George rapes Utah on his way out

Utah's canyon country is such a breath-taking landscape, and its place names bear that out. Desolation Canyon offers some of the best white-water rafting through wilderness quality landscapes. They are landscapes of soaring cliffs where the songs of canyon wrens and other birds echo up and down river, where the breezes sing to you as they ebb and flow through the goosenecks the Green River long ago cut through the sandstone. More than 1,000 pictographs and petroglyphs grace the canyon's walls, some cut by Fremont Indian artists, some by Ute shamans.

These and other slices of the public lands landscape deserve some form of protection for visitors today and tomorrow to enjoy.

And yet, the outgoing Bush administration is determined to open them to drilling rigs with all their associated access roads, noise, air, and, potentially, water pollution.How much is too much? When the oil and gas industry in Utah has nearly 3,500 drilling permits in hand, but which have not been acted upon, why is the Bush administration selling them more, particularly in sensitive areas around national parks and monuments?Because George is getting as much "good will" out of his presidency as possible.Interested in the good of the community..not likely...looking to his Directorships..post presidency