Revisiting the meme that never fails: Blood For Oil. By this time, more and more people in actual positions of influence were "outing" the real reason for the wars in Iraq: to brutalize and intimidate the population while making off with their oil. US Congressman Dennis Kucinich, in a rare ballsy moment, actually came right out and publicly blurted out the truth that sent the pro-war factions into conniptions: this was a war for oil and resources, and had nothing to do with the (non-existent) WMDs or with restoring democracy (the claimed purpose after the WMD claims were debunked). By this time, I'd developed a pretty much foolproof system for determining whether something was true or not: if it was in the Washington
Post or on TV, it was a sure bet that it was false, and if somebody said something that sent the mainstream punditocracy and pro-war howlers into a shrieking tizzy, you could be sure that it was true.
My research for this piece consisted of hitting Google for some scans of old gasoline advertising from back in the days when gas-station attendants wore actual uniforms with hats and bowties, and -- now I can confess to it -- nabbing the title from a favorite old Three Stooges comedy in which the Stooges were running a gas station ("Super Service! Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk, nyuk...").
Medium-res jpg image, 710k
