When Incompetence Goes to War Bombing was the easy part Dan Rather and Team Steady Jun 23 Credit: Getty Images Watching Donald Trump deliver the news of an American attack on Iran Saturday night, I wondered how many viewers had the same reaction I did: How can the United States be going to war — and that’s exactly what it is — with advisers whose collective experience managing international conflict is see-through thin? There was Trump, a draft dodger who has long derided the military, surrounded by his war cabinet of second-rate choices, who owe their professional and political souls to him. Will any of them ever question Trump’s decisions? We know the answer to that. Trump did not have solid evidence Iran was building a nuclear bomb. Nearing the time when they might be able to build one is the best that can be said. Similar, although not identical, to the situation when George W. Bush didn’t have hard evidence that Iraq was building weapons of mass destruction. Bad intel back then led to a war that lasted eight years and killed nearly 5,000 Americans and reportedly 200,000 Iraqis. No WMDs were ever found. Lessons learned? Hardly. Bombing Iran was easy enough. Did anyone at the White House think about what would happen on Day 2? Forty-eight hours after the United States launched bunker-busting bombs and dozens of cruise missiles at Iran, the Iranian regime retaliated. Iran launched missiles at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East. The Defense Department said there were no injuries because Qatari air defenses were able to intercept the Iranian attack. Also, the Iranians gave advance warning to minimize casualties. No one should be surprised by this escalation. And no one should think this is the end of hostilities. Forty thousand U.S. troops are stationed in the region. It is a consequence of going to war, which is exactly what Donald Trump did when he called for strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites. Even if Vice President JD Vance says otherwise. “We’re not at war with Iran. We’re at war with Iran’s nuclear program,” he said on “Meet the Press” Sunday. The Iranian people likely quibble with Vance’s semantics. Iran has other retaliatory options from which to choose. In an internal FBI email obtained by The New York Times, American officials warn that Iran and its allies have “historically targeted U.S. interests in response to geopolitical events, and they are likely to increase their efforts in the near term.” The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow strip of water between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, is one of the world’s most important strategic choke points. And Iran controls the north side of it. The 20 million barrels of oil produced daily in the region — a fifth of global output — must travel through the strait. Some influential Iranians are calling for Hormuz to be closed, including Hossein Shariatmadari, the editor-in-chief of a popular hard-line Iranian newspaper, who has the ear of the supreme leader. “It is now our turn to act without delay. As a first step, we must launch a missile strike on the US naval fleet in Bahrain and simultaneously close the Strait of Hormuz to American, British, German, and French ships,” Shariatmadari wrote in his newspaper. Mohammad Ali Shabani, an expert on Iran, told CNN that Iran’s control of global shipping lanes gives the government the “capacity to cause a shock in oil markets, drive up oil prices, drive inflation, [and] collapse Trump’s economic agenda.” If Hormuz is closed, oil prices will skyrocket. But perhaps the ayatollah will put his pocketbook before payback. China is the No. 1 buyer of Iranian oil. The money Iran earns from Chinese oil sales accounts for 50% of government spending, according to The Times. It has allowed the Iranian regime to fund terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. By the way, need we remind ourselves that China, not Iran, is the most potent foreign threat to American security? Also that Iran, along with China and Russia, has the ability to launch destructive cyber attacks. But now back to the strikes themselves. Trump claimed victory, saying the U.S. bombings “completely and totally obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. No evidence has been given, and a bomb damage assessment has yet to be released. This administration is not known for truth-telling, so a wait-and-see approach is justified. Using satellite imagery, the Israeli military’s initial assessment is that Fordo, the main nuclear site, where the U.S. dropped at least six bunker busters, was damaged but not destroyed. Israeli intelligence believes Iran moved equipment and uranium from the site prior to the bombing. All this means that Saturday’s attack was not a one-and-done as the president would have us believe. Add to that Trump’s changing tune on regime change. Initially he said the goal of the bombing was “destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity.” Vance, Pete Hegseth, and Marco Rubio were reading from the same script as they made the rounds on the Sunday talk shows. The administration’s view “has been very clear that we don’t want a regime change,” Vance said. Perhaps the president didn’t get a copy of the talking points. Not four hours later, Trump took to social media. “It’s not politically correct to use the term, ‘Regime Change’ but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!” he posted. No one thinks the Iranian government is made up of good guys. It has an abysmal human rights record and is the poster child for state-sponsored terrorism. These leaders have a long record of hating America and all for which we stand. They have been known to subvert our Arab allies in the region. But regime change seldom if ever works out the way the changers intend. See: Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But calling for regime change versus seeking to destroy a country’s nuclear capabilities — no matter how spurious the intelligence — are very different goals with very different long-term prospects. It’s been widely reported that the U.S. defense secretary was not included in planning the Iran mission. Perhaps Hegseth’s Signalgate scandal has finally caught up with him. At least he was by Trump’s side as the president delivered his version of the war news. Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has been put on ice by Trump for testifying to Congress — in March — that the intelligence community did not believe Iran was close to building a nuclear weapon. So Trump needs advisers who will guide him by telling him the truth, rather than what he wants to hear; because they are beholden to him for jobs they aren’t qualified for, they never will. Trump learned from his first administration: Don’t hire the smart people, elevate the sycophants. A few closing notes from your reporter, who has spent a fair portion of his life covering wars: Truth IS the first casualty of war. The first things you hear often are untrue, and so are many of the things you hear later. Wars are by their very nature chaotic and unpredictable. What you most expect frequently does not happen; what you least expect often does. Up close and personal, wars are almost unbelievably savage. The television screen and the printed word do not come close to conveying their harsh realities. Steady is free, but to support my team’s efforts to protect our democracy through the power of independent journalism, we’d appreciate it if you would consider joining as a paid subscriber. It keeps Steady sustainable and accessible for all. If you are not able to upgrade, we understand. No matter how you subscribe, I thank you for reading. Stay Steady, Dan

 

Israel bombs Iran’s embassy in Damascus: The Middle East on the brink of region-wide war

in Palestine

by Alex Lantier

03/04/2024

Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy in Damascus on Monday, which killed three senior leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and three others, is an act of war against Iran for which Washington and its NATO allies bear political responsibility.

The bombing marks a major new stage in the Israeli war on Iran, because its target is Iranian territory, according to international law. The Israeli regime has long conducted a lawless foreign policy of targeted murder, repeatedly bombing Iranian and Syrian officials—particularly after the US murder of IRGC General Qassem Soleimani in 2020 in Iraq. Its latest action, however, threatens to provoke a direct war between Iran and Israel, as well as Israel’s NATO imperialist backers.

Yesterday, Iranian officials vowed retaliation. “We will make [Israel] regret this crime and others it has committed,” Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said. The Russian, Chinese and Saudi foreign ministries also issued statements condemning the strike.

The Biden administration reportedly contacted Iranian officials just after the strike, denying responsibility and claiming Israeli officials had only notified it of the strike until only minutes before it took place. However, that Israel felt it could take such action, whether or not it notified Biden, is because Washington and its NATO imperialist allies have given it a blank check throughout six months of genocide against Gaza.

It is difficult to believe that Israel would have taken this action without coordination with the White House. If that was the case, it would indicate that the Biden administration is seeking an enormous escalation of war in advance of the November election.

In any case, the United States, Britain and France all refused to denounce the Israeli strike last night in a UN Security Council meeting. Effectively endorsing Israel’s rationale for the strike, US Ambassador to the UN Robert Wood said he was “concerned by reports that terrorist leaders and elements were allegedly present at this facility and condemn Iran’s continued coordination, training and arming of terrorists and other violent extremists.”

This week, US officials brazenly defended the Israeli army’s massacre of 400 people at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre baldly declared, “Hamas should not be operating out of hospitals.” US State Department spokesman Mike Matthews also indicated he would endorse an Israeli assault on Rafah, where 1.5 million Palestinian refugees are living in tent cities, stating that a scenario where “Israel does nothing about the Hamas fighters that continue to exist in Rafah” is “not acceptable.”

Washington and its NATO allies green-light the Israeli genocide, which has killed 32,000 Palestinians, because they are preparing similar crimes across the Middle East. At the outset of the Gaza genocide, Washington sent carrier battle groups and nuclear missile submarines to the region that were explicitly targeted at Iran. Today, as Israeli officials discuss invading Lebanon to attack the Hezbollah militia, plans are well advanced for the NATO imperialist powers to use Israel as a proxy in new neo-colonial wars against Lebanon, Syria and beyond.

For a decade, Russian, Iranian and Hezbollah forces have fought in Syria alongside government forces against NATO-backed “rebel” Islamist or Kurdish nationalist militias. The 13 years of the NATO war for regime change in Syria have devastated the country, leaving a half million dead and over 10 million refugees.

Israel decapitated the Iranian military command in Syria and Lebanon Monday amid a global war the imperialist powers are waging for domination of Eurasia. While Washington and its NATO allies fight Russia in Europe, arming the far-right Ukrainian regime in Kiev, they are also attacking Russia and its allies in the Middle East. Covering fighting between US and Iranian IRGC forces in Syria, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote:

Americans may not know they’re at war with Iran, but Iran’s Revolutionary Guards know for sure they are in a shadow war with America through their proxies. And if one of these Iranian proxies gets “lucky” and creates a mass casualty event by striking a US warship or the barracks of one of the US bases in Jordan or Syria … [it would] become a direct shooting war in the region the world most depends on for its oil. Just thought I’d let you know.

Workers across America and the world must be alerted to the imminent danger of catastrophic military escalation. The war Friedman is discussing would have devastating consequences even beyond the global economic collapse caused by the blocking of Persian Gulf oil trade. Amid the NATO-Russia war in Ukraine and after the signing of a $400 billion Chinese-Iranian trade and military treaty in 2017, it would risk drawing all the major nuclear powers into a global conflict.

Indeed, US officials increasingly do not hide the fact that the confrontation with China is now their central concern. Last month, US Central Command head General Michael Kurilla denounced the unstable defensive alliance emerging against NATO between the Iranian, Chinese and Russian regimes.

“Collectively, Iran, Russia and China are strengthening their relationships and fostering a chaotic landscape favorable to their exploitation,” Kurilla said. “The ramifications of this partnership will have global implications.” Referring to Iranian drone exports to Russia for the Ukraine war and Russian and Iranian oil exports to China, he complained: “Iran sells 90 percent of its oil, all US-sanctioned, to China.”

The imperialist powers’ support for the genocide in Gaza emerges from their drive to subjugate the globe through war targeting Russia, China and Iran. This was starkly revealed in the recent outburst of US Congressman Tim Walberg, who called for dropping nuclear bombs on Gaza “like Nagasaki and Hiroshima” and for “the same in Ukraine” to “wipe out Russian forces.” Unable to resolve conflicts created by decades of war and plunder, imperialist politicians increasingly see no way out besides the mass murder of those standing in the way.

Opposition to the Gaza genocide must be developed as an international movement in the working class against the US-NATO imperialist war and the capitalist system. In its New Year’s statement, the World Socialist Web Site warned:

Taken as a whole, the normalization of different forms of social barbarism signifies that the capitalist class has arrived at a dead end. A class whose policies consist of different forms of sociocide has clearly exhausted its historical, economic, social and political legitimacy.

The decisive question is arming the growing opposition among workers and youth to the Gaza genocide, revealed in mass protests in Israel and across the Middle East as well as in the NATO countries, with a socialist perspective. This requires building a Trotskyist leadership in the working class, sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International, in every country. This is the basic and urgent task posed by the escalation of war in the Middle East.

Originally published in WSWS.ORG

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ISRAEL'S EMBASSY BOMBING

POLITICO Nightly: The oil market’s nightmare scenario

 

BY SUDEEP REDDY Presented by Armed supporters of Yemen's Houthi rebels attend a rally in solidarity with the Palestinian Hamas movement's armed resistance against Israel in Yemen's capital Sanaa today. | Mohammed Huwais/AFP via Getty Images SUM OF ALL OIL FEARS — It sounds like a preposterous scenario discarded in a Hollywood writers’ room: A group of renegade militants from a small Middle East country obtain cartons of missiles from an American adversary, attack Western oil interests and cripple the global economy until their demands are met. It was a prospect easily dismissed as fanfiction for amateur oil traders — until now. The attack on a fuel tanker in the Red Sea on Friday brought to real life the immense economic risks of a ballooning crisis in the Middle East. The Houthi rebels in Yemen have been firing Iranian missiles at commercial ships for months, triggering turmoil that has already reshaped global shipping routes and put new inflation threats on the radar. U.S. military forces have fought back to prevent dozens of direct attacks on global cargo. But the latest attacks on oil interests marked a new realm of concern. Ever since the Middle East oil crises of the 1970s, which contributed to runaway inflation that reshaped the U.S. political landscape and energy policy, the remote prospect of a shutdown of a key passageway in the Middle East has represented the sum of all fears in the geopolitics of oil. It’s so unthinkable to fathom a loss of a fifth of the world’s oil in a typical supply-and-demand curve that analysts imagine a world of $380-per-barrel oil and $10 gasoline purely based on guesswork out of thin air. Today’s Middle East crisis is spiraling in ways far beyond Yemeni rebels firing cheap missiles. The weekend attack by Iranian proxies on the Jordan-Syria border killed three American soldiers and wounded dozens more; it marked the first U.S. troop deaths in combat in the region since the latest wave of turmoil in the Middle East began in October. (U.S. troops have been attacked 164 other times in Iraq and Syria in that period.) President Biden and his team spent the day huddled in the Situation Room to formulate a response — one that is surely intended to exact revenge on Iranian interests without ricocheting to hit American interests or global oil supplies. The good news for the overall economy is that these moments of fear tend to pass swiftly; Friday’s successful attack on the Red Sea tanker was contained quickly enough to be just a blip in markets. But what happens if the remote scenario plays out? What would the Biden administration do in a moment of surging oil prices that could derail a strong economic expansion nine months before an election? Watch three key fronts: Military deployment to protect energy interests: The U.S. has long proven itself willing to militarize the Middle East for strategic reasons — and knows how to do it without going alone. President George H.W. Bush organized a true global coalition for the first Gulf War. In recent months, the Biden team sought to assemble international military patrols and escorts for the global shipping industry with commercial vessels from more than 40 nations coming under attack. Some nations are reluctant to get involved too deeply; they’ll be less reticent in a deeper crisis. Even oil-importing nations that engage deeply with Iran — such as China and India — stand to lose if oil prices spike at a difficult economic moment. That’s why top Biden officials are pressuring the Chinese to help rein in Iran despite persistent U.S.-China tensions. Energy policy to cushion an oil shock: Oil remains the U.S. economy’s kryptonite. Nearly every U.S. recession since World War II was associated with spiking oil prices. (The Covid-19 oil crash marked a glaring exception.) Pain at the pump translates immediately into lower consumer sentiment, poorer approval ratings and panicky politicians. The U.S. still holds an emergency tool for any crisis: the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a 700-million-barrel stockpile born out of the 1970s Arab oil embargo. President Trump once proposed slashing the SPR; years later he wanted to fill it up when oil prices tanked in the pandemic. Biden used the SPR to offset higher prices in 2022 to calm oil markets after Russia invaded Ukraine; the move helped save his party in the midterms. While depleted today to only half its capacity , you can expect that oil to flow in a moment of crisis this year. China has amassed even larger reserves; a barrel of oil anywhere provides a cushion to calm markets and relieve short-term disruptions. Energy politics in an election year: No product price looms larger in America’s public consciousness than the price of gasoline. It was among the top policy issues on voters’ minds in New Hampshire and Iowa this month, according to Google Trends. And it would surely be the No. 1 issue up for debate if oil prices spike on top of years of historic inflation. Yet the issue today is not as clear-cut as it would’ve been a few years ago. The U.S. is now the world’s largest oil producer, with output hitting record after record under Biden despite a broader policy agenda designed to transition the world away from fossil fuels. The other elements of Biden’s climate agenda — the spending to support electric vehicles and renewables — would also take on new meaning on the campaign trail if Americans are worried about how to escape yet another hopeless cycle of pain at the pump. None of these scenarios can ever be outlined with certainty — that’s why nobody ever wants to go down them. But if any play out, there’s no feel-good Hollywood ending. Just immense economic and political torture. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at sreddy@politico.com on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @reddy .   A message from American Beverage: Not all plastic is the same. America’s beverage companies are carefully designing our plastic bottles to be 100% recyclable, including the caps. This means our bottles can be remade into new bottles, and that can reduce our use of new plastic. Learn more at EveryBottleBack.org.   WHAT'D I MISS? — Trump tax return leaker sentenced to five years in prison: A former IRS consultant was sentenced to five years in prison for leaking former President Donald Trump’s tax returns as well as the filings of thousands of other wealthy people to the news media. A district judge today agreed with the Justice Department that Charles Littlejohn, 38, deserved the maximum statutory sentence for what she called “egregious” crimes . Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden nominee to the bench, focused on Littlejohn’s decision to release Trump’s filings, which Reyes called “an attack on our constitutional democracy.” — Supreme Court sets date for high-stakes abortion pill oral arguments: The Supreme Court today set a date for one of the highest-stakes and closest-watched cases of the term — announcing it will hear oral arguments on how patients can access mifepristone , the commonly used abortion pill, on March 26. In December, the high court said it would hear the case brought by the conservative group Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine challenging policies expanding access to the drug mifepristone. Those policies, issued in recent years by the FDA, have allowed the pills to be prescribed online, mailed to patients and dispensed at brick-and-mortar pharmacies. — NATO chief huddles with Trump allies in longshot Ukraine funding push: NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Monday kicked off a critical trip to the U.S., where he’ll meet with Biden administration officials, lawmakers and allies of former President Donald Trump in a high-stakes bid to unlock $60 billion in funding for Ukraine. The longest-serving chief in the alliance’s history will deliver a speech at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday, a conservative think tank that’s closely aligned with Trump. The visit comes as Trump and allies press Republicans to reject a $111 billion package that includes aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan over a disagreement with the White House on border policy.   JOIN 1/31 FOR A TALK ON THE RACE TO SOLVE ALZHEIMER’S: Breakthrough drugs and treatments are giving new hope for slowing neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease and ALS. But if that progress slows, the societal and economic cost to the U.S. could be high. Join POLITICO, alongside lawmakers, official and experts, on Jan. 31 to discuss a path forward for better collaboration among health systems, industry and government. REGISTER HERE .     NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 PATCHING THINGS UP — The Biden campaign met with Rep. Rashida Tlaib last week as the president aims to patch up relations with key parts of the Democratic party , two people familiar tell POLITICO. Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress, has been an outspoken critic of the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Gaza war. Their meeting comes as Biden’s campaign manager traveled to Michigan last weekend to meet with local officials seething over the Gaza war. PHILLIPS GOES TO COURT — Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips wants the Wisconsin Supreme Court to order that he be put on the primary ballot in the battleground state after he was excluded by the state’s top Democrats who only put President Joe Biden’s name on the ballot, reports the Associated Press. Phillips asked the state’s highest court to take his case on Friday. On Monday, the Wisconsin Supreme Court gave the committee that put forward Biden’s name as the only Democratic candidate, as well as the state elections commission, until Wednesday to respond. Former President Donald Trump and five of his challengers, including four who have ceased campaigning, will also be on the Wisconsin ballot.   A message from American Beverage:     AROUND THE WORLD U.S. Marines assigned to Fleet Anti-Terrorism Security Team Central Command (FASTCENT) and members of the Jordanian Armed Forces conduct weapons training during exercise Infinite Defender 23 in Jordan, Aug. 19, 2023. | Sgt. Angela Wilcox/U.S. Naval Forces Central Command DEADLY TRAILER — An enemy drone launched by Iranian proxies that ended up killing three U.S. soldiers was trailing a U.S. drone that was returning to the base in Jordan , allowing it to evade detection, according to a Defense Department official, reports POLITICO. The attackers saw an “opportunity” and “exploited” it, said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss a developing security situation. The assault, which dramatically escalated the situation in the Middle East, has put renewed pressure on the Biden administration to respond more forcefully to the more than 160 attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria and now Jordan. In addition, an hour and a half after the strike on the small base, known as Tower 22, Iranian proxies launched another drone at a U.S. base just across the border in Syria, al-Tanf Garrison, said the DOD official and another U.S. official. A U.S. drone, Raytheon’s Coyote unmanned aerial system, shot it down, the DOD official added. The two facilities are just kilometers apart, and U.S. drones often defend both, the DOD official said. The news comes as the Pentagon is still gathering information about how a drone launched by Iranian proxies penetrated U.S. defenses and struck the living quarters at Tower 22, which also injured at least 34 more service members. TUNNEL VISION — An Islamic cemetery in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, has been obliterated, transformed by the Israeli military’s search for underground Hamas tunnels , The Associated Press reports. An Associated Press journalist saw a destroyed mosque and — where the cemetery had once been — a 140-meter-wide pit that gave way to what the army called a Hamas attack tunnel underneath. The military said today that combat engineers had demolished part of the network, releasing a video showing massive explosions in the area. As Israel moves forward with a ground and air campaign in Gaza that health officials in the besieged enclave say has claimed over 26,000 Palestinian lives, the military’s destruction of holy sites has drawn staunch criticism from Palestinians and rights groups, who say the offensive is also an assault on cultural heritage. Under international law, cemeteries and religious sites receive special protection — and destroying them could be considered a war crime. Israel says Hamas uses such sites as military cover, removing them of these protections. It says there is no way to accomplish its military goal of defeating Hamas without finding the tunnels, where they say the militants have built command and control centers, transported weapons and hidden some of the 130 hostages it is believed to be holding. They say digging up the tunnels involves unavoidable collateral damage to sacrosanct spaces.   YOUR GUIDE TO EMPIRE STATE POLITICS : From the newsroom that doesn’t sleep, POLITICO's New York Playbook is the ultimate guide for power players navigating the intricate landscape of Empire State politics. Stay ahead of the curve with the latest and most important stories from Albany, New York City and around the state, with in-depth, original reporting to stay ahead of policy trends and political developments. Subscribe now to keep up with the daily hustle and bustle of NY politics.      NIGHTLY NUMBER $81 billion The amount that American defense companies made in new foreign military sales in 2023, a more than 50 percent increase from 2022 , with huge deals spurred by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine leading the way. RADAR SWEEP IS ANYBODY OUT THERE? — A new NASA telescope is looking to answer the age-old question: does life outside of Earth exist? Since the James Webb Space Telescope launched two years ago, NASA has already had its eyes on its next big project which will launch into the galaxy looking for habitable planets outside of the solar system. Meet the next flagship space telescope, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, that could have the potential to find life on exoplanets , or planets orbiting a star that is not the sun. While it may not launch for a dozen years, NASA scientists are already saying this type of technology — that allows the telescope to see the planets without the star’s light overpowering it — could be a “pivotal moment for mankind.” Dan Falk writes for Smithsonian Magazine. PARTING IMAGE On this date in 2009: Illinois Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich is removed from office by a vote of 59-0 in the Illinois state Senate. Blagojevich was ultimately sentenced to 14 years in prison for his role in a corruption scandal that included an attempt to sell the Illinois U.S. Senate seat left vacant by President Barack Obama. | M. Spencer Green/AP Did someone forward this email to you?  Sign up here .   A message from American Beverage: Our plastic bottles are made to be remade. America’s leading beverage companies - The Coca-Cola Company, Keurig Dr Pepper and PepsiCo - are working together to reduce our industry’s plastic footprint through our Every Bottle Back initiative. We’re investing in efforts to get our bottles back so we can remake them into new bottles. Together, we’re:  • Designing 100% recyclable plastic bottles – we’re making our bottles from PET that’s strong, lightweight and easy to recycle.   • Investing in community recycling – we’re marshaling the equivalent of nearly a half-billion dollars with The Recycling Partnership and Closed Loop Partners to support community recycling programs where we can have the greatest impact. • Raising awareness – we’re adding on-pack reminders to encourage consumers to recycle our plastic bottles and caps.     Please help us get Every Bottle Back.     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Mia McCarthy @Reporter_Mia   FOLLOW US

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The US ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION

"R" voters are conspicuouly uninformed, refuse to look up FACTS, refuse to search. 
It's time to GET OVER IT! 

PLEASE SAVE THINK LINK!

Disinformation WHINERS would have you believe their DELUSIONS

It is known that MAGA SHEEP don't want FACTS!

They ignore that tRump negotiated with the SAUDIS = OPEC to cut production prior to being VOTED OUT OF OFFICE.

Under President Biden, the US is producing record EXPORTS.

Ask BIG OIL why the price isn't declining!

The US ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION maintains a great deal of historical information, lots of explanation, imports/exports, countries and so on.

There are pages and pages of information.

EIA.GOV

U.S. Imports & Exports