22 June 2010 We want to borrow your platform for a while

22 June 2010 We want to borrow your platform for a while


Blow Up the Well to Save the Gulf

By CHRISTOPHER BROWNFIELD

Published: June 21, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/opinion/22Brownfield.html?th&emc=th

“TONY HAYWARD, the chief executive of BP, made an astounding admission before Congress last week: after nearly two months of failure, the company and the Coast Guard have no further plans to plug the Macondo oil well leaking into the Gulf. Instead, the goal is merely to contain the leak until a relief well comes online, a process that could take months.

With tens of thousands of barrels of oil leaking from the well each day, this absence of a backup plan highlights a lack of leadership, resources and expertise on the part of the Coast Guard, which from the beginning was compelled to give BP complete control over the leaking wellhead.

Instead, President Obama needs to create a new command structure that places responsibility for plugging the leak with the Navy, the only organization in the world that can muster the necessary team. Then the Navy needs to demolish the well. “

While this sounds like a workable solution, the U.S. Navy does not possess the hardware to carry out such a mission. It would have to immediately seize control of all the drilling platforms, salvage vessels, and other technology necessary to assume the mission. This would immediately enrage the oil industry, the GOP, and the Tea Party mobs.

The research Remote-Operated Vehicles used by Ballard are not equipped to drill, ferry heavy hardware, or deliver explosives. Naval demolitions and explosives are not necessarily deliverable via hose and blasting slurry, AMFO type mixtures, may not be sufficiently high order or powerful enough to perform as the author hopes. He is, after all, familiar with torpedoes and other Navy ordnance, not with blasting compounds measured by the gallon. Given the fractured nature of the sea bed at the well site reported by geologists who came forward, the risk of further fracturing the strata and causing more leaks is extremely high.

While our Navy is capable of many types of missions, it is not familiar with deep water drilling and well management.

It might not be the worst option for Obama to nationalize the hardware currently in use by BP in drilling the relief well and salvaging what oil they can contain. Whatever action he takes will anger and antagonize the right wing and the oil industry. He’s been accused of trying engineer a socialist political takeover – utter nonsense but widely believed. He’s also been accused of doing nothing to resolve this crisis. He may as well commandeer the hardware the Navy might need to deliver some sort of other device. At some point BP is likely to decide they’ve completed their obligation. That point is not likely to intersect with that which indicates that the best possible cleanup and recovery has been done.



Stanley McChrystal: The runaway general

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37847841/ns/us_news-military/

The graveyard of empires has likely destroyed another military leader’s career. This President is too poorly grounded in things military to trust the Pentagon or its flag officers. That will cost him and the nation dearly.

He’s allowed himself to be sucked further into Bush’s war, making it Obama’s war. A withdrawal would have been the best option. Failing that, paying attention to the military leaders would have been advisable. This war is not winnable and will never be. We have not defined a victory point; have no Afghani allies who can be trusted to provide a working government or military without immense amounts of assistance. The Taliban’s religious hold and terrorist hold on the Afghani citizenry, as well as the tribal nature of the country will prevent a workable army every being fielded.

McChrystal, highly talented, should have refused the assignment. He is too much a warrior, too little a diplomat, and too given to speaking the truth as he sees it. The Rolling Stone article is well worth reading. It depicts a doomed mission being attempted by a military force that must believe in the mission; a force essentially abandoned by all of the nation’s citizenry except the theocons. Our military is once more being ordered out to accomplish the impossible by civilians who don’t understand the mission and who can’t be bothered to serve their selves.

Obama has no real choice but to fire McChrystal. In doing so, he will guarantee that we will leave Afghanistan as we left VietNam.