[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 119 (Thursday, September 21, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9904-S9906]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. SANTORUM:
  S. 3926. A bill to provide for the energy, economic, and national 
security of America, and for other purposes; to the Committee on 
Finance.
  Mr. SANTORUM. Mr. President, I gave a speech a couple weeks ago about 
the situation in the Middle East. I want to just do a reprise of that 
in brief to discuss the context of introducing today what we call the 
Empower America: Securing America's Energy Future Act.
  It comes from the basis that I believe we are facing in this 
country--a threat. We are, in my opinion, already in the very early 
stages of a world war. We can act now to make this threat--which I 
believe is a serious one but not yet fully actualized--less severe if 
we do certain things. One of them, as you will hear at the conclusion 
of my remarks, will be focusing on our energy situation here at home.
  One of the things I hear as a frustration of so many people I talk to 
in Pennsylvania is they look at the conflicts we are in in Afghanistan, 
Iraq, and other places in the world, and they don't see an end or a 
strategy of how we succeed. I suggest that part of that strategy is in 
creating energy security and developing a whole host of energy 
resources in this country so that we are not dependent upon--or as 
dependent upon foreign sources of energy and that we develop the new 
technologies that will allow America to continue to grow and keep 
prices down, and not just because I want to keep them down for 
consumers, which is great, but so we are not providing enormous riches 
for people to develop nuclear weapons and turn around and harm the 
United States and our allies.
  I believe the threat we face can be analyzed in a three-pronged 
approach. As I said on the floor last week or the week before, we face 
a threat, an enemy most people refer to as terrorists. I do not refer 
to them as terrorists; I refer to them as who they are: radical Islamic 
fascists. They have an ideology. These are not people who kill for the 
purpose of killing. They don't kill because of hatred. They kill 
because they have a belief, an objective.
  I know that for a year or two, the President, right after 9/11, 
referred to these terrorists as ``cowards.'' I notice that he doesn't 
do that anymore. I don't know of anybody who does that anymore. There 
is a reason: They are not cowards at all. These are people with great 
conviction. Some would even say that, in a demented way, they have 
great courage. But they are certainly not cowards. Calling them cowards 
gives the wrong impression to the American people that we are fighting 
a foe who is afraid of us or afraid of something. The problem is they 
seem to be afraid of very little when it comes to this world. They are 
willing to give up their lives. In fact, they want to give up their 
lives, and their objective, by the way, is to take as many other lives 
in the process. The object in this war is not territory; the object of 
this war is submission and death.
  So we are not dealing with a group of cowards. When we tell the 
American public we are dealing with cowards, they don't think this is a 
serious enemy that can defeat us. America would never lose to a group 
of cowards. But we can lose to a group of fanatical, zealous Islamists, 
who have a clear mission and a clear methodology by which to accomplish 
that mission.
  These are people who are very serious about what they want to do, 
whether it is radical Sunnis or radical Shias. They have an objective 
and a common enemy--as does the radical left, represented so comically, 
in my opinion, so ridiculously, by the speech of Hugo Chavez yesterday 
at the United Nations. What do Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad, President of Iran, 
and Hugo Chavez have in common? Nothing except their hatred of 
everything this country holds dear--freedom, democracy, and individual 
human rights. That is what they hate. I would suggest they have as much 
in common as Mussolini and Hitler and Tojo. They had very little in 
common ideologically. The Japanese believed in the superiority of the 
Japanese race and wanted to conquer and rule the world. Hitler didn't 
believe in that, but they formed an alliance because there was a common 
enemy.
  That is the case here. We are seeing it. It is, hopefully, a 
frightening sight put on display over the last couple of days at the 
United Nations, as this character of a President, this ridiculous 
diatribe Hugo Chavez presented to the U.N. received applause from many 
around the world--most leaders around the world. This is a serious 
threat. We can look at it and put it in political terms and say we went 
to war for the wrong reason and this or that wasn't true. But that is 
looking in the rearview mirror when we have a huge

[[Page S9905]]

threat. So they have an ideology and a common enemy.
  Secondly, they have a very effective methodology by which to conduct 
this war. It is one that doesn't require the kind of coordination and 
resources a traditional military campaign would require. They don't 
need to conquer land, to hold ground; they simply need to kill people 
every day. And they do--every day. And we cover it in America every 
day. American people watch it every day. And every day, the resolve of 
the American people is eroded. The resolve of the American people is 
eroded because--I will use the words of Osama bin Laden--because we 
Americans love life and the radical Islamists love death. That is how 
he said he would defeat us, because of America's and the West's love 
for life and respect for life, their attachment to this world, to the 
modern world, and the radical Islamist's attachment not to this world 
at all but to death, which, in their minds, means life--a better life 
with Allah. That is their objective, their methodology. Their 
methodology is to prey upon what they believe is the weakness of 
America, what they believe is the weakness of the West, which is the 
fact that we respect life, love life, we have human rights, and we 
believe in freedom. We believe it is our objective in this world to 
make it a better world. They don't care about that at all. So terror is 
a uniquely effective tactic that fits well into their culture of death 
and is particularly effective against our culture of life.
  In addition, they are trying to develop a new weapon; that is, a 
nuclear weapon. Iran has made it very clear and Chavez has announced 
his intention to develop a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction 
to use, in the words of Ahmadi-Nejad, ``to wipe Israel off the face of 
the earth'' and use that weaponry to get the rest of the Western World 
to submit to their radical, fanatical brand of Islam.

  This is their ultimate threat. This is the ultimate tactic of death 
and terror--to have a country that is committed publicly to using 
nuclear weapons not to defend itself, not to gain an earthly dominion 
over the world, but to cause mass chaos and destruction, in the case of 
Iran, for a religious purpose, because what they seek to accomplish is 
the return of the Hidden or 12th Imam. That is the 12th descendant of 
the Prophet Muhammad who, in the late 800s, went into hiding, according 
to the Shia religion, and is destined to return as the messiah of the 
Islamic faith at the end of times--the end of times meaning Armageddon. 
The interesting twist that the radical Shia project onto the world 
stage today is they believe it is their obligation to bring about the 
return of the Hidden or 12th Imam by causing a modern-day Armageddon. 
That is what they believe. You may not have heard this before, but let 
me assure you, that is what they believe. That is what they say. That 
is what they talk about all the time, that this is their objective. It 
is a messianic vision; they are being compelled by their faith.
  Some pass it off as a bunch of dictators who are just using religion 
to prop themselves up, to maintain control, or to try to dominate 
bigger areas of the world. Well, that would be bad enough. That would 
be dangerous enough. But I think we underestimate them when we say 
that. I think we underestimate President Ahmadi-Nejad and the ruling 
mullahs of Iran when we say that. I believe they are true believers, 
and I don't think we can afford the luxury of not believing that they 
believe this. I don't think we can dismiss them as another group of 
two-bit tyrants. These are two-bit tyrants who have billions upon 
billions of dollars and have allies like North Korea, who have access 
to nuclear technology. They have scientists from Russia who left Russia 
because there is nothing for them to do, and they are in Tehran today 
developing rocketry and the nuclear capability to project that power.
  Some would say I am beating the drums of war. No. I am accurately 
describing the situation at hand. Some disagree with me, and they are 
welcome to. Do you want to take that chance? Do you want to take the 
chance of having a nuclear weapon? They are clear about their intention 
of developing it. Do you want to take that chance? I don't.
  How did this happen? Radical Islam has been present in the Middle 
East for a long time. We have not heard much from them except when? In 
the last 30, 40 years. Why? The price of oil. It is oil, to begin with, 
and now the high price of oil. It gives them the resources to not only 
feed the people to keep them in power but to produce weapons to project 
power. The only reason, again, they have those resources is because of 
this one three-letter word--oil--which brings me back to the beginning 
of this discussion.
  If we are going to defeat radical fascist Islam, then we have to have 
a strategy to take resources away from them so they cannot project the 
power they can today. The only way to do that is by developing a more 
secure energy future for America and reducing our dependency on that 
oil, which would reduce the price of energy around the world. We need 
to encourage not only alternative energy production in this country; we 
have to do so around the world. We have to do so around the world by 
using alternative technology such as, for example, as I talk about in 
the bill, coal.
  One of the greatest new energy consumers in the world is China. They 
don't have a lot of oil, but they have a lot of coal. So it is an 
opportunity for us, with coal to gas and coal to liquid fuels 
technology, developing and commercializing that technology. And it is 
not just going to be coal to liquid fuels, but if you talk to folks in 
the business who are developing these plants right now--and one is 
being developed in Pennsylvania, which I have been involved with--they 
believe they can use all sorts of organic matter, such as waste 
products, to blend in with the coal to be able to produce liquid fuel.
  We need to have that technology in America, and they need to have 
that technology, and they are developing it, by the way, in China. We 
need to create from the vast amount of energy opportunities that we 
have in America and around the world new technologies so oil becomes 
less of a valuable commodity. This is one concrete way we can fight the 
war on radical Islamic fascism.
  I have put together a bill that talks about making--it does, if it 
would be passed--a huge investment, a huge investment in alternative 
technologies, a huge investment in coal, a huge investment in 
renewables to create a more secure energy future for America. We can no 
longer talk about how we are going to do this or that we will do it at 
some future date. We must act now, quickly. We need to provide support 
for the commercialization of this technology. We are not going to see 
energy produced at $20 a barrel, the equivalent of oil. We are not 
going to see it done at $30 or $40 a barrel. It may be more expensive. 
We have to make sure we provide proper support in loan guarantees, 
incentives, and tax credits to make this a profitable venture and a 
secure venture for people to invest in.
  This is not something that normally I have come to the Chamber and 
said that this is the Government's job. This is national security. This 
is not about subsidizing big business. This is about producing energy 
here for the security of our country. We either make the investment 
here or we pay a horrible price, human as well as financial, in the 
future.
  We need to think big, and we need to think now. That is why--when I 
spoke about the comments the Senator from Louisiana made before I came 
to the floor on opening up OCS--it is unconscionable for us to look at 
the national security situation we look at today, to look at the 
subsidies we are providing to our enemies and say: Oh, oh, we can't 
explore for oil in Alaska or OCS. Oh, we are worried about the 
environment.
  I am worried about the environment, too. In my State of Pennsylvania, 
in the western part of our State, we drill 3,000 gas wells a year--
3,000--on farms, in neighborhoods, outside neighborhoods, in people's 
backyards. At Oakmont Country Club, which is where the U.S. Open is 
going to be played, they are going to drill a gas well right next to 
Oakmont Country Club. That is pretty much an environmental area. Nobody 
wants to pollute Oakmont Country Club. We are going to drill a gas well 
there.
  Yet there are people on this floor who won't drill those wells in 
Alaska where nobody goes, where nobody is. As a result, our country is 
at risk. We feed an enemy huge resources to combat us

[[Page S9906]]

in their attempt to destroy us. It is unconscionable for us, a country 
that produces oil and gas cleaner and more efficiently than any other 
country in the world, to allow our enemy to hold us, not just hostage, 
but to gain resources to destroy us because we placate an interest 
group who funds, campaigns, and influences voters.
  I know many in this Chamber and many in this country do not believe 
we are at war or do not believe this war is serious. Time will tell. I 
think, unfortunately, time will tell us in a relatively short period of 
time how serious this is, and we will look back on this time as we 
stood year after year for the past 10 years twiddling our thumbs, not 
doing what we can do to provide a more secure energy future for this 
country, and we will look back in horror of the blinders, of the scales 
we had on our eyes that we could not see the threat before us.
  We must do something. The bill I am introducing today is a 
comprehensive package that does a lot to make America a safer country, 
first and foremost, from a national security perspective and, secondly, 
from an economic perspective.
  I know we only have a week left. The Senator from Louisiana talked 
about trying to get a bill done. Let's get something done. I plead for 
us to get something done to create some new sources of energy for this 
country, to put some downward pressure on world market prices. It is 
essential for us to do so.
  We need to make this commitment for the future of our country.
                                 ______