Just got a pointer to this old article from the New York Times, dated October 14, 2001:
That sympathizers of Osama bin Laden sink three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and choke off the narrow, bow-shaped channel that funnels 14 million barrels a day from the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world. That the United States attacks Iraq, and Israel launches a huge strike against the Palestinians, driving them from their camps and staking out more land — all of which spurs the Persian Gulf states to cut off oil for the West. Or perhaps that a popular uprising, led by sympathizers of Mr. bin Laden, topples the ruling Saud family in Saudi Arabia, by far the world’s largest oil producer.
”If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he’d turn off the tap,” said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. ”He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel’‘ — about six times what it sells for now.
Very interesting and eery given today’s oil price. And no needed to become king of Saudi Arabia to do it.
Psychohistory 
Very interesting and eery given today’s oil price.
Subversives and Evangelical Dominionist End-Timers, McCain but especially Palin, would just call for more oil drilling in more places in order to remain — as Bush correctly observed but did not nothing about — addicted to oil instead of using other, non-nuclear sources of energy in order to precipitate the End Times to take advantage of the Rapture to be pulled up into Heaven to avoid the Tribulation that their Fundie points of view largely helped cause.
John,
What you are stating is false. John McCain has been explicit about the need to pursue increases in supply (drilling) as well as decreasing demand (non-fossil fuel alternatives like nuclear, wind, solar) and investment in green technology. He has also publicly supported a cap & trade system around fossil fuels to decrease their use going forward.
Adam
McCain is not “green,” Adam, and never will be.
I’m not sure what that means. I’m pretty sure that at some level, everyone fails some level of environmental test. I’d have to see the pure “green” proposal on energy to evaluate it. I’ve heard people ripping apart wind because of purported impact on birds and bats, for example.
McCain is greener than any President we’ve had to date, bar none, as he (like Obama) is actually proposing carbon limits, funding for cleantech, and a pretty firm commitment to moving us off foreign oil. McCain is targeting 60%, Obama 80%, but since neither has a completely solid plan on how to get there, it seems like just bragging rights. No one, by the way, has fully quantified the costs vs. benefits of that last 20%.
Nuclear power has some issues, but compared to natural gas, coal, or oil-based power plants, there is no question what is greener and better for us and the earth. We have been phenomenally stupid in the past 30 years to not invest in nuclear at a time when cleantech was not practical, and when dependence on foreign oil was growing.
If we really want to crack this problem, we need to pursue all of the above.
Adam