Bush Lets ANOTHER Fabrication into the State of the Union?
Reported by Janie - February 2, 2006
Dayside did not air yesterday, as Fox opted to play George Bush's speech from Tennessee in its entirety. As Bush was merely recapping his State of the Union Address, he continued to discuss how America is addicted on oil, even as his own Secretary of Energy was claiming that original inclusion was a mistake.
At the end of the 1 o'clock hour, Bush had this to say: "In order to stay competitive, America must end its dependence on oil. When you're hooked on oil from the Middle East, it means you've got an economic security issue and a national security issue. And I spoke last night to some exciting opportunities here in America. I believe -- I know that technology is going to enable us to diversify away from being dependent on hydrocarbon, from oil."
This line virtually parroted excerpts from his State of the Union address from the previous night, where he promised the U.S. would "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."
Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman, said however; "This was purely an example." As Knight Ridder sums up Bodman's (and therefore Bush's) position, "He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth."
According to the Energy Information Administration's 2006 Annual Energy Outlook, "In 2025, net petroleum imports, including both crude oil and refined products, are expected to account for 60 percent of demand ... up from 58 percent in 2004."
In an even more sharp contrast to Bush's position, the New York Times reported yesterday that the Energy Department is set to begin layoffs in the next few weeks due to budget cuts, and these cuts will primarily focus on researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol, one of the initiatives Bush proposed.
With these conflicting statements, actions and outlooks, it appears that Bush's position in both speeches somehow made it past those fact-checking and reviewing the text of them numerous times, similar to the situation in the 2003 State of the Union Address where he "accidentally" included those now 16 famous words "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
Comment: I think Bush needs a better fact-checker!
