take-over which could then be blamed on payback for 9/11.
Which came first, the attack that resulted in the invasions or the plan to invade Iraq that needed only a national event to justify its occurring to the emotionally stirred up American public who were salivating for some kind of pay-back? Was the USA simply doing exactly what Higgins had prophesied to Turner in this 1975 movie? We didn't want war because we were freezing, we wanted war because we were angry. What difference did it make?
Thanks Bill. Yes, that speech at the end of that movie was pretty stark. What was left out, of course, is that hydrocarbon energy became obsolete before I was born. Not that that character played by Cliff Robertson would been privy to that, as he played a ways down that food chain.