Link Think: One Greece Per Day...

... is about how much oil the US military consumes ever 24 hours. Earlier in the week, we ran an item about how California uses more gasoline than China. This set us on a hunt for comparative oil consumption figures, which led us to this tidbit on Politico.com:

The Biggest Oil Guzzler? The Pentagon
With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and troops spread around the world, the Department of Defense is the nation's biggest oil consumer, burning 395,000 barrels per day -- about as much as Greece.

The Air Force is the SUV of the military. Its thirsty planes burn more than half the fuel supply for the entire U.S. military. It's received $1.5 billion in new relief from Congress for fuel -- and last week still had $400 million left on its credit card.

[...]

Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who formed a Defense Energy Working Group, seized on the issue in 2004 after learning that the Army's Stryker combat vehicles got only 5 miles per gallon of gas.

He cited national security as another reason to conserve fuel.

"Here is our current defense posture," Israel said. "We are borrowing money from China to fund our defense budgets to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to fund our military to protect us from China and the Persian Gulf. It is an insidious vulnerability." [full item]

What's that line from Oliver Stone's JFK, again? Right: "It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The *bleepin* shooters don't even know!"

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--Gary Dauphin

3:10 PM ET | 07-26-2008 | permalink

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