Oil for Blood: T. Boone Pickens wants his

Reuters quotes Pickens:

"They're opening them (oil fields) up to other companies all over the world ... We're entitled to it," Pickens said of Iraq's oil. "Heck, we even lost 5,000 of our people, 65,000 injured and a trillion, five hundred billion dollars." . . .

"We leave there with the Chinese getting the oil," Pickens said.

Breathtaking, no? Shrieks are of course rising all over the world. What about the Iraqis, the widows, the veterans, the poisoned, diseased, disabled, disinherited? And what about U.S. taxpayers, who no doubt could have solarized every home in the country, and, replaced every gas guzzling car in every garage with an electric, for a trillion, five hundred billion dollars.

But Pickens is angry and indignant that he's not getting his.

It's hard to find words for the scale of his sense of entitlement, especially considering that, with $3 billion, he's already the 117th richest man on earth.

But, we can at least thank him for reminding us, yet again, that the Iraq War, like the Afghanistan War, and the covert U.S. war in Africa, a.k.a., AFRICOM, are not about terrorism; they're about oil--and natural gas, and, some say, heroin.

I just sent a note to my friend Cindy Sheehan to ask how much oil she thinks T. Boone Pickens, and/or Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, Koch Industries, etc., are entitled to for Casey Sheehan's life, plus 4,000 more and counting? She said they should pay her for Casey's life.

And, what she thinks Pickens is really entitled to, besides life in prison, maybe Abu Ghraib? At the very least, irreversible commitment to a hospital for the criminally insane.

First published on Examiner.com.