I believe even a larger then necessary troop deployment of around 150,000 to 200,000 would not really yield beneficial results, the region would become more destabilized, America will look more like an occupier radical islamic people could then easily sell their case to the population and you'll have the entire middle east against US forces.

I think McNamara's rule of understanding your enemy needs to be explored here, concussions made for strategic purpose. What would the Iran leadership really want? A costly and self destructive war against the largest super power or economic help to appease their own population so they can stay in power.

The fact is that this is not the 1960s where the USA could endorse a totally unilateral stance, the globalization of the world means that more and more nations are co-dependent on economic well being. It's no longer that economic shocks effect one nation but they effect all. Because China relies on import sales to everyone, and in turn the first world become the innovators of new technology.

The last thing the USA needs to do is push OPEC further in considering a switch to the Euro via aggressive action in their area. That would lead to a depression and a total collapse of the economy.

The costs are far more now then ever before.

Zeth you seem to have a lack of understand towards how the oil market operates, oil prices and consequentially gas prices are controlled by OPEC, via augmentation of oil supply.

The greenpeace guy has a point, although his environmentalist approach is pretty shallow. He wants us to pay more so we'd be more conscious about conservation and buy fewer and/or more efficient cars.

Yes, we do need to get off our dependence of foreign oil, but once again I don't hear any viable solutions. But there is however a plan in action to ease our dependence.

Allowrnme to set up the situation...over the last few months there has been increasing tensions in the Middle East and as a result of those tensions oil speculators and OPEC raised the price of oil slowly but considerably, remember the oil companies (Mobil/Exxon, BP et al.) have no control over the price of oil. Meanwhile there was the usual political posturing as a result, calling for hearings on earnings, windfall tax proposals, and the like. There was also some talk about finding ways to get out of oil completely, but the CEO of Jet Blue and a few other high profile businessmen along with GE have sent a bill into Congress about constructing new refineries to convert coal to oil (a technology perfected in the 40's) and we could become energy independent in about 10 years. Now this technology is only profitable when the price of oil is around 30-35 dollars a barrel, any less and they lose money, the project itself will cost an estimated 50 billion dollars so these companies are trying to get the government to underwrite the insurance on this project. Because if this bill goes through and we get underway towards becoming an energy independent nation, OPEC loses one of its biggest customers and they take a huge hit in their profits. The only way OPEC could compete with this kind ofrna plan is if they collapse the oil market and drive the price of oil down to a level where it no longer becomes profitable to become energy independent. Therein lies the problem.

Now is this latest drop in the price of oil a result of this legislation? I really don't know. Is this plan of real concern to OPEC? I would think so.

So the real question is, would you pay for oil at 35 dollars a barrel if it came from America, or would you pay for oil at 15 dollars a barrel if it came from overseas?