"Reuter's impossible timeline" has been verified by other sources.

And I might also remind you that Reuter's is a British news service. I knew that if I quoted an American news service, you and a few others of the British persuasion would be all over me like a tent.

You folks are doing back-flips trying to shift the blame from BP to an American company, and you're making yourselves a bit ridiculous in the process.

Look! Haliburton! Dick Cheney, the (thank God!) former Vice President of the United States, the man who was manipulating the hand puppet most people thought of as George W. Bush, and thus was, in effect, the real President of the United States during the Bush administration, had been the CEO of Haliburton. When he became Vice President, he was required by law to divest himself of his investments in Haliberton. He didn't. He had his investments put in trust, to be held for him until is term of office was over. In the meantime, those investments could continue to grow if Haliburton prospered. And those investments, plus the increases, would revert to Cheney when he was no longer in office!

For some strange reason (!!!), during the Bush administration, Haliburton was awarded an unprecedented number of no-bid government contracts. All government contracts are supposed to be open for bids from any company that wants the work, but this was not the case under Bush (Cheney). Haliburton got the lion's share.

So—if Haliburton was to be declared at fault for the Gulf blow-out (as some Brits here in this thread are trying to claim), I, personally, would not at all mind seeing Haliburton—and as a result, Dick Cheney—take it in the shorts!!!

But that's obviously not the way it happened. Unfortunately~

I'm surprised at you guys!!

NOW HEAR THIS!!

Apparently you missed the point of what I was saying in my post above.

The FIRST bore-hole was going well until the BP manager insisted that the Deepwater Horizon crew "bump up" the drilling—which the drilling crew knew to be unsafe. Yet, at BP's insistence (and threats of being sacked), they did speed up the drilling.

And what they feared, happened. But fortunately, no blow-out occured with THAT hole.

But they had to abandon that bore-hole and start another.

And that's the hole where everything went wrong and the blow-out occured!

If the crew had been allowed to complete the first bore-hole at a reasonable pace, and hence, safely, the second hole would not have been necessary.

BP's profit minded micro-managers and bean-counters should have kept their big noses out of the details of the drilling operation in the first place. Up to that point, the drilling had been routine. But it's when, under BP's orders, the drilling was speeded up that it got screwed up—as the crew was afraid it might. And that necessitated abandoning the first bore hole and starting another

And it was on the new bore hole that things went bad!

Get it? Got it? Good!!

Don Firth