The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“ENERGY SOLUTIONS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H8008-H8015 on Sept. 10, 2008.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
ENERGY SOLUTIONS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. KING) is recognized for 60 minutes.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I appreciate the honor to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the House of the United States Representatives. I have a series of subjects that I am interested in moving forward on.
Before I broach those subjects that might be illustrated on my left, I yield so much time as he may consume to the gentleman from east Texas, Mr. Louie Gohmert.
Mr. GOHMERT. I thank my friend from Iowa for yielding. Of course, we have had a good bit of discussion on energy. One of the things that has gotten a lot of attention is this moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf.
It was interesting to talk to Ralph Regula, a Congressman here, who said he was here in 1981 when the first moratorium got put in place. If you go back to President Jimmy Carter, he signed a declaration stating that the Outer Continental Shelf was such an asset for this Nation that it should be developed expeditiously. Those were the two words: Developed expeditiously.
So what happened to that? Jimmy Carter saying, Wow, we have got this fantastic resource for oil and natural gas that would help the American people and solve so much of our energy problems. What happened? Well, Ralph explained he was on the committee when there was some wealthy beach front owners, landowners in California, and of course there had been an oil spill around Santa Barbara in California, a bad spill. Amazingly, people complained about the drilling platforms when actually it's the tankers that spilled the stuff bringing it from other places.
But, anyway, wealthy, just the rich, who had beach front property, said they didn't want to look out there and have to see a rig, no matter that it might bring cheaper gasoline or cheaper natural gas prices, which could mean cheaper fertilizer, cheaper foreign products, cheaper plastics, cheaper all kind of things. Never mind about that. The wealthy didn't see that as a problem.
They didn't want to see the rigs out there so they begged and pleaded Congress to give a moratorium so there would be no drilling off the California coast. Well, they were apparently persuasive. They had plenty of resources with which to persuade the Congress. As I understood, it was back in 1981. They persuaded Congress to give them a moratorium.
Well, the recitation was such that then Florida said, Wait a minute. Those of us that are wealthy in Florida that have beach front property, we don't want drilling that might put a rig out there where we could see it off our coast. So never mind that it might provide cheaper gasoline, cheaper products, cheaper heating oil, cheaper things like that. Never mind that. We just don't want to look out from our expensive piece of property and even risk seeing a rig out there. So let's get a moratorium too. California got one. Ralph had warned that if you give California this moratorium, you will rue the day you did it.
Well, the wealthy there were able to persuade no drilling off the Florida coast. They got a moratorium. Before you know it, State after State was able to use and parlay California's and Florida's moratorium into not having drilling off their coast, until we get to the present day, where there's still these moratoriums off most of our coastline that could help our Nation become completely energy independent and say adios to this tremendous transfer of wealth that has been going over to some people that just flat don't like us and some of whom have supported terrorism. So it's important to know your history. In order to know where you're going, know your history.
So when we talk about this moratorium, that is what we are talking about, wealthy folks in the country that didn't want to have to risk seeing a rig, never mind that the rigs could have been required to be far enough off the coast that they could not be seen from the coastline.
In Texas, we didn't have the moratorium. Louisiana didn't. So you can go down, and we did hear the stories that if you put a platform off the coast, then it's going to destroy all the fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. How terrible that would be. Well, they put the platforms out there and, lo and behold, the fish look at it as artificial reefs. Now, if you want to go fishing, a great place to go out is to the artificial reefs, which the fish look at them as, and they are actually just the platform that are producing.
So Carter wanted it developed expeditiously. I had tremendous problems with some of the things he did, like creating the problem in Iran when he cut the legs out from under the Shah and hailed the Ayatollah as a man of peace coming in, and we have been paying the price ever since then.
But here we have a majority that talks about being concerned about what they say is the little guy in America, what I would say are the hardest working people here. I have had union jobs lost in the last few years because natural gas prices were too high. It isn't helpful to keep putting our natural gas off limits. We are losing jobs that good, hardworking union workers should not have to lose to some country where they have got cheaper natural gas.
Also, ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is ridiculous not to drill that small area, compared to the millions of acres that would not be touched, that area where there's no wildlife, the area where there is nothing that would be disturbed, and produce that to bring a million, million and a half barrels on line. And it would not take 10 to 15 years. We have got a pipeline 74 miles away. That oil could be in the pipeline and coming this way in 2 or 3 years.
All of that said, we can then use the revenue, the royalties. People talk about subsidies and this kind of this. Make them pay royalties. The bills that we were pushing in the last Congress for 2 years had significant royalties that would go and be split between the States and the Federal Government. Tremendous revenue enhancers. You have could used that for the renewable energy, you could use that to shore up the hurting infrastructure of this country without raising taxes, and it would be producing new jobs.
One estimate says that if we allow the drilling in ANWR, it would immediately start producing 250,000 jobs, and we'd have 750,000 jobs by the time it was actually completed and the oil started flowing this way. I think solar, I know Boone Pickens is visionary on the idea of wind. That can help us out. But I think ultimately if we get the capacitors to ever store electricity, solar could provide all our power, and this would provide the revenue to get on the way to do that, and we could say goodbye forever to this tremendous gross transfer of wealth to countries, so many of whom don't care for us.
So I appreciate my friend from Iowa yielding. I felt like as a follow-up on this discussion about energy it was very important for people to know the moratorium that will go out of existence come the end of this month, unless something is passed. And I know there are many wealthy people in the Senate, I know that there are millionaires here in the House who are really not bothered by the high gasoline prices. I hope that the Senators that are wealthy will feel and understand the pain of the hardworking Americans and not cut the legs out from under this program that could strengthen America for the next 200 years.
I hope they won't cave in because the hardworking Americans in this country need the help. This is one place we can provide the help.
May God bless this country. One way it can be is if we are allowed to utilize the resources with which we have already been blessed. But thank you to my friend from Iowa for yielding, and I yield back to him.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas, reclaiming my time, and I thank him for this transfer of wealth of knowledge to us, which we know in the brief time we have is a small component of the big picture but it adds a piece to the puzzle of the energy picture that we have been painting here every day in this 110th Congress for months and months and months, including every day, Mr. Speaker, that the House was designed to be adjourned for the August recess, as it's called. Republicans were here on this floor. Those cameras shut off, these microphones shut off, the lights shut down. We stayed here every single working day to carry the case to thousands of the American people who we brought down here on the floor of the House of Representatives to experience what a real debate was like, a real discussion was like.
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I spent six to seven days here myself, Mr. Speaker. And although I saw a couple of Democrats lead a tour of people down here on the floor, I saw not one single one engage in this debate. The floor is always open for legitimate debate, and when it happens, I hope it is facts and not anecdotes.
A person who delivers this thing from a factual and occasional anecdotal but always a solid philosophical perspective is the gentleman from Michigan, the chairman of the Policy Committee, duly elected by his peers, and that is the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Thaddeus McCotter, to whom I will yield.
Mr. McCOTTER. I thank the gentleman from Iowa, and I rise to address some of the issues that were raised by our colleague from New York, whose sincere earnestness was not matched by his argument's accuracy.
Let us look at this situation squarely in the face. You can either increase America's supply of its own domestic natural resources in oil and gas, or you won't. Now, if you want to support it and increase the supply of American oil and natural gas, which we have to understand is that every time you play politics, for whatever ideological reason, to have government imposed rationing over America's production of their own domestic natural resources, you are going to increase the cost to the American consumers, because the more you hold back, the less supply is added, and this at the very time that global demand increasing.
What you are going to want to do is increase the supply as best you can, as fast as you can, so you can help Americans who are suffering. What we have seen out of this Democratic party is quite simply a fig leaf plan to do nothing.
First, do-nothing bills that come to this Congress that are purported to be energy bills are in fact lethargy bills that are designed in fact to have a supermajority required to pass them. Why are they designed so have a supermajority to pass them? Why make it harder to do something that will actually help Americans at the pump? Because they are designed to fail, and they are not allowed to be amended by the Members on this floor. So this is part of a cynical strategy to put forward a do-nothing bill, get nothing done, and refuse to accept your accountability as the Democratic majority.
All we are asking the Democratic majority is to either agree with us to have a bipartisan vote on the all-of-the-above energy plan or to be honest with the American people. We have heard that somehow the Republican Party is engaged in a myth. Well, if it is a myth, then let us put it to the test on the floor with a vote. Let us see how many Democrats believe it is a myth.
The Republican Party can pass nothing in this House without Democratic support. We believe we have it, and if we don't, we will accept the defeat, move forward and try to find a way to work with the Democratic Party's leadership, which seems to believe that the United States does not need to increase its own domestic energy supplies, but rather needs to go cold turkey into an oil-free future, which I continue to stress is going to callously inflict pain upon Americans' pocketbooks and their quality of life.
This is an ideological battle, but it is not an ideological battle amongst the majority of Members of Congress. Again, I could be wrong, but give us an up-or-down vote.
In fact, as you know, through the Chair to the gentleman from Iowa, as you know, we have seen this Democratic Congress take a 5 week paid vacation while 84,000 Americans were put out of work. The Speaker of this House had time to write a book, but not a bill on energy. We still do not have a bill on energy. We still have nothing in front of us, except what? A bill that has already been introduced called the American Energy Act. And whether it is fact or fiction, or good or bad public policy, we can debate that, if you let us. We can debate that and have a vote, if you let us.
If you allow this representative institution, this beckon of democracy to all the world to actually function as it is intended under the Constitution of the United States and as it has been entrusted to us by our constituents, put it up for a vote. Let our voices be heard on behalf of our constituents, and let the majority, if not a party prevail, but the people prevail. That is all we ask.
But let us be clear about what the stakes are and the positions are. We support an all-of-the-above strategy. We want maximum domestic energy production as a part of it. We do not want minimum energy production as part of an ideologically zealous pursuit of some unobtainable future in the near term which is going to devastate Americans' lives now.
I yield back.
Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Michigan. And it occurs to me as I listen that not only is there no energy bill on the floor, there has been only one appropriations bill come through the House of Representatives, where all appropriations have to begin, Mr. Speaker, and that appropriations bill, of course, hasn't gone anywhere in the Senate. And this is the longest period of time in the history of the United States of America that this Congress has failed to do its duty and responsibly pass appropriation bills, that have to begin here by Constitution, do go over to the Senate, are to come back here in a conference report, generally speaking, unless the Senate agrees, and go to the President for his signature.
We are here knew on the eve of the seventh anniversary of September 11th. Tomorrow is the day, the seventh anniversary. And yet a few days later, at midnight, September 30th, if this Congress doesn't act, if the responsible assignments that should come from the Speaker of the House aren't brought forward, Mr. Speaker, this government shuts down. That means it shuts off all money going to the various departments of government.
I do not think that will be allowed to happen, because that would be too obvious to the American people as to what is going on here. But there is no energy bill. There are no appropriation bills.
But what we have seen in this 110th Congress is 40 resolutions, 4-0, 40 resolutions have been brought to the floor of the House of Representatives designed to unfund, underfund, or undermine our troops. We took votes on them and debated them intensively. And none of them went anywhere, Mr. Speaker, except they made their political statement, which encouraged our enemies, discouraged our allies, discouraged our troops, and said to them that this Congress wasn't behind them.
I heard Member after Member say, ``I support the troops, but I oppose the mission.'' I would submit that that is philosophically inconsistent. You simply can't take a position that says I want our troops to know that I am behind them, but I am not behind them if they have to go out and put themselves in harm's way in an operation that I disagree with.
This Congress voted to authorize the President to use military force in the places and locations that we are. And once that vote goes up, we are to stand together, not divided, and we are not to be going to foreign countries to negotiate with terrorists, tyrants, dictators, or any parts of any evil empire, carrying on foreign policy out of this Congress. That is the President's responsibility, by Constitution the commander-in-chief, and he conducts our foreign policy, Mr. Speaker.
I am fairly fresh back from a trip over to some of those parts of the world that have given us a significant amount of grief since September 11th, and among those places in the world, three stops that I will speak of tonight are Iraq, Afghanistan and the sovereign state of Georgia, all in that order.
My report, Mr. Speaker, back from Iraq, is the easiest one and it is the most optimistic one of the three to deliver. It was my sixth trip into Iraq over the time that I have been in Congress since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Over that course of time, I have made it a point to get around the country so that I can be in the different corners to see what is going on in places like Kurdistan, in Mosul, up in Irbil, down in Basra, certainly Baghdad, up to Ramadi and over to Fallujah, a couple of times to Fallujah, Taji comes to mind, Balad comes to mind, Baja comes to mind, at some of the places that I have had the privilege to go to get a sense and a feel for the things going on in that country.
Always briefed by our top officers, always had an opportunity to sit down the State Department, usually the U.S. Ambassador, usually also the corps commander of our military there on the ground. I met General Petraeus for the first time in Mosul when he commanded the 101st Airborne, that was in October of 2003. And as this situation unfolded, I met with General Sanchez, General Casey, and now back to General Petraeus again as the commander of our troops in Iraq. He is posed now to be raised up to be the commander of CENTCOM, and we will see General Odierno step in as the commander of our military in Iraq, entirely capable, and I think an excellent and wonderful choice, and someone whom I have met over there as well over the course of the travels.
One of the things I do as well is I go into a mess hall and I meet with Iowans. It is something unique about meeting with troops from your home State. The troops from the home State just know that you know somebody that they know if in case we don't know each other, and they will always give me the straight line because they know that we have got a reference point and they know that they can talk to me in confidence and I am not going to blow their cover, so-to-speak, and they won't get into a problem with their commanding officer out of anything that I carry on from that conversation.
So I am able to cross-reference what our troops on the ground know, our frontline troops, all the way up through our officer corps at all ranks, and on to our ambassador corps as well. And I find our military gives us straight answers, and they have been doing a selfless job, and they believe in their duty, and they believe in their mission, and they believe in this country, and they are there because they want to take this fight off of their children and grandchildren, and also, Mr. Speaker, your children and yours and mine grandchildren as well.
I agree with them and I honor and salute them for it, and I stand with them, I support them, and I support their mission, because supporting our troops and their mission is integral. It cannot be divided. You can't separate the two. They have to go together, Mr. Speaker.
Here is what I see in Iraq. The casualty rates, the civilian casualty rates have dropped off more than 80 percent. I know that a year-and-a-
half or so ago they were picking up about 50 bodies every morning out of the river in Baghdad. The sectarian violence was that bad and the power struggle that was going on was that bad.
The enemies that we were fighting in Iraq a year-and-a-half ago came down to these definitions. We were fighting, of course, al Qaeda in Iraq was our number one enemy. We were fighting al Quds, the Iranian influence of their training of terrorists and their arming of terrorists. They foment terror with whomever they can. But the Iranian influence was there.
We were fighting Muqtada al-Sadr, his al Mahdi military, his militia. That was three. We were fighting also the Badr Brigades, a couple of different divisions, a couple of different separations or identities of them. Organized crime was another component. The pure power struggle going on within the communities was another component of fight going on a year-and-a-half ago.
But I would have to say that al Qaeda in Iraq was number one, probably al Quds, the Iranian influence was number two, Muqtada al-Sadr was number three. Former Ba'athists, I didn't mention them, was another enemy we had. Then organized crime, then the Badr Brigades and another Shia group that was in there.
So it comes to five, six or seven different enemies that were cluttering up the battlefield and causing a lot of casualties and making it difficult to know which way to turn because it was an asymmetric war.
Fifty bodies roughly a day being picked up out of the river in Baghdad I mentioned. The situation was grim. Al Anbar province was so dangerous that a Member of Congress could not go in there just a little more than a year-and-a-half ago.
So I reviewed that, and went and visited those areas that I could at that time. This was Thanksgiving, a year ago last Thanksgiving. And I went back about seven months later, probably eight months later, at the end of July last year. Things had gotten better. When I couldn't go to al Anbar province during Thanksgiving of 2006, I could go in there in July of 2007, and I did. And I went to Ramadi and in fact received a briefing there from the Marine general that was commanding that region, all of al Anbar province, and saw the change that had taken place.
That is the famous Sunni awakening, the Sunni awakening that was triggered by the surge, the surge which made a commitment to the military operations in Iraq, that said to the Iraqis, we are here, we are with you, and we are not leaving.
When that happened, it triggered the Sunni awakening, and they decided they would throw their lot in with the side that was going to be the winner. They were tired of the tyranny and the brutality of al Qaeda, and they understood who it was and what kind of people they allowed in their midst. They turned the other way and decided to join with us and provide the intel and also lead a good number of the military missions to go in and purge al Qaeda from al Anbar province. That was happening while I was there a year ago last July, Mr. Speaker.
And as I looked at the map that showed the mosques and what they were preaching in their services in the mosques, there was a time when it was about a 90 percent anti-coalition message. By then, by a little over a year ago, it was a 60 percent neutral message, 40 percent pro-
coalition message. No mosque that they had for record was preaching an anti-coalition, anti-American message. It was a significant sea change that was taking place there. When the Iraqis, the Sunni Iraqis came around on our side, they began to purge al Qaeda from their midst.
A little more than a year later, I went back, 13 months later to be more accurate, Mr. Speaker, and went into some of the same regions and met with the Marine unit that was there, a different commanding general there this time, this time General Kelly. What I saw was something that was even safer yet, and much improved, al Anbar province.
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In those trips, I went shopping in downtown Ramadi. I went back to Fallujah. There was a time I couldn't do that. Yet I'd been in Fallujah in June 2004. I wasn't able to go to Fallujah in 2006. It was too dangerous because al Qaeda owned al Anbar province, and they do not any longer. There are some traces of al Qaeda in the province, but they barely exist. They're in little camps out in the desert, and they're being mopped up by the Iraqi defense forces and by our defense forces as well, Mr. Speaker.
Now, 11 of 18 provinces in Iraq have been turned over to the Iraqis for primary security, and that 11th one just happened here this past week with al Anbar province being that large area. It's about a third the area of Iraq and the population only about 5 or 6 percent of it, but it was turned over to the Iraqis, 11 of 18 provinces. If you look at the map of those 11 of 18 provinces, there are those that are not yet turned over to the Iraqis for security. As to this incremental, one province at a time, if the security allows for that, those that are still under U.S. primary security responsibility are the provinces that are most likely to still have some al Qaeda in Iraq in them. They are being mopped up systematically. At the progress rate they were going, it looks to me like a year from now it's going to be hard to find ``al Qaeda in Iraq'' in Iraq. It looks like the progress that's being made is very, very positive. So there has been significant progress made there.
Civilian casualties are off more than 80 percent. Sectarian violence is measured this way by sectarian death. In Baghdad since mid-April, statistically, we don't have a single sectarian death on our charts. If you look at sectarian deaths in Iraq as a whole, in Iraq proper, there have been about a handful of sectarian deaths since mid-April till today. So, if you look at the line on the charts, that number was going on someplace over 2,000 in a matter of a limited period of time--and I believe it was a week--and I hesitate to say so specifically, Mr. Speaker, but that number on the chart goes up over 2,000, and now it goes down to zero on sectarian violence.
You see that measure. You look at American casualties in Iraq. There was a period of time for 7 weeks, from the 1st of July until into August--I think that date would be about August 18--where the combat deaths in Iraq were exactly the same as accidental deaths in Iraq for American troops. There were 15 accidental deaths and 15 hostile deaths that took place in Iraq on American troops. That's the measure that, I think, is the one that provides the most optimism for me when the relative risk to being, let's just say, in a Humvee wreck is equivalent to being shot by a sniper or from having an IED detonated in a fatal fashion. Those measures tell me that security is going up and that violence is going down dramatically. If you look at the charts on the attacks that are taking place, whether they be on Iraqi forces or on U.S. coalition forces, all of those numbers are down. They're down to historically low levels, down to the levels where they were right after the liberation of Iraq that took place in March and in early April of 2003. That should give us great hope, Mr. Speaker.
The situation in Iraq today is not yet what we can call a victory, but it is, I believe, what we'll be able to look at to say we know what victory will look like from here if we can sustain these low levels of violence and if we can drive them down even further.
We have to remember that Iraq is a more violent country than we are here in the United States of America as a whole. So, traditionally, they've had more violence. They have more violence that comes from people settling scores, from having more grudge matches. They don't have the long tradition of the rule of law like we have in the United States.
I just came from a reception where I joined with Judge Juhi, who was one of the judges who sat in judgment of Saddam. Many of you will remember him--a youthful judge who was the first one to retort back to Saddam when Saddam asked him ``Who appointed you?'' Judge Juhi said,
``You appointed me and I'm doing my job.'' This man is now in the United States, and I'm proud to have him here. I'm proud to welcome him here to the American soil. I met with him in Iraq. He showed courage. He stood up for the rule of law at great risk. I recall at least one judge who was killed in this. Judge Juhi did survive this and has come through it all, and that's the kind of courage that we're seeing in the Iraqi people as they step up to defend their own freedom, Mr. Speaker.
Some of these measures are this: The level of security in Iraq probably never gets down to the level of security in the United States. They're a different kind of people than we are. There are more violent countries in the world than Iraq as well, and I could name you a few of them. One of them is Colombia. Their numbers have gone down, but about 3 years ago, when I committed some of their violent numbers in the world to memory, they had about 63 violent deaths per 100,000. The most violent country in the world is Swaziland. There are 88 violent deaths per 100,000 in Swaziland. That sounds horrible to think of that, that 88 out of 100,000 would be killed in a year in a country like that. Well, in Iraq, their violent death rate is down around 23 per 100,000 today. It was 27.51 back in 2005. Today, it's 23 per 100,000, and that includes the violent deaths across the country.
I have been accused, Mr. Speaker, of laying out, roughly, 3 years ago statistics and that this was a false quote. It was not something that I'd said, but I was accused of saying that it was more dangerous for my wife to live in Washington, DC--this is in 2005--than it was to live in Baghdad. In 2005, Mr. Speaker, we didn't have legitimate numbers on Baghdad's violent death rates, and so I didn't quote such a thing, but I can say today, Mr. Speaker, that now we do have legitimate statistics on Baghdad's violent death rates.
Mr. Speaker, I can tell you without hesitation that it is today more dangerous to live in Detroit than it is to live in Baghdad. It's safer to be in Baghdad than it is to be in Detroit. Do you know it's safer to be in Detroit than it is to be in Washington, DC, and it's safer to be in Washington, DC than it is to be in New Orleans, and it's more dangerous to be in New Orleans than it is to be in Swaziland? That puts it in perspective, Mr. Speaker.
The violent death rates go like this: 88 per 100,000 for Swaziland, 23 per 100,000 for Iraq, 41 per 100,000 for Detroit. I've got to guess at this number now because Washington, DC's numbers have gone down. They've gone down from, I think, about 46 per 100,000. That number is a little bit lower than that, but it's still above Detroit's at 41 per 100,000. New Orleans used to have a number of about 53 per 100,000. Post-Katrina, it has posted violent death rates of up to 90 violent deaths per 100,000. It's more dangerous in New Orleans than it is in Swaziland. It's more dangerous in Detroit than it is in Baghdad. It's more dangerous in Washington, DC than it is in Baghdad. That puts this all into perspective for us. As for the safety in the entire country of Iraq, aside from Baghdad averaged into that, it is still safer to live in Iraq than it is to live in Oakland, California, and it actually has been for some time. That's a sign of success. We see the film on the violence that comes constantly out of that part of the world, Mr. Speaker, but we ought to also pick up on some optimism because our troops have done their job.
The Iraqi Government is stepping up. They're sitting on a $79 billion fund. I want to call it a surplus, but it really is not. They're having difficulty allocating those funds and in getting them out to the local political subdivisions and in getting them out to the Iraqi people. They don't have a tradition of anything except central command, and people are reluctant to make decisions for fear they will be accused of fraud or corruption. So, if you don't make a decision, you cannot be accused of doing very much, and that delay that's part of a culture of not having a delivery system is starting to cause some problems in Iraq, but it's the right kind of problem to have: $79 billion and not being able to figure out quite how to spend it.
They need to develop their oil industry, Mr. Speaker. They had, I believe it was, five oil companies and six contracts that they had signed to ask these oil companies to bring their technical expertise into Iraq and to evaluate inventory--the wells inventory, the supply of untapped energy that they have and the inventory of the pipelines, the delivery system, the processing, the entire network of oil. These companies were negotiated contracts. I understood they were no bid contracts. They would now be working on developing those oil fields in Iraq. Instead, Senator Schumer from New York, Senator McCaskill and, I believe, Senator Kerry from Massachusetts all lined up and signed a letter, criticizing the no bid contracts that Iraq had entered into.
The result of that was they pulled those contracts down, and Iraq has been set back another year on developing their oil. They're doing that at a time of record high oil prices. So the delay on this won't just be they don't get to sell that number of barrels of oil next year or the year after or the year after, but the profit that comes from high oil prices needed to be capitalized on. They're set back at least a year, Mr. Speaker, because of interference on the part of the United States Senate in the sovereign business of Iraq. We said we didn't go there for their oil. Why are we sticking our nose in that business? They wanted to award contracts to U.S. companies on a legitimate basis. Because they needed to move, they didn't have time to do bid contracts on this. They wanted to agree. They had the money. They could be working today, and they're not because of interference on the part of the United States Senate.
But Iraq is still moving forward, and they're producing more oil than ever before. They're producing more electricity than ever before. The oil is being refined in Baji, and it's going up the pipeline to the north and out to Turkey. It's also going down to Baghdad and on down to Basra, and it's being exported off of the two platforms that Iraq has out in the ocean. Their navy is patrolling those platforms and is providing security there. Progress is being made. There's a lot to be done in the country, but they do have an infrastructure, and they do have a tradition of education. They do sit on a lot of oil, and I believe they will for a long time be a moderate, Arab, prosperous ally to freedom in the Middle East. I'm hopeful that they will provide an inspiration for the Iranians to reach out and to grasp their own freedom in a fashion that the Iraqis have today.
That's Iraq, Mr. Speaker, and I'm encouraged by it, and I hope to be able to look back on this time and this date, perhaps, and see that the progress continues to be made and that the Iraqi people step up.
If there is anything that I'm concerned about there--and there are a number of things--it is that I'm concerned that the Iraqis are a little overconfident on their current military capability. I believe they undervalue American communications and American air cover and our backup firepower that we have and the logistics that support their operations, and so that's one of the concerns that I have about the Iraqis.
Another one would be, if Muqtada al-Sadr and the Iranians decided to light it up again in Iraq, this could go south pretty fast. I don't think that al Qaeda can mount a tactical military approach again in Iraq under the situation they're in. They can do some terrorist attacks, but they can't do coordinated terrorist attacks of the magnitude they have done in the past. That's why the attacks and the violence have dropped off substantially, but you can see what victory can look like from where we are today in Iraq.
On the other hand, Mr. Speaker, Afghanistan is a bit of a different story. I went back to Afghanistan also a little over a week ago, and I traveled to the central and eastern and a little bit of the southern parts of the country in some regions that I hadn't been before--
Kandahar. I traveled to the central and western parts of Afghanistan, to areas I hadn't been before. I had been to the east into the mountainous regions, to the northeast where the mountains go up pretty sheer, pretty vertically. It's sheer stone and rock, and there's not much going on with the exception of a little bit of civilization in the valleys. There are very narrow, little, green valleys with some vegetation.
I traveled west in Afghanistan, over to Kandahar, and then on down to a camp called Camp Bastion. The flight over that way is a different topography. It's mountainous, yes, but the mountains are simply dust all the way to the top with little valleys in between that are the narrowest slivers of green areas where there is some population that lives, Mr. Speaker. Then there are the high plains that lay out in a high plains desert. If you describe it in one word, Mr. Speaker, the prevailing situation in that part of Afghanistan--and it's a vast part of Afghanistan--is dust. There's dust everywhere. There's dust all the time. There's dust in the air. There's dust settling on everything. Actually, this is from Kabul all the way to the west as far as I've gone.
When you go through the market, you'll see the watermelons and tomatoes at this time of the year covered with dust that hovers in the air. The visibility is limited. There is meat hanging in open markets, some of it with the wrapping on it and some of it hanging out in the open, collecting dust from the air. Many times, our planes are grounded because the visibility is so low that they can't fly on or off the runway. There's dust everywhere.
{time} 2315
And so dust is a prevailing piece. The roads, we built a ring highway around Iraq, and that is paved and that let's traffic get around the--
excuse me--the ring highway around Afghanistan. And that's paved. It lets traffic go around that current in the ring highway, but the balance of the highways, with few exceptions, are dust, dirt, not gravel and not asphalt, not paving. They're dirt.
So in the summertime, this time of the year when the temperatures got to 125, it cooled off to 115 when we were there. Then the vehicles and any traffic, any animal traffic fills the air with dust. The wind blows and it fills the air with dust. Our troops get stuck in the dust. Their equipment will get stuck in the dust. It's that deep and that soft on some occasions.
And as the weather changes and we go into the winter time and the rainy season, then that dust turns to mud. And of course the equipment will be stuck in the mud instead of the dust. But the dusty covered mountains and the dust covered high plains going to the West from Kandahar on over, and looking across that countryside, and I asked the question of the veterans who were there that served for a long time in Afghanistan, do these mountains ever turn green? Do these high plains ever turn green? Is there vegetation that grows during a time of the season when it rains? And the answer is no. They just stay dust. And it's all dustier, except down in the narrow parts of the valleys where civilization goes up and down the valley. And that's of course where the Taliban travel, up and down the valley. And Helman Province is one of the places where we were.
Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world's poppies for opium and heroin. And 90 percent of that, 80 percent of Afghanistan's poppies are raised in Helman Province. And so we were there.
It wasn't the poppy season. But the Taliban come up and they will front a crop and they'll say, here, I'll give you some money, half of what your crop is worth. Raise some poppies this year and I'll be back at harvest time to pick up the crop and I'll pay you the balance of what I owe you. We've got Taliban brokering, it's kind of like a farm bill or a banker; here's the front money, put your crop in, and we'll come back and collect the harvest of the opium crop that you have. We'll pay you the balance that we owe you and then they go back to Pakistan.
Taliban and al Qaeda will penetrate as far as they can go until they run into American troops, whether it's Marines in that area or Army troops in other areas. And there is far too much ranging of the enemy across that countryside. They've got too much freedom of movement. And yes, we're doing, I believe, as much as we can with the resources that we have there. But I look across at Pakistan, and up until a few days ago the leadership there was a jump ball. Yet, Pakistan is a sovereign sanctuary that neighbors Afghanistan.
I continually ask this question of our military historians, Mr. Speaker. Give me an example of an insurgency that was defeated by a foreign power, an insurgency that had a sovereign sanctuary to retreat and be resupplied and retrained and rearmed from. I've yet to get an answer to that question from any of our military historians as to when a foreign power has defeated an insurgency, when those insurgents could retreat to another country that was a sanctuary. I don't believe it's ever happened in history.
So the situation that we're in today, Mr. Speaker, is, we either have to rewrite history, excuse me. We have to write new history. We have to write a new precedent for how to defeat a sovereign sanctuary that had, how to defeat an insurgency that has a sanctuary in a sovereign country. We either set new precedents for history, or we are slowly learning a bitter lesson of history. And today, Mr. Speaker, I don't know the answer to that question. It will be determined by history.
But at this point, I don't believe that we have a lot of options for September and October or November, except to maintain and limit the movement of our enemies there. There are at least nine different identifiable enemies there. I went through the list of enemies we had in Iraq a year and a half ago. The list of enemies is down now to where they barely exist there today.
But over in Afghanistan they list nine enemies for me and they call them the syndicate of enemies. I can't list them all from memory, but they include the Taliban and al Qaeda, seven other groups that are, most of them are camping in the mountains and training there and mounting their attacks from those locations where they believe that they are safe from American attacks. They aren't always. Sometimes we find an opportunity to strike a target in that region as well.
But with the unrest in Pakistan, with the new leadership that's just taken place there, with a presidential election coming up in this country, with resources that I believe need to be refurbished and reinforced in Afghanistan, this is the time that we begin to move on the political and the economic fronts until we can set the stage to eradicate that habitat that breeds terror in Pakistan.
It is a very tough nut to crack. It will be very difficult. I have said for years that we would be in Afghanistan longer than we'll be in Iraq. I said that because Afghanistan is closer to the stone age. They don't have the oil wealth that Iraq has. They don't have the prosperity. They have a Gross Domestic Product of $7.5 billion, Mr. Speaker, and $4 billion of that Gross Domestic Product is the poppies.
So I would submit that we should just simply remind Afghanistan, Afghan farmers, it's against the law to raise poppies, and we're going to enforce the law and it'll be Americans that do it if we need to. And as I had that discussion with some of the powers that be in that country, they said to me that the poppy crop in Afghanistan was the equivalent to, it was either one or two football fields wide all the way around the world. It would be impossible to go in and spray all those poppies.
And I brought up the fact that we've sprayed almost, we've sprayed most of the acres of corn and soybeans in Iowa. And we did so in 6 weeks. And we have enough spray planes parked in the hangars in Iowa that that's the off season to go over there. I think that we could take care of the poppies in Afghanistan without breaking a sweat. Might get shot at a few times, but we would end that trade in opium that is funding our enemies.
This is a strange, strange war, Mr. Speaker, when we're paying an exorbitant price for oil, and that money goes into the pockets of people that don't like us very much. And some of it gets into the pockets of our enemy, called the Taliban and al Qaeda and a number of other enemies.
At the same time, the American demand for illegal drugs is funding the poppy trade in Afghanistan, along with the European demand for illegal drugs as well. They're tapping into that, and it's another place where we're funding our enemy. So we're paying for both sides of the war.
We're watching our economy atrophy because the cost of energy is going up and up and up while we're marching through this long hard slog.
As much optimism as I have for Iraq, as much caution as I lay out here for Afghanistan, I relate to that concern, Mr. Speaker, concern for Georgia. That was the last strategic stop on the trip, unless you count St. Paul, at the convention. And what I see in Georgia is this: I believe that----
Well, first, to take it to the Georgia situation, Mr. Speaker, I actually went in and Googled the exact quote so I could get right. Here's my recollection, and then I'll take it to the exact quote.
Back in the year I believe it was 1984 was the year, if I remember correctly, that Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick stepped down as Ambassador to the United Nations. She was appointed by Ronald Reagan. She served there and served honorably and served well, and she left a legacy, but she decided it was time for her to leave that post. And so as she stepped down as Ambassador to the United Nations, I remember seeing an article, tiny little article on page 3 or 4 of the newspaper that I was reading at the time where it quoted her as saying that was going on in the Cold War was the equivalent of playing chess and Monopoly on the same board. The contest between the super power of the United States, super power of the Soviet Union, playing chess and Monopoly on the same board. And the question was, would we bankrupt the Soviet Union economically before they checkmate us militarily. Now that statement, and she sadly passed away a couple of years ago, Jean Kirkpatrick. But that statement was made by my recollection, 24 years ago. And it has often framed the viewpoint with which I look at this super power contest that's going on. And it really framed it when I watched the Berlin Wall begin to come down on November 9 of 1989, and it framed it more when the Soviet Union imploded, and I'll pick the date December 31, 1991. We might call that the end of the Cold War, Mr. Speaker, but it was not to be.
Jean Kirkpatrick's exact quote, this is the way it shows up when you check it, as opposed to checking my 24-year-old memory, reads this. 1984. ``Russia is playing chess while we are playing Monopoly. The only question is whether they will checkmate us before we bankrupt them.'' That was the statement that Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick made in 1984. That's the statement I think illustrates what was going on then during the Cold War, and I think it's the statement that illustrates what's going on now in places like Georgia.
Putin has expressed that the most tragic thing that's happened in his lifetime was the collapse of the Soviet Union. And I would say, no, that marked the end of the Cold War. It was one of the best things that happened in my lifetime, perhaps the best thing that's happened globally in my lifetime. We see that differently.
He saw the Soviet Union as a power that perhaps needs to be reconstructed. And so when Putin came to power, we saw him consolidate his power and make his moves to negate legitimate elections, set himself so that he could be the power broker in Russia and really the true power in Russia.
We know that President Bush has said that when he looked in Putin's eyes he sees a friend. I understand the reasons for him saying that. But when John McCain said, when I look in his eyes I see KGB, and I think John McCain sees it clearly.
Putin is a KGB chess player, Mr. Speaker. And he saw what happened when the wall came down in 1989 and when the Soviet Union collapsed in the end of 1991. He saw that the Soviet Union had been bankrupted economically before they could checkmate the United States militarily. He saw that Jean Kirkpatrick's analysis was correct, and he saw it play out because we were better Monopoly players with our free market economy than the Soviet Union was chess players. We got there first because our economy was stronger. We upped the ante.
And by the way, we played chess on the board too. We had a military escalation. We built up our military, built up our troops. Ronald Reagan called for it. And he walked out of the nuclear missile negotiations in Reykjavik, Iceland he walked away from it, to the gasps of his own staff. And he went into Berlin and he said, Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall; and down it came. And down came the iron curtain, crashing with it. And the end of the Cold War on the last day of 1991 marked the end of the Soviet Union.
But Vladimir Putin has been putting this back together again. Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and had a great fall. But Humpty Dumpty is being put back together again by Vladimir Putin.
And here's where this--now he's learned. Now, Mr. Speaker, he's learned this; that you can play chess or you can play Monopoly, but if you're going to be a master at this global hegemony that he is playing today, if you're looking for dominance and if you're looking to be a super power, then you have to play Monopoly and chess on the same board, and you have to do it master fully.
So the Soviet Unions's economy wasn't that strong. It's never been that dynamic. It's been focused on central planning, Mr. Speaker. But what has come along for them as a windfall because they happen to sit on a massive amount of the world's energy and the world's oil, and with high oil prices that went up to $140 a barrel and perhaps more than that, Putin saw the cash come rolling in, so he didn't have to do a lot of smart things economically. All he had to do was keep producing oil, keep selling oil. And if he's doing that, then Russia is building up wealth and we're watching the West, the free world, we are energy consumers and we have energy deficits.
Europe, eastern and western Europe imports a lot of their own energy, natural gas and oil, and they import a lot of it from Russia. In fact, Europe imports 25 percent of their oil from Russia, and they import 40 percent of their natural gas from Russia.
So if Vladimir Putin can shut down the oil valve going into Europe, a huge oil pipeline coming into a free country means cheap energy. Energy is a component of every part of our economy. Everything that we buy and sell and trade, it takes energy to produce it, energy to deliver it, it takes energy to receive the delivery of it. It takes energy to heat our homes and our factories and air condition them and light them and get from place to place and manufacture and produce food, clothing, fiber, you name it. It all takes energy. And a nation that has an abundance of real cheap energy has a real big advantage over NATIONS that have only a little bit of energy. The high priced energy. And nations with costly energy cannot compete with other nations that have cheap energy, all other things being equal.
{time} 2330
And so Putin knows that sitting there looking at this global chessboard, this global Monopoly board, simultaneously sitting on top of this oil, that if he can decide whether oil goes east or west, he can determine whether going to the east, whether China's economy prospers, or maybe the same oil going to the West, whether Eastern or Western Europe's economy prospers.
He built a Trans-Siberian pipeline to go to China to take Russian oil to China. And in Kazakhstan, they built an oil pipeline to take some of the massive amounts of oil they have in Kazakhstan into China. But from the same locations, Kazakhstan and that region--and here I have in this chart, Mr. Speaker, I think I have got some of these countries, here is Kazakhstan--there's a significant amount of oil in this region here. Uzbekistan less oil, Turkmenistan even less. But this amount of oil in this region needs to come through.
There's a pipeline across the Caspian Sea, and then it comes from here into Georgia. This little country here, 4.6 million people, is Georgia. Tbilisi is where I was about a week ago, the capital of Georgia. This square right here is the square through which the pipelines across the Caspian Sea, the central Asian energy, oil and gas, if it's going to go to the west to get out through the Straits there at Istanbul and out into the Mediterranean and out into western Europe, it has to come through Georgia. Putin knows that.
He sits up here and in control of the Russian region looking at this oil that he has next door watching how it can be controlled, and it must come through Georgia. When I met with the Georgians, they said to me, ``We always knew he was going to do this. We always knew the Russians would come in and occupy our country,'' because this square, Georgia, is the square on the chessboard where he can control whether this oil in this region comes into Europe or whether it goes on to the east on over to China, just off the chart here.
A pipeline exists to go from Kazakhstan to China. There's a pipeline that exists from Russia that goes on into Europe, several of them actually, and a pipeline from Russia that goes down into China, Mr. Speaker.
This is where the valve is right here. That's where he can turn it on and he can turn it off, and he can decide if it goes east or if it goes west. If it goes to the east to China, their economy prospers; if it shuts off the oil going to the West, these economies in Europe atrophy.
If he can team up down here with Ahmadinejad and the Straits of Hormuz, and they can threaten to--or close the Straits of Hormuz, they can also decide whether oil goes to the West, the free world, the Western Hemisphere, or whether it is stuck up in here in the Middle Eastern region. That is a powerful position to be in.
If he continues to build this triumvirate--which is, I believe, Putin, Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chavez--Chavez's oil, he can shut that off as well. He can decide whether to sell it or not and who's going to get it.
So if you put those three guys at the same table, Putin, Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez, they would have control--presuming the Straits of Hormuz could be shut down by the Iranians or with Russian help--they would have control of more than 50 percent of the world's export oil supply. They could decide oil prices for the world: running them up, allowing them to go down and/or they could decide whether that oil actually goes to those economies. They could decide whether the free world's economy would atrophy or whether it would prosper.
If you're in a position like that and you've had the lesson that Putin has had, he lost the Monopoly game and he checkmated his chess game, because their economy collapsed. He's learned the lesson. Now he's playing Monopoly and he's playing chess, and he's sitting on this square in Georgia. He's sitting on a massive amount of oil. He has a diabolical plan, and we're Americans sitting here naively arguing that well, we don't want to develop any American energy.
Mr. Speaker, we must open up all American energy now. Every form. It's imperative. Whether we're going to be a superpower 10 or 20 years from now depends on the decisions we make in this Congress today. All energy all the time. Drill ANWR, drill the Outer Continental Shelf, develop the oil from the oil shale areas in the West, open up all of our natural gas. Let's do coal, let's do nuclear, let's do ethanol, let's do biodiesel, let's do wind, let's do solar, all forms of American energy.
Let's save our freedom, Mr. Speaker.
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