Two steps back, please...

I just want to make sure I'm not reading something into Ryan's last that wasn't there...

Surely, I'm not hearing you suggest, or (God forbid) defend, a Presidential policy of ignoring such a massive national security issue as America's dependence on foreign oil simply to provide security to quasi-despotic theocratic oligarchies like Kuwait and Saudi Arabia?

Every single aspect of the society and nation that is the United States of America gains in a world where we, as a nation, no longer have to look ANYWHERE else for fuel or energy. Our economy booms, our security grows, our military is that much more mobile and ready to defend the public, and we can then work that much harder to EXPORT the freedom and liberty that Bush so desperately seems to want to promote abroad.

As for the view of the Middle East in a world were OIL isn't the single most important commodity on the market? Jambo is right... unless something like "cold fussion" is discovered, and dirt-cheap, zero-emission energy is made universally available... someone will need the oil, if for no other reason than it is still the basis for 90% of all the plastics and makes up 25% of the components of all the fertilizer on the planet.

That's not to say that states like Saudi Arabia and Iran wouldn't suffer a serious set-back in their global bargaining ability, though. More importantly for us would be the nearly certain fact that the aggressive actions of those same "bin Laden" types that Ryan commented on would be focusing their hatred on the Saudi and Kuwaiti regimes... not the US and UK. After raping the world for 40 to 50 years over oil, if they haven't made any preperations for the day the oil dries up... they deserve to burn in the fires that will undoubtedly be lit for them.