Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, there have been at least 187,000 people killed (infoshout.com). Other estimates count over 1,000,000 killed.
The undeclared war with Iraq is now the longest war that the USA has ever been involved in.
$1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars) from U.S. taxpayers have been spent on the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, “closer to home,” each day 100,000 barrels of crude oil are gushing into the ocean.
The polar ice cap is melting faster than anyone imagined it would, and the planet continues to warm.
You and I are the unwitting creators of all of this, and we are also the benefactors — every time we use an automobile, eat some fresh produce grown with chemical fertilizers or imported from California, Chile, or New Zealand, every time we purchase an electronic gadget or anything encased in plastic or anything trucked or shipped to us…almost everything we use (for comfort, necessity, or luxury) is inextricably connected to petroleum — in the raw materials, the manufacturing, the shipping, or all three. (What would we own if we had to make everything from what is in our immediate surroundings?)
The more deeply I look into it (I mean really look at everything I am doing, everything I am consuming), the more I see how virtually everything I buy and everything I do is dependent upon cheap oil and its derivatives.
My profit from this system may not be as obvious as that of a BP executive’s, but it is just as ugly.
Jamie O’GormanEdgartown
