Jul 01 2008
War looms with Iran… *** UPDATE ***
While writing my previous post, two related news items came in.
1. Iran has formally threatened the Strait of Hormuz to hurt Western economies should either America or Israel attacks.
Iranian Major General Mohammed Ali Jafari said, “Regarding the main route for exiting energy, Iran will definitely act to impose control on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.”
It seems they’ve declared that closing or disrupting the Strait of Hormuz will be one of their opening moves in this potential war. 20 to 40 percent of the world’s energy passes through those narrow waters.
2. It was reported today in China View and other locations that Iran is digging 320,000 graves on their border provinces for our troops.
“We do not wish the families of enemy soldiers to experience what Americans had to go through in the aftermath of the Vietnam War,” said Baqerzadeh, who is also head of Iran’s search committee for missing soldiers.
The preemptive measures would decrease the time during which slain soldiers would be buried, the Iranian military official said, adding “the burial of slain soldiers will be carried out decently and in little time.”
I would say this is more than the usual rhetoric, wouldn’t you?
Update 7/1/08:
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, in a energy starved world, closing or disrupting this supply would lead to at least a Great Depression. If you think it’s just about oil, you are absolutely correct.
I try to explain to people (if they are willing to listen) that petroleum doesn’t just go into your cars. It makes all your plastics, all the fertilizers for our food– in a word, it is what drives out entire world. We are practically bubblewrapped in petroleum products.
So, when people chant, “No blood for oil!” think about this. Without oil, millions will die from starvation, poverty, and eventually, disease (no plastic syringes and no plastics in machinery to create the vaccines). There will be plenty of blood flowing without oil, more than we can imagine.
We know what life without oil is like— it’s the kind of life during the Civil War on back where people were white-haired, toothless and dying by 40 years old.