I am not surprised that it took Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to tell the American public the truth that the oil spill could have been prevented if it were not for eight years of the George W. Bush and Dick Cheney administration. Bush’s crew at the Minerals Management Service in 2003 could not wait to jump in bed with the oil industry and give it any cost-cutting it wanted. The absence of an acoustical regulator, a remotely triggered dead-man’s switch that would have closed off BP’s gushing oil, was not deemed necessary and too costly by the oil-friendly Bush administration.

Cheney’s offshore company (here we go again), Halliburton, had just completed working on a very sensitive process that, according to government experts, could trigger catastrophic blowouts. Shortly after that work was done, the British Petro well went up in flames.

The festering ethics of the Bush administration and the corruption of the agency required to oversee that the law is obeyed are at fault. Bush’s 2005 energy bill removed the requirement for the acoustical regulator as too costly. The price of an acoustical regulator is $500,000. The cost so far for this spill is now $14 billion, just for the Gulf states.

Perhaps now the American people will understand why President Barack Obama has issued a halt to offshore oil drilling, because without the acoustical regulator on those wells, America and the world could have a repeat disaster beyond imagination.

Thank you, RFK Jr.

William R. Rice Jr., Wilton