Unusual GOP claim in ANWR oil drilling debate isn't true

[babylonsister]

Unusual GOP claim in ANWR oil drilling debate isn't true

By Erika Bolstad and Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — As Congress has debated energy policy over the past several days, an unusual argument keeps surfacing in support of drilling off the U.S. coastline and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban leases?

Yet no one can prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba's shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is "akin to urban legend," said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR.

"China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period," said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon's research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.

Even so, the Chinese-drilling-in-Cuba legend has gained momentum and has been swept up in Republican arguments to open up more U.S. territory to domestic production.

Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Wednesday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, picked up the refrain. Cheney quoted a column by George Will, who wrote last week that "drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are."

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/40776.html

[Lone_Star_Dem]

1. Why wouldn't they lie when it's worked so well for them in the past?

Well, that and the fact that the truth would bury them.

[Lex]

2. Fact-checking those lying mofos is a full-time job.

Damn, they lie as easy as they breathe.

[Recursion]

7. A lot easier...

...in Dick "Quintuple Bypass" Cheney's case.

[TrogL]

3. Typical authoritarian debating tactic - the big lie

[Lex]

4. K & R

:thumbsup:

[tanyev]

5. WMDs in Iraq, China drilling for oil near Cuba.

Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.

[gratuitous]

6. George Will said the Chinese were drilling off Cuba

And Dick Cheney quoted Will as saying that. As the chief priest famously asked, "What further need have we of witnesses?"

[corkhead]

9. that Dick is the one who probably told George that the Chinese are drilling off Cuba

[WhiteTara]

8. any time there is real evil stuff

the devil dick starts the lie. We must have excellent medical care in this country. If only I could afford it.