Politicians love to talk about the U.S. dependence on foreign oil as if it is unpatriotic to be paying for stuff sucked out of some other country's stores.

Yet some would argue that foreign oil is the safest, cleanest way to get the juice to our cars, homes and workplaces. And since we appear to show no real committment to dramatically cut our usage or switch to cleaner forms of energy, why not get all we can from overseas suppliers? No one is complaining about our depedence on other foreign products or supplies, but oil hits a hot button.

Sure, the U.S. has plenty of oil in reserve in places where we'd rather not have corporations sinking wells, laying pipes or building huge, stinking processing plants.

Oil shale in the Rocky Mountain states, deep-water reserves in the Gulf of Mexico and vast untapped reserves in Alaska's Northern Coastal Plain could allow the U.S. to be almost completely independant from foreign oil. But at what cost to our own environment? Would domestic production be any cleaner overall than foreign production, and would it have any impact on foreign production as demand grows elsewhere?

Politicians like to play off the false assumption "foreign oil" comes primarily from Middle Eastern nations, when Middle Eastern nations only account for two of the top 10 suppliers and only one of top five suppliers, with Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria comprising the top five. Does anyone really begrudge Canada for supplying us crude oil?

Perhaps by the time the U.S. really needs to tap into it's own reserves, the technology will be improved to better safeguard the environment. So, in the meantime, when a gallon of gasoline generated from foreign oil still costs less than a gallon of milk generated by good, old American cows, is all this political talk about foreign oil dependence more than just a lot of hot air?