In the late '50s, some people really believed that Detroit and Big Oil had suppressed a remarkable invention -- a tablet you could drop in you car's gas tank that would let it run on water. Much to my surprise, a claim only slightly less outlandish has suddenly taken the fancy of neoconservative writers -- the same fellows who recently believed castor beans and peanut mold might be fearsome weapons of mass destruction.

 The new version of turning water into gasoline first appeared in Newsweek. Fareed Zakaria wrote, "Tomorrow, President Bush could make the following speech: '... It is now possible to build cars that are powered by a combination of electricity and alcohol-based fuels, with petroleum as only one element among many. My administration is going to put in place a series of policies that will ensure that in four years, the average new American car will get 300 miles per gallon of petroleum. And I fully expect in this period to see cars in the United States that get 500 miles per gallon.'"

 The president could make such a speech, but only if he were indifferent about being hauled off in a straightjacket. Yet the "geo-green" apostle of The New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman, echoed similar political advice: "Most of all -- it's smart politics! ... Imagine if George Bush declared that he was getting rid of his limousine for an armor-plated Ford Escape hybrid, adopting a geo-green strategy and building an alliance of neocons, evangelicals and greens to sustain it. His popularity at home -- and abroad -- would soar."

 What is this "alliance of neocons, evangelicals and greens," and what do they really want?

 Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations recently repeated Zakaria's fantasy: "Hybrid electric cars such as the Toyota Prius, which run on both electric motors and gas engines, already get more than 50 miles per gallon (mpg). Coming soon are hybrids that can be plugged into a 120-volt outlet to recharge. ... Add in "flexible fuel" options that already allow many cars to run on a combination of petroleum and fuels like ethanol (derived from corn) and methanol (from natural gas or coal), and you could build vehicles that could get -- drum roll, please -- 500 mpg. That's not science fiction; that's achievable now."

 Boot and Zakaria clearly lifted this 500 mpg line from the same source, but both were cagey about it. Boot says it came from "Set America Free, a group set up by R. James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney and other national security hawks." But this is just a front group "organized by the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS)."

 Zakaria names neither group, but instead credits Gal Luft, "a tireless and independent advocate of energy security." But Luft is co-director of IAGS and specializes in "strategy, geopolitics, terrorism, Middle East and energy security." He is also a former lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces.

 The other key "member" of the IAGS front group Set America Free is actually another front group called the Apollo Alliance. It was founded by Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., Washington Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, the heads of the United Steel Workers Union and the Sierra Club, and a few left-fringe organizations like the Institute for America's Future. This Apollo Alliance boasts generous support from Move On and the Tides Foundation, both heavily funded by Bush-hater George Soros, and from Ted Turner's "United Nations Better World Fund."

 The five-page IAGS "Set America Free" memo is an undocumented list of grandiose assertions based on bad science and worse economics.

 The bad science begins by treating electricity and ethanol as if they were sources of energy that could be produced without using any energy. To arrive at a figure like 500 mpg, just fill your tank with a mix of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline -- but then count only that 15 percent against "miles per gallon." Continued...