BushCo's State Of The Union Retraction

This article is interesting (via Kos):

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.

OK, it would be one thing if Bush blurted out something like this as he was walking to his helicopter, but this is the State of the Union address. I assume such an address is, you know, written out beforehand, reviewed by a lot of Administration officials, and perhaps practiced a time or two before delivery.

Obviously, someone -- an oil company executive or a member of the House of Saud -- called to complain about Bush's comment. Wouldn't it be great to have that kind of control over the White House?

UPDATE: It was the House of Saud.

I love it how foreigners are dictating policy over at the Executive Branch. Where's the right-wing outrage over this? Geebus, when a U.S. Supreme Court justice merely made a reference to the laws of other countries, pretty much every wingnut in the U.S. had a stroke.

UPDATE II: Denny Hastert has a great idea on how the oil companies can spend their record profits. He says they should use the money to make commercials explaining why their prices are so high. Meanwhile, Bush doesn't think it would be prudent for oil companies to reduce gas prices:

President Bush defended the huge profits of Exxon Mobil Corp. on Wednesday, saying they are simply the result of the marketplace and that consumers socked with soaring energy costs should not expect price breaks.