Well, that didnt' take long

"Cheer...but verify", cautioned Sully regarding Bush's pretty words on energy independence. Well, it didn't take long for his minions to start the backtracking.

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

What the president meant, they said in a conference call with reporters, was that alternative fuels could displace an amount of oil imports equivalent to most of what America is expected to import from the Middle East in 2025.

But America still would import oil from the Middle East, because that's where the greatest oil supplies are.

And really, what does independence from mideast oil matter anyhow if we are still creating the demand? Oil is a fungible product and there are plenty of customers for it around the world in addition to the United States.