PLUGGING THE MORAL LEAK JUST AS IMPORTANT

The near ocean of oil billowing into the Gulf may, repeat may, come to a merciful end sometime in August if the staggeringly complicated relief well process, hitting a seven inch pipe, just above the oil reservoir 18,000 feet below sea level is successful. By then the current 150 million gallons of oil destroying the Gulf and its economy will have swelled to upwards of 300 million gallons, the equivalent of 30 Exxon Valdez super tankers, the oil of just one of which still haunts the Alaskan ecosystem it despoiled twenty-one years ago.

While working to fix the oil leak we should work just as hard to fix the moral leak that has brought untold misery to the America and the world in one short decade of this new century.

A single terrorist attack launched by a group of fanatics so disrupted America's moral compass we allowed our leaders to plunge us into two insane wars of empire in Afghanistan and Iraq, resulting in over five million dead, injured, imprisoned, tortured or displaced in those two pitiful countries. The super rich, not satisfied with more money than could ever be spent, bribed Congress to unshackle the post Great Depression economic regulations that created seemingly endless prosperity, nearly destroying the economy in the process. Finally, a government run by former oil barons gave the current oil barons the keys to unfettered and unsafe drilling, which has unleashed the endless Gusher in the Gulf, the last in a trifecta of man made moral disasters.

The scientists and engineers may have the scientific technology to eventually plug the oil leak. Sadly man does not yet appear to have developed the moral intelligence and simple common sense to plug the moral leak, the eventual consequences of which will make the final tally of oil in the Gulf appear like a drop in the bucket.