First let me say to all those who clicked on this reply because my title led them to believe that I was going to bash Bush, relax…you don’t need to defend the chief. I merely wanted to say, that which has been stated numerous times before, that current administration energy policies are starting to show their dark side.

The Iran problem is unique in that we are really in a bind. We have little leverage other than Tactical Warfare. In the past one could have tried to make Iran understand that nuclear weapons were a folly by placing economic/political pressure on them. Currently, we find ourselves slaves to oil. We need oil, it makes our economy run, along with our cars. We need oil. They have oil….a lot of oil. It is difficult to imagine that countries like Russia or China would go along with UN sanctions. They like oil too, especially China. If you can’t slap economic sanctions on a country to try and persuade them to change their ways, what does that leave you with? Military action. Well, seeing as how we have vested considerable time/money/troops to Iraq, it doesn’t seem all that probable that an invasion of Iran would fare well both domestically as well as globally. Couple that with the fact that the majority of citizens in Iran feel they should have nuclear weapons, I don’t think this would be a "liberation" type engagement. So all we really have are empty threats, so why not go with the big ones, like nuclear attacks? Everyone knows we are bluffing, but that’s not to say that bluffing hasn’t worked before…reference CUBA and COLD WAR.

Personally, I think that if this administration took drastic steps to revamp their stances on energy reform…it would go a long way to help give us an upper hand in this matter. One needs to consider conservation as a geopolitical tool. I think it applies to Radical Islamic fundamentalism (or is it islamofacism?) as well as a nuclear Iran. Rather than boost a defense budget…why not boost our research budget….it worked when we were trying to develop THE BOMB why couldn’t it work to help us stop?