..Since the 1945 meeting between President Franklin Roosevelt and King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the Saudi monarchy, U.S. foreign policy has been subservient to the nation’s energy needs. Access to the Persian Gulf oil required robust and costly military presence in the region and frequent interventions. Worse, the U.S. has been forced to coddle some of the world’s
worst despots just because they held the key to our prosperity hence compromising American values and principles...
..The overall reserves-to-production ratio -- an indicator
of how long proven reserves would last at current production rates – outside of the Middle East is about 15 years comparing to roughly 80 years in the Middle East. According to Exxon Corporation and PFC Energy, non-OPEC production, including Russia and West Africa will peak within a decade.1At that point the amount of oil found outside of the Middle East will decline steeply, putting OPEC in the driver seat of the world economy..
..Indeed, oil imports constitute a quarter of the U.S. trade deficit and are a
major contributor to the loss of jobs and investment opportunities. According to a study on the hidden cost of oil by the National Defense Council Foundation, the periodic oil shocks the U.S. has experienced since the 1973 Arab oil embargo cost the economy almost $2.5 trillion. More importantly, while the U.S. economy is bleeding, oil-producing nations increase their oil
revenues dramatically to the detriment of our national security...
..It is widely accepted that Saudi Arabia’s oil wealth has directly enabled the spread of Wahhabism around the world. The Saudis use oil funds to control most of the Arabic language media and are now moving to gain growing control over Western media.[And our total democracy via the SCOTUS decision.]
Only last month Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the world’s fifth richest man, purchased 5.46 percent of Fox News...
..The U.S. in an odd situation in which it is funding both sides in the war on terrorism. We finance the defense of the Free World against its sworn enemies through our tax dollars. And at the same time we support hostile regimes through the transfer of petrodollars. If we don’t change course
we will bleed more dollars each year as our enemies gather strength. Steady increase in world demand for oil means further enrichment of the corrupt and dictatorial regimes in the Persian Gulf and continued access of terrorist groups to a viable financial network which allows them to remain a lethal threat to the U.S. and its allies.corporation...
http://foreign.senate.gov/testimony/2005/LuftTestimony051020.pdf
