Political Quotes

“It is not just the Senator from Alaska crying in the dark. We have heard from Gale Norton, Secretary of Interior, saying it is in the national energy security interests of this country to reduce our dependence, and the best way to do it is basically to open up this area because we have the technology to do it. We can create American jobs. Also, we have heard from the Secretary of Energy, indicating the significance of what this can mean to reducing our dependence. We have had the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Anthony Principi, indicate that America's veterans who fought the wars--and I will reflect on one comment made by a former Member, Mark Hatfield, who was a pacifist and a good friend of ours. He said: I would vote for opening ANWR anyday rather than send another American man or woman overseas to fight a war in a foreign country over oil. That is what we are doing. We did that in the Persian Gulf conflict. We fought a war over oil to keep Saddam Hussein from going into Kuwait and moving on into Saudi Arabia. If we look at affairs in the Mideast now and consider the vulnerability associated with that area and our dependence on Saudi Arabia and the weakness of the royal family and Bin Laden's terrorist activities that would disrupt those oilfields--we are sitting on a situation very similar to what we saw maybe 30 years ago with the fall of the Shah in Iran. That situation could happen, dramatically, overnight. We could face a terrorist attack on the Straits of Hormuz.”