ANWR finally gets passed

ANWR, the proposed plan to drill for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife refuge area, has finally been passed by the Senate, 51-49. About time that they got around to doing this. Sure, it'll take some 10 years to get oil really coming from ANWR, but that's 10 years of investments, construction, and a partial redesigning of the economics of oil for the United States. In 10 years, there will be oil for the United States coming from ANWR, Afghanistan, and Iraq. That means that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Venezeuela, and others will find themselves adrift in a wholly new game. OPEC will be a thing of the past- at least as it's currently constituted. It would be a VERY smart thing for Mubarak to go ahead with his democratization plans NOW, and not play any stalling game. Why? Because in roughly 10 to 15 years his country will be losing money and would have to seriously cut back on it's programs and gov't spending in order to survive. They'll need innovation and leadership in order to do that. In an ossified dicatorship that Mubarak has provided them with, that would be next to impossible. In a democracy, that would seem feasible. And as for Saudi Arabia, they need to do more than just go towards democracy- they need to kill the funding that the Wahabi sect of Islam is putting forth for the terrorists. If they don't do that now, they'll find themselves as the playthings of the terrorists- and the process would be reversed: the terrorists would be funding the Saudis to keep pumping their propaganda. The Saudis know full well how easily the United States defeated the Taliban and Hussein's Iraq. They don't want to be next.

So, here's to more oil!