by Robert Mckenna

Created on: August 06, 2010

“Now this is not the end.  It is not even the beginning of the end.  But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”  Winston Churchill originally said those words in November 1942.  Although often misquoted and obviously taken out of context, the words are profound in describing where the country stands in the clean-up process of the worst oil spill in American history.

BP Oil and the US government appear to be using the same playbook from the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.  The only way the people of Louisiana and the other Gulf States will ever recover from this disaster is if the whole nation refuses to let this story, this tragedy, and this blatant corporate malfeasance slip into obscurity.  The only way that will happen, however, is for everyone to question the spurious facts quoted in the press as provided by BP Oil and government scientists.  Remember this catastrophe was virtually preordained to happen because BP Oil bought off any government oversight.  Who is to say this might not happen again?

The facts today about the spill as published in Reuters, mention government scientists believe 50% of the oil released into the Gulf of Mexico has been captured, burned, or skimmed into containment.  Twenty-five percent of the spill either naturally or chemically has been dispersed, while the remaining 25% is now a light sheen, weathered tar balls washed ashore, or in sediment on the sea floor.  Statistics have a strange way of making the worst man-made disaster with long reaching ecological effects seem rather innocuous.

The numbers put another way, using conservative figures, estimate around five million barrels of oil spewed into the Gulf.  The figure is really too large for most to comprehend, but that is the way the government and BP like to release the spill amount.  They rarely say that the spill exceeds 210,000,000 gallons, or that a quarter of that spill, the 25% of the oil released from the well that is still in the Gulf, is a million barrels of oil or about four times the total spill by Exxon carelessness and callous disregard for safeguards in Prince William Sound.

Dispersal of oil either naturally or chemically is truly a double-edged sword.  Government scientists openly admit oil dispersed even into microscopic droplets is still highly toxic.  The pictures of dead, sea animals, fish, and birds, are glaring reminders of the dangerous effects of oil in the once

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