Obama’s Katrina in Gulf Just Got Twice As Awful

What is it, day 54 of the fool-in-chief’s disastrous inability to do anything about that damn hole he can’t plug?

Well, the damn hold problem is officially bigger than ever.

June 10, 2010
Government doubles previous oil flow estimate for BP well
By Mark Seibel and Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Thursday doubled its minimum estimate of how much crude oil was gushing from the Deepwater Horizon oil well, saying a panel of scientists had concluded that 20,000 to 50,000 barrels, or as much as 2.1 million gallons, were pouring into the Gulf of Mexico every day before BP sheared the well’s riser pipe on June 3.

That action, which BP engineers undertook to fit a “top hat” containment dome over the well, almost certainly increased the flow, and Dr. Marcia McNutt, the head of the U.S. Geological Survey, said an estimate of the flow since June 3 would be available in a few days.

“Our scientific analysis is still a work in progress,” McNutt said.

The announcement that tens of thousands more barrels of oil than previously estimated have been spewing into the Gulf for weeks added to a growing sense that neither the federal government nor BP correctly assessed the size of the unfolding disaster or marshaled enough resources to meet it.

McClatchy gives us a picture of the constantly changing estimate:

The Los Angeles Times offers more on the sheer scope of the disaster Obama is doing such a terrible job presiding over:

The new figures could mean 42 million to 84 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on the night of April 20 — with the lowest estimate nearly four times the size of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill.

The flow estimates were released by Marcia McNutt, director of the U.S. Geological Survey, and do not count any increases that may have occurred since the cutting of the well’s riser pipe, a step that was expected to boost the flow.

And was it the heroic Obama administration that determined that the official estimates were wrong yet again?

No.  It was a bunch of scientists who had been arguing that the official estimates – from both BP and the federal government – were complete bullpucky:

The official government estimate of the flow rate is 12,000 to 19,000 barrels a day, which means the new device should be capturing the bulk of the oil. But some scientists have said those flow numbers could represent just the lower range and that the rate could be multiple times higher.

Worst-case scenario?
Leifer said based on the data he’s seen so far, the rate of flow from the broken well has increased since the initial April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers. He believes BP’s decision last week to sever the well’s damaged riser pipe in order to install the containment cap has increased the flow by far more than the 20 percent BP and government officials had predicted.

In fact, Leifer says, the well may be spewing what BP had called before the spill its worst-case scenario — as much as 100,000 barrels a day from a freely flowing pipe.He said he’s seen no evidence from BP to date that would be inconsistent from that dire scenario.

Judging by live undersea videos, “it looks like a freely flowing pipe,” Leifer said. “From what it looks like right now it suggests to me they’re capturing a negligible fraction.”

It’s unclear how much oil is still escaping because scientists don’t have access to enough data and the video feeds show a “disorganized cloud” of oil shooting out of open vents in the containment cap and between the riser and the cap, Wereley said.

Obama assured us prior to the top hat attempt which not only failed but made the crisis much, much worse that he was in charge, and that BP was answering to him.

Which means that it’s OBAMA’S FAULT that BP even attempted the top hat procedure in the first place.  Everyone knew there was a risk that it could make the problem much worse by at least 20%.  Obama gambled big and failed huge.

And it is readily apparent that Obama has literally assisted BP in a continual giant cover-up as to the actual extent of the damage, either by omission or comission:

From the New York Times:

Tensions between the Obama administration and the scientific community over the gulf oil spill are escalating, with prominent oceanographers accusing the government of failing to conduct an adequate scientific analysis of the damage and of allowing BP to obscure the spill’s true scope. […]

And the scientists say the administration has been too reluctant to demand an accurate analysis of how many gallons of oil are flowing into the sea from the gushing oil well. […]

Oceanographers have also criticized the Obama administration over its reluctance to force BP, the oil company responsible for the spill, to permit an accurate calculation of the flow rate from the undersea well. The company has refused to permit scientists to send equipment to the ocean floor that would establish the rate with high accuracy.

Ian MacDonald of Florida State University, an oceanographer who was among the first to question the official estimate of 210,000 gallons a day, said he had come to the conclusion that the oil company was bent on obstructing any accurate calculation. “They want to hide the body,” he said.

You want chilling?

Contacts in Louisiana have given me numerous, unconfirmed reports of cameras and cell phones being confiscated, scientists with monitoring equipment being turned away, and local reporters blocked from access to public lands impacted by the oil spill. But today CBS News got it on video, along with a bone-chilling statement by a Coast Guard official: “These are BP’s rules. These are not our rules.”

Fifty days into the disaster, Barack Obama had still never bothered to make any contact with the CEO of British Petroleum to lay out the way things will happen, to find out what is going on, or to hold BP accountable in any way for anything.  Or, I don’t know, to politely ask BP to please allow some actual measurements of the flow rate so the nation can know the extent of the disaster they are going to have to deal with.

And now it is becoming increasingly obvious that BP – not Barack – has been ruling the roost all along.

Obama is responsible?  He doesn’t even have a clue what is going on.

Well, now, after 54 days – and weeks’ worth of inexcusable delay and weeks’ worth of criticism – Obama is finally “summoning” the BP CEO to mitigate the damage being done to his political hide.  But it’s rather obvious that Obama isn’t meeting the BP chief to do the right thing, but rather to appear to do the right thing to avoid further legitimate criticism over why he’s taken so damn long to do the right thing.

Obama should have at least been on the phone with the BP head within the first three days of this disaster.  Instead, he’s ignored his responsibilities and allowed BP to repeatedly lie, obfuscate, conceal, and even fabricate and done nothing about any of it.

What we have here is a complete failure of leadership.  And the result of that failure has just officially become twice as awful as it had been.

Afghanistan and Iran: Weakling President Obama Confronted By ‘Strong’ Candidate Obama

Anne Bayefsky yesterday characterized Obama’s foreign policy as “the mouse who roared.”

Words don’t mean anything unless a leader has the character, integrity, courage, and resolve to stand behind them.

In July 15, 2008, candidate Obama roared regarding Afghanistan:

“I have argued for years that we lack the resources to finish the job because of our commitment to Iraq. That’s what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier this month,” Obama proclaimed in a major foreign policy address on July 15, 2008. “And that’s why, as president, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it should be. This is a war that we have to win.”

In March 27, 2009, President Obama roared:

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future. That’s the goal that must be achieved. That is a cause that could not be more just.

But now, just six months later, Obama is hiding from his generals and refusing to even LOOK AT his own General’s (Gen. Stanley McChrystal) troop request which will be necessary to carry out Obama’s own strategy.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Obama doesn’t even want to look at it yet.

Here’s the current situation:

Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal’s team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn’t given sufficient resources (read “troops”) to implement a change of direction in Afghanistan:

“Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn’t ready for it.”

Here’s the current situation:

In interviews with McClatchy last week, military officials and other advocates of escalation expressed their frustration at what they consider “dithering” from the White House. Then, while Obama indicated in television interviews Sunday he isn’t ready to consider whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, someone gave The Washington Post a classified Pentagon report arguing more troops are necessary to prevent defeat.

Here’s the current situation:

Those officials said that taking time could be costly because the U.S. risked losing the Afghans’ support. “Dithering is just as destructive as 10 car bombs,” the senior official in Kabul said. “They have seen us leave before. They are really good at picking the right side to ally with.”

The roaring mouse has been replaced by a timid, weak, pandering, patronizing, appeasing – and most certainly DITHERING – president.

Bush used to talk to his troop commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq every week; Obama has spoken JUST ONCE with Gen. McChrystal in the last seventy days.

Obama has spent more time talking with David Letterman than he has his key general in Afghanistan!!!

Clear implication to McChrystal: Talk to the hand.

A recent article entitled, “Pentagon worried about Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan” ended with this assessment from a senior Pentagon official:

“I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier.  We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war.”

Which answers the question as to why our troops so overwhelmingly supported Bush, and sat on their hands when their new commander-in-chief addressed them.

Charles Krauthammer points out the sheer cynical depravity of Barack Obama and the Democrat Party as regards Iraq and Afghanistan by pointing to what the Democrats themselves said:

Bob Shrum, who was a high political operative who worked on the Kerry campaign in ’04, wrote a very interesting article in December of last year in which he talked about that campaign, and he said, at the time, the Democrats raised the issue of Afghanistan — and they made it into “the right war” and “the good war” as a way to attack Bush on Iraq.In retrospect, he writes, that it was, perhaps, he said, misleading. Certainly it was not very wise.

What he really meant to say — or at least I would interpret it — it was utterly cynical. In other words, he’s confessing, in a way, that the Democrats never really supported the Afghan war. It was simply a club with which to bash the [Bush] administration on the Iraq war and pretend that Democrats aren’t anti-war in general, just against the wrong war.

Well, now they are in power, and they are trapped in a box as a result of that, pretending [when] in opposition that Afghanistan is the good war, the war you have to win, the central war in the war on terror. And obviously [they are] now not terribly interested in it, but stuck.

And that’s why Obama has this dilemma. He said explicitly on ABC a few weeks ago that he wouldn’t even use the word “victory” in conjunction with Afghanistan.

And Democrats in Congress have said: If you don’t win this in one year, we’re out of here. He can’t win the war in a year. Everybody knows that, which means he [Obama] has no way out.

Reminds me of Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who said, “I believe myself that … this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything.”  Reminds me of Democrat House Majority Whip James Clyburn openly acknowledging the fact that good news for American troops in Iraq would actually be bad news for Democrats.

The party of cut-and-run is already preparing to cutand run.  On the war they said we needed to fight and win in their campaign rhetoric.

By the way, Obama’s refusal to use the word “victory” is right here.  Nearly a year to the day after Obama said “This is a war we need to win,” Obama said (you can go here for the interview):

I’m always worried about using the word ‘victory,’ because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur.

Well, first of all, Obama is factually wrong in his history: Hirohito didn’t sign the surrender to MacArthur.  Secondly, he is utterly morally wrong in his foreign policy.

Let’s compare Obama’s refusal to pursue victory with the strategic vision of a great president:

“Here’s my strategy on the Cold War: We win, they lose.” – Ronald Reagan

Reagan’s America: winner; Obama’s America: loser.

Let’s turn now to Obama’s abject failure in Iran.

In his April 16th, 2008 debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama roared:

“I have said I will do whatever is required to prevent the Iranians from obtaining nuclear weapons.”

But he did nothing.  NOTHING.  And now Iran already has them at their whim.

And  in The Jerusalem Post, we get a picture of the REAL Obama:

The Iranians have already called Obama’s bluff. An Iranian newspaper referred to the American agenda on July 26 this way: “[T]he Obama administration is prepared to accept the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran… They have no long-term plan for dealing with Iran… Their strategy consists of begging us to talk with them.”

Obama had a historic opportunity at the United Nations gathering: he was the first American president EVER to serve as the chair of the UN Security Council.  He had the power to shape the agenda, and confront Iran over its now overwhelmingly clear nuclear weapons program.

He pissed his opportunity away, and drove NOTHING.

Anne Bayefsky described how Obama utterly failed to force any kind of showdown with Iran – even when the opportunity was literally handed to him.  She concludes by saying, “There is only one possible answer: President Obama does not have the political will to do what it takes to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb.”

Remember that pandering, appeasing, pathetic weakness when Iran gets the bomb and the ballistic missile system to deliver it.  Remember that when they launch wave after wave of terror attack with impunity.  Remember that when they shut down the Strait of Hormuz and send the price of gasoline skyrocketing to $15 a gallon.

As for Israel?

Only a brain-dead and witless minority of 4% of Israelis believe Obama hasn’t sold them down the river; by contrast, 88% of Israelis believed Bush was pro-Israel.

Hearkening back to the Carter Administration which Obama’s frighteningly resembles, Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, wants to make it clear to Israel that if they attempt to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons sites the U.S. Air Force will stop them.

Apparently, Saudi Arabia is a better friend of Israel than the United States.

I believe God will supernaturally protect Israel when they are attacked by an enemy that will be emboldened because of American abandonment of Israel and a perception of American weakness.

Alas, America won’t be so fortunate.

I had crystal clear clarity when I heard that Barack Obama’s pastor of 23 years shouted:

“No, no, no!  Not God bless America, God damn America!”

And Barack Obama’s incredibly weak and pandering response was that:

Rev. Wright “is like an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with.”

I believe that God WILL damn America under this President.  And I believe that that damnation has already began.