re: #102 Naso Tang

That sounds almost flattering of ourselves. We stumbled into this role because we don’t have a national energy policy worth a damn. China on the other hand just buys the oil producers with cash and investments and says they will look the other way for everything else.

We however do have principles//

we chose, does not mean we chose wisely.

Remember those golden days of the 1980’s with Iraq and Iran at war with each other, pumping oil as fast as they could and selling it at whatever price they could get (as little as $10 per barrel).

We assumed those days would last forever and made no attempt to get away from our dependency on that part of the world, despite all the headaches it has been causing us since the 70’s.

And NATO? NATO was founded to counter the Warsaw pact, which is officially defunct. Our presence there is a political white elephant and result of inertia taking precendence over our our national interests.