Cows into Gas

R. James Woolsey headed the Central Intelligence Agency under President Bill Clinton. He now spends his time trying to convince Americans that national security requires ending U.S. dependence on oil. In Sunday's Washington Post, he had a hilarious mock-conversation between a K-Street lobbyist and "Tehran," whose greatest fear was that politicians will listen to those who think the U.S. would be better off if it shifted 20 million acres to producing corn for ethanol instead of corn for cattle feed. Says Tehran:

"My regime is much better off if nobody understands that. If you'd ever eaten grass-fed beef, you'd know it's quite tasty. The only thing you add to a cow by feeding it corn instead of prairie grass is fat. And since the corn makes cows huge and sick, they need lots of antibiotics, which are used so massively on the dumb animals that it helps make bacterial strains grow immune to the antibiotics more quickly. Sooner or later, that means Americans will find that their antibiotics don't work. So your stupid country now has 20 million acres' worth of corn that basically does nothing but promote cardiovascular surgery and infectious disease."