Hookers, oil, and empire
Three quick notes:
1) General Petraeus has the gall to compare the US occupation of Iraq to the British struggle against the IRA. He said that "fighting the insurgency is a 'long term endeavour' which could take decades." He then said,
Northern Ireland, I think, taught you that very well. My counterparts in your [British] forces really understand this kind of operation… It took a long time, decades.
The United Kingdom spent over thirty years fighting a rebellion inside its own national borders. The general needs to understand that Iraq is not the 51st state (at least not yet).
2) The International Energy Agency has finally admitted that peak oil is either already here or is on the close horizon. This is a major shift in the public discussion of the issue (which revolves not around the end of oil, but the end of cheap oil). The full Medium Term Oil Market Report for July 2007 is only available to subscribers, but this Reuters story includes the money quote:
Certainly our forecast suggests that the non-OPEC, conventional crude component of global production appears, for now, to have reached an effective plateau, rather than a peak.
Same thing.
3) The DC Madam has released her little black book. Click here to download all eleven years of it.
From those three, draw your own conclusions.