[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 24684]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1015
                                HUNT OIL

  (Mr. WELCH of Vermont asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, while President Bush is asking 
Congress and the American people to give his failed policy in Iraq more 
time, even some of the President's closest allies don't believe the 
strategy will work.
  Last week, it was reported that Hunt Oil Company of Dallas, Texas had 
signed an oil exploration and production deal with the Kurdish Regional 
Government. That Hunt Oil Company is owned by Ray Hunt, major campaign 
supporter of President Bush and a member of the President's Foreign 
Intelligence Advisory Board. His decision to bypass the Iraqi 
Government in Baghdad and negotiate directly with the Kurds shows his 
lack of confidence that Iraq will develop a functioning government in 
the near future, and it undermined important efforts for the Iraqi oil 
sharing law, which collapsed last week.
  While President Bush is asking our Nation to sacrifice more of our 
brightest young soldiers and to spend hundreds of billions more in 
taxpayer dollars in pursuit of his Iraq strategy, one of the 
President's closest allies and advisers is betting that his strategies 
will continue to fail and, in fact, is looking to profit from it.

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