Coals to Newcastle

More catching up. Robert Bryce has a short piece in the May issue of Atlantic Monthly detailing the US's escalating need for fuel in Iraq. This quote jumped out: "......[T]he American GI is the most energy-consuming soldier ever seen on the field of war. For computers and GPS units, Humvees and helicopters, the modern soldier is in constant need of energy: battery power, electric power, and petroleum. The U.S. military now uses 1.7 million gallons of fuel a day in Iraq. Some of that fuel goes to naval vessels and and aircraft, but even factoring out JP-150 fuel (which is what the Navy primarily uses) each of the 150,000 soldiers on the ground consumes roughly nine gallons of fuel a day. And that figure has been rising."