Submitted by Kelly Knight, Aug 27, 2008 09:09

If the ultimate goal for US Energy independence is merely that, then perhaps you are correct. However, the United States of America has a divine mission to defend and promote the agency of man to choose for himself the life he will lead in all parts of the world. Democracies and representative governments are the course, and the only possible hope the US has of achieving that divine calling is to be free of the oppressive regimes that fuel the charge. By developing our own fuel resources, we become an independent nation not ham-strung by sheiks, dictators, and terrorists, but a nation free to come to the defense of the oppressed without being encumbered by the thread of insufficient fuel. And by the way, the oil shale fields of the western US will provide 1.8 billion barrels, or 240 years of energy independence at today's rate of consumption.

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