During an Oval Office interview with Politico, President Obama compared the Gulf oil spill catastrophe to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, saying, "In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11, I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come." OH, he said 9/11! So of course the Daily News had to ask relatives of 9/11 victims what they thought of the comparison.

"I think he's off-base," said ex-FDNY Deputy Chief Jim Riches, whose son died at the World Trade Center. "These were terrorist attacks, these 9/11 murders, not something caused by people trying to make money." But Sally Regenhard, whose son also died that day, told the News she wasn't offended: "Just like on 9/11, there were no plans for emergency preparedness, coordination of response. It's a failure of the system and the government. I'm not offended by the comment." Then there's Jack Lynch, whose firefighter son was killed on 9/11: "To compare an environmental accident, if that's what you call it, to a premeditated terrorist attack is ridiculous. Politicians have no sense of reality."

No argument there, but if you just consider the political ramifications, the spill could conceivably end up being the defining event of the Obama administration. Reflecting the seriousness of the disaster, Obama will deliver his first televised address from the Oval Office tomorrow night, a setting used by previous presidents to convey utmost gravitas. After his overnight visit to the Gulf today and tomorrow, Obama will return to DC in time to make his address, which is expected to include demands that BP create an escrow account to compensate businesses and individuals for their losses, the Times reports.

On Wednesday, Obama will have his first face-to-face meeting with BP executives. The chairman of BP’s board, Carl-Henric Svanberg, will appear on the carpet along with BP CEO Tony Hayward, the tone-deaf tool Obama would have fired if he worked for him. Sometime after Wednesday, BP is expected to announce their decision about whether to suspend dividend payments to shareholders. In the event that BP refuses to voluntarily set up an escrow account to victims' claims, Justice Department lawyers have been researching Obama's legal authority to force BP to set aside money for claims, based on the 1990 Oil Pollution Act.

According to the Times, BP has nearly $7 billion in cash on hand and the capacity to borrow about $15 billion; the company recently said its costs of responding to the spill had risen to $1.6 billion. "We want to make sure that money is escrowed for the legitimate claims that are going to be, and are being made, by businesses down in the Gulf - people who've been damaged by this," senior adviser David Axelrod said on NBC's "Meet the Press" this weekend.

Meanwhile, in response to the administration's "request" that BP speed up its ability to capture the spewing oil, BP said it would target containing more than 2 million gallons of oil a day by the end of June, up from about 630,000 gallons of crude a day now, ABC News reports. As much as 2.1 million gallons a day could be gushing from the broken well, but estimates have varied widely since the rig exploded on April 20th. On Sunday, BP used underwater robots to position sensors inside the well to measure how much oil is spilling. Today, a piece of wreckage that appears to be from deep-sea rig that exploded in April in the Gulf of Mexico washed up on a beach in Florida.