"How many more dead Americans is it worth? Our opinion was: not very many." (Cheney, April 15th 1994)
Time passes, though. Facts become unignorable, and priorities change. This is him five years later, in Autumn 1999, addressing the Institute of Petroleum in London:
"By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world‘s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies; even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
"How many more dead Americans is it worth? Our opinion was: not very many." (Cheney, April 15th 1994)
ReplyDeleteTime passes, though. Facts become unignorable, and priorities change. This is him five years later, in Autumn 1999, addressing the Institute of Petroleum in London:
"By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world‘s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies; even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."
http://www.studien-von-zeitfragen.de/Zeitfragen/Cheney_on_Oil/cheney_on_oil.html
(He was still CEO of Halliburton at the time.)
I mean, in the years between Gulf War 1 and GW2, the quagmire had become worth risking. Or even creating.
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