INCUMBENT

Senator Cantwell voted for higher oil prices the minute she said yes to George Bush's misbegotten neocon adventure in Iraq. Indigenous oil reserves are being nationalized the wide world over and the essential American energy sources are no longer stable anywhere.The amount of 'proven reserves' the big oil companies bring to market yearly are not being replaced by new discoveries. Higher demand (China and India) plus lower supply equals higher prices. Cantwell's solution to the relentless upward charge of those oil prices is to "declare a temporary energy emergency followed by congressional investigations." The energy crisis already evidenced has the earmarkings of being permanent. Investigations are always good for political incumbents in need of media exposure when they are running for re-election but Cantwell's ploy is so misinformed as to the nature of the world energy situation as it exists in the real world as to render it laughably absurd. Almost as absurd as the Seattle Times editorial question "What are the oil companies doing to protect their american consumer?" The Big Oil Bogeyman coerced the american consumers into buying gashog suv's??-- Isn't it the Seattle Times who instead of infotaining consumers should inform and educate them as to the brave new and precarious energy world toward which we are indulgently driving ourselves?

Senator Cantwell's Seattle Times op-ed piece on the Iraq front is clearly an attempt to mitigate the deafening silence of the cowardly democratic stance that seeks to echo the Bush position of 'staying the course'. Once again either misinformed or misapprehending the situation on the ground outside the green zone in Iraq she fails to note that Iraqi sectarian civilians are killing each other night and day left and right and up and down and in and out. By any definition this IS civil war and to pretend otherwise is to willingly don disengenous blinders that enable her to protect her charade of actually having a position differing (in fact, not one wit) from the delusions of Mr. Bush and the neocon republicans. The elected government is now housed in the green zone because the rest of the country is too dangerous. It is a government with very little territory and virtually no sovereignty. Even in the less dangerous areas the Shite militias in the south and the Kurdish Pesh Merga fighters in the north control the police forces and they have not pledged allegiance to the newly 'elected' assembly. Come on, Senator, take a real position. And to the Times, Wake Up!!