California Conservative

One thing obvious from President Obama’s speech about the BP oil spill is that President Obama wasn’t particularly forthright. Put another way, President Obama’s speech contained a couple whoppers. Here’s an example:

Because there has never been a leak this size at this depth, stopping it has tested the limits of human technology. That’s why just after the rig sank, I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge, a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s Secretary of Energy. Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice.

As a result of these efforts, we’ve directed BP to mobilize additional equipment and technology. And in the coming weeks and days, these efforts should capture up to 90 percent of the oil leaking out of the well. This is until the company finishes drilling a relief well later in the summer that’s expected to stop the leak completely.

Already, this oil spill is the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced. And unlike an earthquake or a hurricane, it’s not a single event that does its damage in a matter of minutes or days. The millions of gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico are more like an epidemic, one that we will be fighting for months and even years.

Unless President Obama called the Dutch and the British to ask for their help, which his administration had previously rejected, and unless he’s quietly waived the Jones Act so that foreign skimmers can help with cleaning up the Gulf, I’m more than skeptical of President Obama’s statement. (more…)