Prime Cuts

On Page 118 of Al Gore's The Assault on Reason, we read;

"We know from documents obtained in discovery proceedings against [the] Cheney Energy Task Force, by the odd combination of the conservative group Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club, that one of the documents that was receiving scrutiny by the task force during ... [the run up to the start of the war] was a highly detailed map of Iraq -- showing none of the cities, none of the places where people lived, but showing in great detail the location of every single oil deposit known to exist in the country, with dotted lines demarcating blocks for promising exploration -- a map that, in the words* of a Canadian journalist, resembled a butcher's drawing of a steer with the prime cuts delineated by dotted lines."

* "Cheney Energy Task Force Documents Feature Map of Iraqi Oilfields" July 17, 2003. www.judicialwatch.org/IraqOilMap.pdf

Which put me in mind of:

"On the wall a chart shows an outline of a steer, like a map covered with frontier lines that mark off the areas of consuming interest, involving the entire anatomy of the animal except only horns and hoofs. The map of the human habitat is this, no less than the planisphere of the planet; both are protocols that should sanction the rights man has attributed to himself, of possession, division, and consumption without residue of the terrestrial continents and of the loins of the animal body."

Italo Calvino "Marble and Blood." Mr. Palomar. Pg. 77.