Marcy Kaptur: “as one Member, I feel a particular obligation at this time in our country's history to help provide information and…”

“as one Member, I feel a particular obligation at this time in our country's history to help provide information and insight to the American people, and indeed to the people around the world, who are looking to us for leadership and for an explanation of enduring freedom, the roots of the engagement in which we now find ourselves involved with a growing coalition around the world. From time to time I will be coming to the floor, as I did last week and now again, to talk about some of the events in past years that have created the context for the conflict in which we as a Nation have now been placed in dead center. Last week we talked a bit about the economics of the Middle East and America's over-reliance on imported oil and the fact that each of the economies of the larger region in which this conflict is occurring make money primarily from oil, with Saudi Arabia being the largest supplier of petroleum to the United States. In Toledo today, where I just flew from, gas prices are down to 99 cents to $1.01 a gallon. Do not tell me there is no relationship between the desire of the oil-producing countries to have America win this battle and therefore to manipulate a bit on the spot market and the price of petroleum. I am sure Americans in the short term think that is probably a good thing, but in the long run what it does is it connects us to a very unstable part of the world.”