[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10962-10963]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           OLD MEN'S OIL WARS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to say in response to the 
earlier Special Order, if the tax rate programs of the Bush 
administration as enacted 2 years ago actually produced jobs, then why 
has America lost nearly 3 million more jobs since that last bill was 
passed when in fact all those dollars were not invested in America but 
taken abroad and continue to empty out the manufacturing and 
agricultural sector of this country?
  My speech this evening actually has to do with old men's oil wars. I 
thought it would be important to put on the record the following:
  Midland, Texas, home to our current President, was drilled dry of oil 
decades ago. The President's father, who had also been President, had 
launched Zapata Oil Company to find more oil when Texas ran dry in the 
Gulf of Mexico and beyond. And then to his son, when the father was 
President and through his father's friends, was born Harken Energy 
which the current President headed. Both these firms looked beyond 
Texas' border for black gold. Both these firms were headed by men who 
became President of the United States. Harken invested in Bahrain. The 
President had to divest himself of that before he became our current 
President; but his father, George 41, still remains a Carlyle Group oil 
and defense acolyte. Their world view is shaped by oil. Their life has 
been oil. The politics they pursue is directly entwined with oil.
  America consumes 25 percent of the world's petroleum, which is a 
diminishing world resource, yet we only have 2 percent of the world's 
people. So having drilled America dry for all intents and purposes, the 
fifties oilmen, I call them, began to rely more heavily on remaining 
global supplies. The motherlode lies in the Middle East. It is now on 
these supplies that America has become dangerously reliant. But rather 
than become energy self-sufficient here at home and create thousands of 
jobs in this country, America's older leaders have continued to drive 
America backwards into a dying petroleum age.
  But Henry Kissinger, age 79, is smiling. For longer than I have been 
an adult, his vision has been to tie Iraq's oil to Israel and points 
west. This trade route would secure U.S. vital interests in the Persian 
Gulf, in oil and Israel. And now America has assured that Iraq is 
policed by over 100,000 U.S. forces.
  Donald Rumsfeld, age 70, is smiling, too. He vainly bragged this 
month he is not known for his diplomacy. The world agreed. In his 1983 
visit to Saddam Hussein as Middle East special envoy for the Reagan 
administration, he was rebuffed when he proposed on behalf of Bechtel 
Corporation, whose chairman in those days was George Schulz, an oil 
pipeline that would extend from Iraq through Jordan to Aqaba. Hussein 
demurred, fearing the pipeline would run too close to Israel. Now 
Rumsfeld has sat in Abu Gharyb Palace in Baghdad as viceroy Jay Garner 
receives Bechtel and Halliburton, which Dick Cheney headed. That 
company now receives noncompetitively bid contracts from this 
government to secure the oil fields. Not far from northern Iraq lies 
Baku on the Caspian Sea, an oil bonanza that even Hitler coveted. U.S. 
forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan make future pipeline defense there 
so much easier.
  George Schulz, age 82, is smiling. No longer Chair of Bechtel, he 
still serves on its board. His Stanford protege Condoleezza Rice, for 
whom Chevron named an oil tanker, heads the National Security Council.
  Dick Cheney, 62, is smiling. Halliburton, of which he served as CEO 
before becoming Vice President, just landed a no-bid contract, $7 
billion from the government of the United States paid for by the 
taxpayers of the United States, to control the oil fields of Iraq. Vice 
President Cheney already is receiving $180,000 a year from Halliburton 
in deferred compensation. I want to know if Halliburton plans to make 
an oil deal with President Karzai in Afghanistan who just happens to 
have ties to Unocal Oil.
  Let America embrace the world of the future. Let us move beyond the 
hydrocarbon age. U.S. addiction to foreign petroleum has cost too many 
lives and the undemocratic oil kingdoms it

[[Page 10963]]

has perpetuated are an international disgrace and the primary reason 
for the rise of terrorism. This world view of the old oil barons should 
be no more. Let America become energy independent here at home. Let the 
oil kingdoms democratize. Let us invest that $100 billion-plus we spend 
to defend foreign oil routes in new technologies here at home: 
photovoltaics, fuel cells, biofuels, in high speed rail, hydrogen, 
renewables.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time for a new generation of Americans to take 
over the government of the United States.

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