The Senate is debating a proposal to drill for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve. Again. George Bush and other drilling advocates argue that the country needs the estimated 10.5 billion barrels of oil that are believed to lie beneath the refuges coastal tundra in northeastern Alaska to slow the growing dependence on oil imports. The United States now uses about 7.3 billion barrels of oil a year.  
If this proposal is passed, the oil from ANWAR would start flowing in ten or twenty years. How long will the oil from ANWAR last?
There's enough to sustain us for 18 months.  
Well, not us, really.

The Department of Defense.  
Military fuel consumption for aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities makes the DoD the single largest consumer of petroleum in the U.S. And according to the Defence Logistic Agency, as of November 2005 more than 2.1 billion gallons of fuel have been used in support of our invasion of Iraq. Now keep in mind two things. First, that doesn't include the last three years. And second, it's a government figure. The real numbers are probably significantly higher.  
Now there appears to be some ambiguity about why oil is now $120 a barrel, and gas at the pump is reaching $4 a gallon. 
But the answer is pretty apparent.

The US military is the biggest purchaser of oil in the world. (There mus be a volume discount. The next time Secretary of Defense Bob Gates has a press conference, a good question might be whether or not he gets a better price on gas than you do. )

Let there be no mistake. There's a direct correlation between the administration's oil addiction and the administration's war addiction.  The fallacy about ANWAR is that it will decrease our reliance on foreign oil. But evidence suggests that we American consumers aren't the intended beneficiaries of the oil from ANWAR. It would seem, from the statistics above, that the Pentagon is.
Are there better ways to reduce the cost of oil and gas?
If we weren't in a state of perpetual war, the supply of oil on the market would increase exponentially. The price of oil and gas will drop dramatically. So too would the amount of carbon dioxide being pumped into the environment by the DoD.

Something to think about on your way to the pump.