Interesting comments from CIA Director Michael Hayden during an interview with Fox News on what he sees as the potential national security threats to the next administration. The key graphs in the article:
While the increasingly fragile status of impoverished North Korea renders it a special threat, the flood of petrodollars coming from the so-called “Axis of Oil” — Iran, Venezuela and Russia — poses another threat to American security.
Hayden said oil prices, which are still hovering around $100 per barrel, have emboldened these oil-rich nations. “Oil, at its current price … gives the Russian state a degree of influence and power that it would have not otherwise had,” he said.
Russia’s invasion of Georgian territory in August and Iran’s continued work on acquiring nuclear weapons only compound the threat.
Icepicks and Nukes 