Except that isn't how it ever works these days does it? The Captain on the Exxon Valdez was calling the shots so he was responsible. No wait shouldn't Exxon who was calling the shots, as you say be responsible? No, just the captain.

Abu Ghraib, it was George W. Bush who was calling the shots and he was ultimately responsible, oh no wait that would be inconvenient, I guess we have to blame Lynndie England and send her to prison.

You don't have a tinge of confusion here wherein you are now this time blaming the "corporation" and this time it will stick?

You are following a mantra, a meme, that fits American expectations. It could not have been Exxon, or George Bush, but this time it definitely is BP. You have to ask yourself why you are like a pack of lemmings. Is the information you seeing so irrefutable? Who do you think is generating this information? I'll give you one guess. Someone who wants to blame a foreign corporation so they can get back to business ASAP.

This is identical to WMD. It was obvious if you thought about it and removed the vengeance for one second. But the lemmings drove the nation over the cliff. In this case it is big oil driving you to believe with righteous indignation that it is BP alone that did this.

It could not have possibly been the American consumer who wants to keep on drinking oil at the highest per capita rate in the world that is at fault. Americans love to find blame and have to find blame, so long as it isn't them.

That's more or less it then to end all BP threads... what shall we talk about now then?

No, it doesn't let BP off the hook. The rig was fine. The BOP was known to be damaged, safety procedures were ignored or bypassed at BP's behest. BP was calling the shots which led to the failure of the well and the collapse of the rig. It still is BP's responsibility.

I think it's you who has become delusional. I never, ever bought into the WMD argument. They never existed - except in GW's tiny mind. Yes! GW was responsible and the whole rotten minded crew advising him. That group fostered an attitude of abuse of nearly everything. I've never stated that BP is the lone party responsible for this, but they are ultimately the primary party. I have stated several times that it was the failure of multiple parties both government agencies and private companies involved. What you are implying is that if a corporation does something wrong, causing great harm, the CEO of that company is not responsible. Really?

I never said you did. I am just using it as an example of mob mentality and lemmings being deluded by majority opinion. The same attitude is prevalent in these BP threads. "You are the only one who thinks that ..." Sometimes the single voice is the correct voice as it was back with the WMD discussions.

Sorry if it looks like I am blaming you and only you for the mob mentality BP is the only evil here. You're not leading the bandwagon but you are on board.

I've said no such thing. I've said that BP could be found 100% culpable. Or not. Transocean made the rig, Haliburton made the parts that failed. But I draw no conclusions what so ever as to who is responsible.

BP is primary so is taking primary responsibility for the spill and the clean up. Assigning blaim comes later. That is not the job of a mob with pitchforks.

IMHO there's plenty of blame to go around for our oil addiction. The whole of western culture, whatever that is, bathes in the stuff like the Romans bathed in olive oil and milk. It's disgusting and if Darwin is right (which he is, despite the fact that mourning doves aren't extinct) then we ain't long for empire. I suspect that no one, at least no one in this forum, would reject that general culpability, although some folks might say that I'm putting it in an excessively negative way.

There's also the culpability of the oil industry generally, in which governments, ours as well as others', are complicit. One reason we bathe in oil is that the industry has done everything in its extensive power to prevent any change at all in our way of life. And, again, government is complicit in that in obvious ways.

But for the particular issue that afflicts the Gulf of Mexico right now, the particular party that is involved is BP and its associates. How the final culpability for the disaster gets apportioned among the parties is a legal issue that will keep lawyers employed for a long long long long long time. But they, collectively and individually, are absolutely culpable for what's taking place right now in the Gulf. I'm not even thinking of capping the well as an index of the failure. Clearly performing that task is a technically very difficult process, and it's not a surprise that it took so long to do it--assuming that in fact it's been done. That the US allows drilling in the ocean with such lackadaisical regulations and safety measures is part of the problem that led to the disaster, but the blow out having occurred, I have no doubt that BP and its colleagues have "fixed" the well as quickly as humanly possible. But report after report--not yet "fact" because a court hasn't passed judgment on what is "fact"--indicates that BP has a woeful safety record, that it and its agents cut corners generally and in regards to this particular well, and that it has primary responsibility for the "accident" (which I put in quotation marks because, if I neglect to fix my car's brakes, then it's not really an accident that they fail as I'm going down a 10% grade).

But BP and its colleagues are responsible for the mess. I know you think that focusing on the particular problem is a way of ignoring the larger problem of our dependence on oil. I disagree. Sure focusing on a villain can allow other rapscallions, the industry itself and our own cultural habits, to get away with murder. But it's also possible that vilifying BP will energize us all to recognize the danger of depending on oil. The long-term result of the mess, enabled by focusing on the shortcomings of BP and its associates as a metonymy for the industry as a whole, may be a comprehensive change in how we all undertake our daily lives.

Yeah well that was owned by Transocean as well.


That's not a fact but an allegation,

I'm still trying to square your analogy - you're saying that as owner of that truck with defective brakes I and not the user is liable for loss flowing from its condition even if the user starts telling his wife how to drive it... but when something defective is supplied to BP and they start giving orders liability all of a sudden shifts from the owner to the user. How does that work?

I agree with everything but this. How about we make a wager.
1) The Santa Barbara blowout closed anymore off shore off Cailifornia, started the Earth Day movement and put extensive regulations in place.
2) The West Falmouth oil spill resulted in all oil shipping to become double hulled even the small local transports.

My wager would be that the direction this is going, BP is evil, spank them and move on, will change nothing in the Gulf of Mexico. It will eventually be a toxic wasteland.

Why? Because the local government in the gulf all the way up to the federal level wants it that way.

There will be a cute story three years from now about how the shrimping industry has come back. Shrimp are shrimp, they grow fast. Meanwhile the loggerhead turtle, some other turtle species, the bluefin tuna nursery will remain wiped out.

People will rant about photoshopped four color glossy marketing strategies of BP and will allow it all to happen.

This strategy works every time.

Abu Ghraib is not Bush's fault, it's Lindesy England's. throw her in jail.
Vietnam and Mai Lai massacre was not Nixon's fault it was William Calley's throw him in jail.
No WMD was not Bush's fault, it was Saddam's. Hang him and kill his sons while you're at it.
The Exxon Valdez was not the oil industries' fault, it was Captain Hazelwood's fault, throw him in jail.
The Gulf of Mexico as a toxic waste dump is not the oil industries' fault, it's BP's, hang them starting with that CEO.

But all those examples and many more were our fault for being gullible and the most wasteful consumers of oil and energy of anyone on this planet. You say it is western civilization's fault. No, if the US could cut their per capita oil consumption to what the British per capita consumption is we would not have to foul the Gulf of Mexico. But 5 dollar a gallon gas won't cut it here because we are selfish pigs who then whine about the pig sty they live in.

Could this blowout actually do some good the way the SAnta Barbara or West Falmouth spills did? If the response in this forum is any indicator of the rest of the US I would say not a chance.

Guess we'll see. I hope you're wrong!

This factual evidence shrivels in the light of day. The OSHA violations are crap. Of course if you start the day after the BP refinery blows up and start counting they are going to have a ton more violations. I would hope OSHA is in there every day. What occurred on the rig is all being controlled and explained by other than BP. Of course they are going to say it isn't there fault but BP's. The oil execs go to congress. Of course they are going to say they would never had done what BP did.

Question: did you hear one little peep (prior to the need for a scapegoat), of this great and terrible evil which was BP? If they were so evil, why wasn't there some news? Even a little. Oh, right, government oversight was a a wee bit negligent.

Virtually all the "facts" I have seen, heard, read about, remind me so much of the WMD justification. Sorry to bring it up again but it is relevant, (as is Bhopal and other things but I'll leave those out.) The WMD was one lie after another. The remote drones, the nerve gas, the anthrax, the yellow cake. One after another they were trotted out like this OSHA violations or OMG photoshopping of marketing drivel! Wow, as bad as Saddam's balsa wood drones. Both show that the culprit is really really bad even though the evidence is ridiculous.

You're going down a more than a 10% grade because you are really being taken for a ride.