We're all to blame for Gulf oil leak, not just BP

Every time they show an oil-drenched pelican on the news I get an upset feeling inside me. Like so many others, I am frustrated and angered by the situation in the Gulf and how it is being handled. And to see the oil continue to flow out of a pipe they can't cap and shut down, makes us all wonder why the oozing crude cannot be contained.

BP is getting all the blame, and rightfully so. It's their well. But this could have happened to any other company the likes of Shell, Exxon and down the line. The fact that experts from all over the world and throughout the industry are exhausting any and all solutions to shut it down, is a clear sign that there is no simple solution and that no oil company out there has a permanent solution at this time.

The American public needs to know that 40 percent of BP's stockholders are from Britain, 39 percent from the U.S., and that the U.S.-owned Amoco, aka Standard Oil, was purchased by BP PLC. Laying blame on BP as a foreign company in the warm Gulf of Mexico waters is not entirely accurate.

It is obvious that all the yelling and screaming that is going on is nothing more than wasted human emotion and political posturing. The well is still spewing. In light of Hurricane Katrina, a natural disaster, we are incapable of handling both man-made and natural disasters from a take charge management standpoint.

Government enforcement and a lax attitude toward permits and record keeping, and outdated rescue and recovery plans is just as much a contribution to the catastrophe as the spill itself. Government has not been strict enough in its enforcement of rules and regulations, and if it's true that there has been a lot of bogus record-keeping and a nonchalant attitude toward the possibility of such an occurrence, then we are all at fault.

Gary Lichthardt

Elgin