Floor Statements

This past Monday, I took to this floor for the eighth time to discuss global warming. My speech focused on the myths surrounding global warming and how our national news media has embarrassed itself with a l00-year documented legacy of coverage on what turned out to be trendy climate science theories.

Over the last century, the media has flip-flopped between global cooling and warming scares. At the turn of the 20th century, the media peddled an upcoming ice age--and they said the world was coming to an end. Then in the 1930s, the alarm was raised about disaster from global warming--and they said the world was coming to an end. Then in the 1970s an alarm for another ice age was raised--and they said the world was coming to an end. And now, today, we are back to fears of catastrophic global warming--and again they are saying the world is coming to an end.

Today I would like to share the fascinating events that have unfolded since my floor speech on Monday.

This morning, CNN ran a segment criticizing my speech on global warming and attempted to refute the scientific evidence I presented to counter climate fears.

First off, CNN reporter Miles O'Brien inaccurately claimed I was ``too busy'' to appear on his program this week to discuss my 50-minute floor speech on global warming. But they were told I simply was not available on Tuesday or Wednesday.

I did appear on another CNN program today--Thursday--which I hope everyone will watch. The segment airs tonight on CNN's Headline News at 7 p.m. and repeats at 9 p.m. and midnight eastern.

Second, CNN's O'Brien falsely claimed that I was all ``alone on Capitol Hill'' when it comes to questioning global warming.

Mr. O'Brien is obviously not aware that the U.S. Senate has overwhelmingly rejected Kyoto-style carbon caps when it voted down the McCain-Lieberman climate bill 60 to 28 last year--an even larger margin than its rejection in 2003.

Third, CNN's O'Brien, claimed that my speech earlier contained errors regarding climate science. O'Brien said my claim that the Antarctic was actually cooling and gaining ice was incorrect. But both the journals Science and Nature have published studies recently finding--on balance--Antarctica is both cooling and gaining ice.

CNN's O'Brien also criticized me for saying polar bears are thriving in the Arctic. But he ignored that the person I was quoting is intimately familiar with the health of polar bear populations. Let me repeat what biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic Government of Nunavut, a territory of Canada, said recently: ``Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present.''

CNN's O'Brien also ignores the fact that in the Arctic, temperatures were warmer in the 1930s than today.

O'Brien also claimed that the ``Hockey Stick'' temperature graph was supported by most climate scientists despite the fact that the National Academy of Sciences and many independent experts have made it clear that the Hockey Stick's claim that the 1990s was the hottest decade of the last 100 years was unsupportable.

So it seems my speech struck a nerve with the mainstream media. Their only response was to cherry-pick the science in a failed attempt to refute me.

It seems that it is business as usual for many of them. Sadly, it looks like my challenge to the media to be objective and balanced has fallen on deaf ears.

Despite the traditional media's failed attempt to dismiss the science I presented to counter global warming alarmism, the American people bypassed the tired old traditional media by watching CSPAN or clicking on the Drudge Report and reading the speech online.

From the flood of overwhelming positive feedback I received, I can tell you the American people responded enthusiastically to my message.

The central theme was not only one of thanks, but expressing frustration with the major media outlets because they knew in their guts that what they have been hearing in the news was false and misleading.

Here is a brief sampling:

Janet of Saugus, MA: ``Thank you Senator Inhofe. Finally someone with the guts to stand up and call it what it is--a sham. I think you have taken over Toby Keith's place as my favorite Oklahoman.''

Al of Clinton, CT: ``It's about time someone with a loud microphone spoke up on the global warming scam. You have courage--if only this message could get into the schools where kids are being brow-beaten with the fear message almost daily.''

Kevin of Jacksonville, FL, writes: ``I'm so glad that we have leaders like you who are willing to stand up against the onslaught of liberal media, Hollywood and the foolish elected officials on this topic. Please keep up the fight.''

Steven of Phoenix, AZ, writes: ``As a scientist, I am extremely pleased to see that there is at least one Member of Congress who recognizes the global warming hysteria for what it is. I am extremely impressed by the Senator's summary and wish he was running for President.''

Craig of Grand Rapids, MI, writes: ``As a meteorologist, I strongly agree with everything you said.''

My speech ignited an Internet firestorm; so much so, that my speech became the subject of a heated media controversy in New Zealand. Halfway across the globe, a top official from the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition challenging New Zealand's television station to balance what he termed ``alarmist doomcasting'' and criticized them for failing to report the views of scientists in their own country that I cited here in America.

As the controversy in New Zealand shows, global warming hysteria has captured more than just the American media.

I do have to give credit to one publication here in America, Congressional Quarterly, or CQ for short. On Tuesday, CQ's Toni Johnson took the issues I raised seriously and followed up with phone calls to scientist-turned global warming pop star James Hansen's office. CQ wanted to ask Hansen about his partisan financial ties to the leftwing Heinz Foundation, whose money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. But he was unavailable to respond to their questions, which is highly unusual for a man who finds his way into the media on an almost daily basis. Mr. Hansen is always available when he is peddling his increasingly dire predictions of climate doom.

The reaction to my speech keeps coming in: Just this morning, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper wrote an editorial calling my speech ``an unusual display of reason'' on the Senate floor.

I have been engaged in this debate for several years and believe there is a growing backlash of Americans rejecting what they see as climate scare tactics. And as a result, global warming alarmists are becoming increasingly desperate.

Perhaps that explains why the very next day after I spoke on the floor, ABC News's Bill Blakemore on ``Good Morning America'' prominently featured James Hansen touting future scary climate scenarios that could, might, possibly happen.

The segment used all the well-worn tactics from the alarmist guidebook--warning of heat waves, wildfires, droughts, melting glaciers, mass extinctions unless mankind put itself on a starvation energy diet and taxed emissions.

But that is no surprise--Blakemore was already on the record that there was no scientific debate about manmade catastrophic global warming.

You have to be a pretty poor investigator to believe that. Why would 60 prominent scientists this last spring have written Canadian Prime Minister Harper that ``if, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.''

I believe it is these kinds of stories which explain why the American public is growing increasingly skeptical of the hype. Despite the enormous 2006 media campaign to instill fear into the public, the number of people who believe that weather naturally changes is increasing.

A Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in August found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe that climate change is due to natural variability has increased over 50 percent in the last 5 years. And that, my fellow Senators, is why the Hollywood elitists and the rest of the liberal climate alarmists are starting to panic.

I hope my other colleagues will join me on the floor and start speaking out to debunk hysteria surrounding global warming. This issue is too important to our generation and future generations to allow distortions and media propaganda to derail the economic health of our Nation.

Mr. President, I would like to discuss the urgent need for this legislation. The Nation's wastewater treatment works--POTWs-- provide a vital service to our Nation. They ensure that municipal and industrial waste is cleaned to a level safe enough to be released back into the Nation's waterways.

After the tragic events of September 11, 2001, much more focus was placed on the Nation's water and wastewater facilities. POTWs not only release treated effluent into the Nation's waters but also consist of miles of pipes that run underground and are often large enough for someone to stand in. They are literally underground roadways.

In the 107th Congress, the House of Representatives passed by voice vote legislation--H.R. 5169--to provide POTWs with the resources they needed to conduct vulnerability assessments and secure their facilities. The bill, H.R. 866, was again introduced in the 108th Congress and passed by a vote of 413-2, with every Democrat who voted supporting the bill. I was pleased to introduce the companion to this legislation, S. 1039 with my colleague and then subcommittee Chairman, Mike Crapo. Last year, despite reporting the bill on a bipartisan vote of 13 to 6, members of the Senate minority objected to Senate consideration of S. 1039.

S. 2781 is a variation of S. 1039 with some important improvements, like the addition of site security plans and a more streamlined grantmaking progress. Senator Lincoln Chafee, chairman of the Fisheries, Wildlife and Water Subcommittee and Senator Lisa Murkowski, a distinguished member of the EPW Committee joined me in sponsoring S. 2781.

Our bill passed the EPW Committee on a voice vote. Unfortunately, once again, my colleague from Vermont has objected to consideration of wastewater security legislation by the full Senate.

My colleagues in the minority argue that my bill is insufficient because it does not impose on POTW's unfunded federal mandates and because it does not assume that local officials are ignoring the security of their facilities.

POTWs are arms of local government. They are largely owned and operated by the Nation's cities and towns. In 1995 Congress passed the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act in which we pledged not to impose costly regulatory burdens on our partners in local government. Just as it is our obligation as U.S. Senators to serve the public good, preserve the public trust and protect the citizenry, so it is the obligation of locally elected, appointed and employed officials.

Why do so many of my colleagues assume that we at the Federal level care more about the citizens of the Nation's towns than the locally elected officials do? Why do so many of them assume that they know more about how to evacuate citizens, secure local treatment plants and protect local citizens than the very people who live in those towns whose jobs it is to protect them?

S. 2781 would simply provide towns with resources to conduct vulnerability assessments and to secure their facilities. It provides funds to research the means to secure the collection systems that are made up of the miles of underground pipes. There are logistical and financial problems with trying to secure these systems that need to be addressed, particularly before imposing an unfunded Federal mandate on the Nation's towns. My bill would support the already ongoing activities of many of the national wastewater associations and the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, to develop assessment tools and industry security standards as well as conduct security trainings. The national water associations make up the Security Coordinating Council and regularly meet with the Environmental Protection Agency, the Agency charged with overseeing security at POTWs. The SCC and EPA are developing a sector security plan to, among other things, establish measures of security improvements.

My colleagues will argue that this is not enough. Local governments cannot be trusted to proceed on their own with a little Federal guidance because to date, they really have not done anything to secure their facilities. However, one need look no further than a March 2006 GAO report to see how much in fact they are doing. According to GAO, 74 percent of the largest 206 treatment works had completed or were in the process of completing a vulnerability assessment. Further, the majority of treatment works had made significant improvements to the physical security of their facility. They did so after careful review of their individual communities' needs. Most importantly, they have done so out of concern for their citizens, not in response to a Federal mandate.

My colleagues will also turn this discussion not into one about security but one about chlorine. Chlorine is by far the most effective disinfectant available and it is the least expensive. During these times of aging systems, growing Federal regulations and limited resources, cost is an important consideration. Washington, DC's treatment works, Blue Plains, spent $12.5 million to change technologies. San Jose, CA, spent $5 million to switch from gaseous chlorine to sodium hypochlorite. The city of Wilmington, DE, spent $160,000 to switch. However, there is much more to their story than that cost figure. Wilmington already had in place a sodium hypochlorite system that was serving as backup to its gaseous chlorine system. Further, Wilmington will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars more each year in operations and maintenance costs.

There are other considerations that must be factored in as well, such as downstream effects of a chlorine alternative. For example, the switch from chlorine to chloramines in Washington, DC's drinking water system was found to cause lead to leach out of service pipes and into the faucets of homes and businesses. Thus, decisions about chlorine must be fully evaluated and must be site-specific. Many POTWs are already undergoing these evaluations. After careful review of cost, technical feasibility and safety considerations, and without the presence of a Federal mandate on technology, 116 of the 206 largest POTWs do not use gaseous chlorine: According to the GAO report, another 20 plan to switch to a technology other than chlorine. To sum, nearly two-thirds of the Nation's largest POTWs are not using or will soon stop using chlorine. Those who continue to use chlorine have taken steps to ensure the chlorine is secure. My bill would provide POTWs who decide for themselves to switch treatment technologies with grant money to make the switch. However, my bill maintains trust in local officials who know best their water, the community and their security needs.

Let me be clear. This is an important security bill and I regret that for the second Congress in a row my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are obstructing it. Members of the minority have criticized the chemical security legislation for not covering these facilities. This legislation has basically passed the House of Representatives twice. The minority party in the Senate is blocking this important security bill.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation which will protect the Constitutionally-guaranteed exercise of free speech and exercise of religion, the Religious Freedom Act of 2006.

The American people may be surprised to learn a few things about their government's relationship with religion. They may be surprised to learn that the Federal Government of the United States of America, in the land of the free, does not allow religious leaders in houses of worship of all religious orders to say anything that might be construed as political in nature. The American people may further be surprised to learn that the federal agency tasked with enforcing the absolute ban on political speech for houses of worship is the Internal Revenue Service. It is the IRS that reviews the content of sermons and homilies and threatens to revoke those institutions' tax-exempt status if they dare to speak out on the political matters of the day. Many times, the only evidence on which the IRS will base their case is a third-party complaint and may move forward with threatening letters and the revocation of their tax-exempt status even if the prohibited activities--the exercise of their First Amendment Rights--were incidental or unintentional. Furthermore, the IRS admits that it applies a ``coded language'' policy to political speech. That is, discussion of a moral issue, if it happens to be a matter discussed in our public debates, is a political issue and is consequently banned by the IRS. The American people may even be more surprised to learn that the IRS is stepping up the enforcement of the ban on political speech in houses of worship and has recently emphasized the ``coded language'' policy.

A skeptic might assert that something as serious as an IRS-enforced ban on political discourse in a church must have a tenured legislative history buttressed by decades of sound First Amendment jurisprudence. The American people may be surprised to learn that the exact opposite is true. The First Amendment freedoms of houses of worship were stripped away in 1954 by the ``Johnson Amendment,'' a floor amendment named for then-Senator Lyndon Johnson, which placed an absolute ban on political speech by tax exempt organizations. Although the legislative record is relatively silent on this matter, the amendment and its subsequent ban were enacted without a hearing, any debate, or any public comment. History also indicates that Senator Johnson enacted this ban as a means of silencing some anticommunist nonprofits that were mobilizing against his political campaign. It now silences important comment on the issues of the day. Although the Supreme Court has affirmed and reaffirmed a ``profound national commitment'' to the proposition that debate on issues should be ``uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,'' the debate has been unconstitutionally restricted for nearly 50 years.

Whereas the legislative history of the Johnson Amendment is dubious where it even exists, the history of the relationship between politics and the pulpit is a history of a positive force for change in momentous times in our history when we as a nation have reaffirmed our commitment to an open and tolerant society. From slavery to segregation, religious leaders in America clearly have been effective forces for good, and they are also for more modern issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, and human trafficking. Perhaps no one could better articulate an important aspect of the history of politics and the pulpit than Martin Luther King, Jr.: ``The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool . . . [or] it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.'' The Johnson Amendment silences the ``conscience of the state.'' It's difficult to see how religious leaders can in any way continue to function as Martin Luther King Jr.'s ideal of the church as the ``conscience of the state,'' as the church has done so effectively during trying times for our state, when houses of worship are banned absolutely from discussing matters of the state.

The moral questions of the day are more often than not also fundamental social and political questions--questions that concern what we value as a nation. It is truly astounding that today, in America, religious leaders are banned from any comment on those moral issues. It is not partisan; this ban on speech makes no distinction between the ideological divide of left versus right in America: one church leader is investigated for publicly opposing abortion and another for discussing the morality of the Iraq War. Indeed, the American people may be surprised to learn this about their country.

The American people would allowing religious leaders, of all kinds, to speak their consciences on the issues facing our nation, and to do so without the threat of IRS punishment through the revocation of their tax-exempt status. This is why I am introducing legislation that will do just that. The Religious Freedom Act of 2006 simply states that religious leaders may discuss political matters, as a Constitutionally protected right, without the threat of an IRS investigation. Upon enactment, this bill will reaffirm the Supreme Court's holding that this country has a ``profound national commitment'' to a national debate that is ``uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.'' It will also reaffirm Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ideal of churches as the ``conscience of the state.'' I ask that the text of this statement be included in the Congressional Record by unanimous consent.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation which will protect the Constitutionally-guaranteed exercise of free speech and exercise of religion, the Religious Freedom Act of 2006.

The American people may be surprised to learn a few things about their government's relationship with religion. They may be surprised to learn that the Federal Government of the United States of America, in the land of the free, does not allow religious leaders in houses of worship of all religious orders to say anything that might be construed as political in nature. The American people may further be surprised to learn that the federal agency tasked with enforcing the absolute ban on political speech for houses of worship is the Internal Revenue Service. It is the IRS that reviews the content of sermons and homilies and threatens to revoke those institutions' tax-exempt status if they dare to speak out on the political matters of the day. Many times, the only evidence on which the IRS will base their case is a third-party complaint and may move forward with threatening letters and the revocation of their tax-exempt status even if the prohibited activities--the exercise of their First Amendment Rights--were incidental or unintentional. Furthermore, the IRS admits that it applies a ``coded language'' policy to political speech. That is, discussion of a moral issue, if it happens to be a matter discussed in our public debates, is a political issue and is consequently banned by the IRS. The American people may even be more surprised to learn that the IRS is stepping up the enforcement of the ban on political speech in houses of worship and has recently emphasized the ``coded language'' policy.

A skeptic might assert that something as serious as an IRS-enforced ban on political discourse in a church must have a tenured legislative history buttressed by decades of sound First Amendment jurisprudence. The American people may be surprised to learn that the exact opposite is true. The First Amendment freedoms of houses of worship were stripped away in 1954 by the ``Johnson Amendment,'' a floor amendment named for then-Senator Lyndon Johnson, which placed an absolute ban on political speech by tax exempt organizations. Although the legislative record is relatively silent on this matter, the amendment and its subsequent ban were enacted without a hearing, any debate, or any public comment. History also indicates that Senator Johnson enacted this ban as a means of silencing some anticommunist nonprofits that were mobilizing against his political campaign. It now silences important comment on the issues of the day. Although the Supreme Court has affirmed and reaffirmed a ``profound national commitment'' to the proposition that debate on issues should be ``uninhibited, robust, and wide-open,'' the debate has been unconstitutionally restricted for nearly 50 years.

Whereas the legislative history of the Johnson Amendment is dubious where it even exists, the history of the relationship between politics and the pulpit is a history of a positive force for change in momentous times in our history when we as a nation have reaffirmed our commitment to an open and tolerant society. From slavery to segregation, religious leaders in America clearly have been effective forces for good, and they are also for more modern issues such as abortion, assisted suicide, and human trafficking. Perhaps no one could better articulate an important aspect of the history of politics and the pulpit than Martin Luther King, Jr.: ``The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool . . . [or] it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.'' The Johnson Amendment silences the ``conscience of the state.'' It's difficult to see how religious leaders can in any way continue to function as Martin Luther King Jr.'s ideal of the church as the ``conscience of the state,'' as the church has done so effectively during trying times for our state, when houses of worship are banned absolutely from discussing matters of the state.

The moral questions of the day are more often than not also fundamental social and political questions--questions that concern what we value as a nation. It is truly astounding that today, in America, religious leaders are banned from any comment on those moral issues. It is not partisan; this ban on speech makes no distinction between the ideological divide of left versus right in America: one church leader is investigated for publicly opposing abortion and another for discussing the morality of the Iraq War. Indeed, the American people may be surprised to learn this about their country.

The American people would allowing religious leaders, of all kinds, to speak their consciences on the issues facing our nation, and to do so without the threat of IRS punishment through the revocation of their tax-exempt status. This is why I am introducing legislation that will do just that. The Religious Freedom Act of 2006 simply states that religious leaders may discuss political matters, as a Constitutionally protected right, without the threat of an IRS investigation. Upon enactment, this bill will reaffirm the Supreme Court's holding that this country has a ``profound national commitment'' to a national debate that is ``uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.'' It will also reaffirm Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ideal of churches as the ``conscience of the state.'' I ask that the text of this statement be included in the Congressional Record by unanimous consent.

I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am going to be requesting unanimous consent to be recognized for up to 1 hour.

After the Senator concludes, yes.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for 1 hour in morning business.

Mr. President, let me first say to my friend from Alabama that as to the last comment he made about whether at the last minute someone may come along and try to torpedo this, I suspect that might be the case. It is like when I had the amendment to make English our national language--and 89 percent of the American people were for it; 70 percent of the Hispanics were for it--and yet some of the liberals in this Chamber were catering to La Raza, an extremist group, in trying to torpedo what we are doing, and merely doing what 51 other countries have done, making English the official language.

I also want to say to my friend from Alabama, I have never been prouder to serve on the Armed Services Committee with any member more than I am to serve with him. It was you and seven other of the Republicans who tried from the very beginning to give the President everything he needed to interrogate these people, to prosecute these people, and to get as much human intelligence as possible to save American lives. I thank the Senator publicly for standing up as one of all nine of us.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Alabama. And I think we will prevail. As to what you are suggesting, and what you have been suggesting over the last few minutes, the vast majority of the American people are on our side. They know as to people who say: You cannot secure our border, fences will not work--they worked for a long time up in between North Korea and South Korea. I think they will work down here, too.

Mr. President, I rise to speak today about the most media-hyped environmental issue of all time. It is the word that gets everybody upset when you say it and the word or the phrase that many politicians are afraid to say, and that is ``global warming.'' I have spoken more about global warming than any other politician in Washington today. My speech will be a bit different from the previous seven floor speeches I have made on this subject, as I focus not only on the science, as I have many times before, but on the media's coverage of climate change.

Global warming--just the term--evokes many Members in this Chamber, the media, Hollywood elites, and our pop culture to nod their heads and fret about an impending climate disaster. As the Senator who has spent more time educating about the actual facts about global warming, I will address some of the recent media coverage of global warming and Hollywood's involvement in this issue. And, of course, I will also discuss former Vice President Al Gore's movie, ``An Inconvenient Truth.''

Let's keep in mind, I do chair the committee in the Senate called Environment and Public Works, the committee that has jurisdiction. I recall so well when I first became chairman of this committee, almost 4 years ago, I was actually a believer that because I had heard it so many times there must be something to this thing, until I started looking at the science. But I have talked about that before.

Since 1895, the media has alternated between global cooling and global

warming scares during four separate and sometimes overlapping time periods. From 1895 until the 1930s, the media peddled a coming ice age. From the late 1920s until the 1960s, they warned of global warming. From the 1950s until the 1970s, they warned us again of a coming ice age. This makes modern global warming the fourth estate's fourth attempt to promote opposing climate change fears during the last 100 years--4 times during the last 100 years--and every time just as hysterical as the time before.

Recently, advocates of alarmism have grown increasingly desperate to try to convince the public that global warming is the greatest moral issue of our generation. Just last week, the vice president of London's Royal Society sent a chilling letter to the media encouraging them to stifle the voices of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism.

During the past year, the American people have been served up an unprecedented parade of environmental alarmism by the media and entertainment industry, which links every possible weather event to global warming. The year 2006 saw many major organs of the media dismiss any pretense of balance and objectivity on climate change coverage and instead crossed squarely on into global warming advocacy.

First, I will summarize some of the recent developments in the controversy over whether humans have created a climate catastrophe. One of the key aspects the United Nations, environmental groups, and the media have promoted as the ``smoking gun'' of proof of catastrophic global warming is the so-called hockey stick temperature graph by climate scientist Michael Mann from Virginia and some of his liberal colleagues.

This graph purported to show that temperatures in the northern hemisphere remained relatively stable over 900 years, and then spiked upward as we moved into the 20th century. And that spike would be the ``blade'' on the hockey stick. They say this was due to human activity. Mann, who also copublishes a global warming propaganda blog--reportedly set up with the help of an environmental group--had his hockey stick come under severe scrutiny.

The hockey stick was completely and thoroughly broken once and for all in 2006. Several years ago, two Canadian researchers tore apart the statistical foundation for the hockey stick. In 2006, both the National Academy of Sciences and an independent researcher further refuted the foundation of the hockey stick.

The National Academy of Sciences report reaffirmed the existence of the Medieval Warming Period. That was from about 900 AD to 1300 AD, and the Little Ice Age from about 1500 to approximately 1850. Both of these periods occurred long before the invention of the SUV or human industrial activity and it could not have possibly impacted the Earth's climate. In fact, scientists believe the Earth was warmer than today during the Medieval Warming Period, when the Vikings grew crops in Greenland. We all remember reading about that. That was a period of time when the Vikings, all of a sudden, because it became warmer back around 1000 AD, started inhabiting Greenland. They flourished up there, until the Little Ice Age came along in 1500, and most of them died at that time. Now the climate alarmists have attempted to erase the inconvenient Medieval Warming Period from the Earth's climate history for at least a decade.

David Demming, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma's College of Geosciences, can testify firsthand about this effort. Dr. Demming was welcomed into the close-knit group of global warming believers after he published a paper in 1995 that noted some warming in the 20th century. He says he was subsequently contacted by a prominent global warming alarmist and told point blank:

We have to get rid of the medieval warming period.

When the ``hockey stick'' first appeared in 1998, it did exactly that. This guy, Michael Mann, turned around and ignored the fact that we had this medieval warming period and then went into the little ice age, which changed it.

The media has missed big pieces of the puzzle when it comes to the Earth's temperatures and mankind's carbon dioxide, CO2, emissions. It is very simplistic to feign horror and say the 1-degree Fahrenheit temperature increase in the 20th century means we are all doomed. First of all, the 1-degree Fahrenheit rise coincided with the greatest advancement in living standards, life expectancy, food production, and human health in the history of our planet. So it is hard to argue that the global warming we experienced in the 20th century was somehow negative or part of a catastrophic trend.

Here on the chart you can see during this period of time, when things were flourishing and they went down, it was far more prosperous during the medieval part.

Second, what the climate alarmists and their advocates in the media have continued to ignore is the fact that the little ice age, which resulted in harsh winters which froze New York Harbor and caused untold deaths, ended about 1850. So trying to prove manmade global warming by comparing the well-known fact that today's temperatures are warmer than during the little ice age is like comparing summer to winter to show a catastrophic temperature trend.

In addition, something that the media almost never addresses are the holes in the theory that CO2 has been the driving force in global warming.

The alarmists fail to adequately explain why temperatures began warming at the end of the little ice age in about 1850, long before manmade CO2 emissions could have impacted the climate. Then in about 1940, just as manmade CO2 emissions rose sharply-- about 80 percent, with the largest increase in the middle of the 1940s--the temperatures began a decline, and that lasted until about the 1970s, prompting the media and many scientists to fear a coming ice age.

I am saying that this increase in CO2 emissions did not precipitate a warming period; it precipitated a cooling period.

If CO2 is the driving force of the global climate change, why do so many in the media ignore the many skeptical scientists who cite these rather obvious inconvenient truths?

My skeptical views on manmade catastrophic global warming have only strengthened as new science comes in. There have been recent findings in peer-reviewed literature over the past few years showing that the Antarctic is getting colder, and ice is growing. And a new study in Geophysical Research Letters found that the Sun was responsible for 50 percent of the 20th century warming. Now, that is shocking: the Sun is responsible for warmth.

Recently, many scientists, including a leading member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, predicted long-term global cooling may be on the horizon due to a projected decrease in the Sun's output. It is going to start getting cooler again.

A letter that was sent to the Canadian Prime Minister on April 6 of this year by 60 prominent scientists who question the basis for climate alarmism, clearly explains the current state of the scientific knowledge on global warming. Keep in mind, these 60 scientists were the ones who recommended back in the 1990s that Canada sign onto the Kyoto Treaty. They wrote this to Prime Minister Harper:

If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about

climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we

would have concluded that it was not necessary.

The letter also noted:

``Climate change is real'' is a meaningless phase used

repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate

catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of

these fears is justified. Global climate changes occur all

the time due to natural causes, and the human impact still

remains impossible to distinguish from the natural ``noise.''

These are scientists talking. People realize that these cycles go on. God is still up there, and we have the cycles every 1,500 years or so. Every time this happens, alarmists get this out and say we are all going to die.

One of the ways alarmists have pounded the mantra of a ``consensus'' on global warming into our pop culture is through the use of computer models that project future calamity. But the science is not there to place so much faith in scary computer model scenarios which extrapolate the current and projected buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and conclude that the planet faces certain doom.

Dr. Vincent Gray, a research scientist and a 2001 reviewer with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel--they started like most bad things do, with the U.N. Back in the 1990s they came out with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Dr. Gray said:

The effects of aerosols, and their uncertainties, are such

as to nullify completely the reliability of any of the

climate models.

Earlier this year, the director of the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, AK, testified to Congress that highly publicized climate models showing a disappearing Arctic were nothing more than ``science fiction.''

That is not Senator Inhofe talking. That is the director of the International Arctic Research Center in Fairbanks, who ought to know a little bit about the Arctic.

In fact, after years of hearing about the computer-generated scary scenarios about the future of our planet, I now believe that the greatest climate threat we face may be coming from alarmist computer models.

This threat is originating from the software installed on hard drives of the publicity-seeking climate modelers. It is long past time for us to separate climate change fact from hysteria.

One final point--and there are many. We have made seven talks, averaging about an hour apiece, about the flawed science. One final point about the science: I am approached by many in the media and others who ask: What if you are wrong, Inhofe, to doubt the dire global warming predictions? Will you be able to live with yourself for opposing the Kyoto Protocol?

My answer is blunt. The history of the modern environmental movement is chock full of predictions of doom that never came true. We have all heard the dire predictions about the threat of overpopulation, resource scarcity, mass starvation, and the projected death of our oceans. None of them came true. Yet it never stopped the doomsayers from predicting a dire environmental future.

The more the eco-doomsayers' predictions fail, the more the eco- doomsayers predict. These failed predictions are just one reason I respect the serious scientists out there today debunking the latest scare mongering on climate change: scientists such as MIT's Richard Lindzen; former Colorado State climatologist, Roger Pielke, Sr.; the University of Alabama's Roy Spencer and John Christy; Virginia State climatologist Patrick Michaels; Colorado State University's William Gray; atmospheric physicist, S. Fred Singer; Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Oregon State climatologist George Taylor; astrophysicist Sallie Baliunas, to name a few.

You never hear about these well-established scientists.

More important, it is the global warming alarmists who should ask the question: What if they are correct about manmade catastrophic global warming? They have come up with no meaningful solution to their supposed climate crisis in the two decades they have been hyping this issue.

If the alarmists truly believe that manmade greenhouse gas emissions are dooming the planet, then they must face up to the fact that symbolism does not solve a supposed climate crisis.

It is long past time for them to separate symbolism from fact. Let me show you this. This is a chart I used on the floor before. A very prominent Senator from the Northeast who bought into this hoax called global warming--after he researched this chart, found it was true. This chart says in the event that everything is true that they have said about global warming, and if all of the countries--I am talking about the developing nations, as well as the developed nations--adhere to or achieve Kyoto goals, this is the difference it would make by 2050. It is not even measurable.

A final point on the science of climate change. Again, I am approached by many in the media and others who ask what if you are wrong? I think the answer is that they have been wrong all along.

The alarmists freely concede that the Kyoto Protocol, even if fully ratified and complied with, would not have any meaningful impact on global temperatures. Keep in mind that Kyoto is not even close to being complied with by many of the ratifying nations. Fifteen European nations ratified the Kyoto Protocol, and 13 have not made their goals. So they are not going to be able to do it.

Many of the nations that ratified Kyoto are now realizing what I have been saying all along: The Kyoto Protocol is a lot of economic pain for no climate gain.

Legislation that has been proposed in this Chamber would have even less of a temperature effect than Kyoto's undetectable impact. And more recently, global warming alarmists and the media have been praising California for taking action to limit CO2. But here again this costly, feel-good, California measure, which is actually far less severe than Kyoto, will have no impact on the climate, only the economy.

Symbolism does not solve a climate crisis.

In addition, we now have many environmentalists and Hollywood celebrities, such as Laurie David, who have been advocating measures like changing standard light bulbs in your home to fluorescents to help avert global warming. Changing to more energy-efficient light bulbs is fine, but to somehow imply that we can avert a climate disaster by these actions is absurd.

Once again, symbolism does not solve a climate crisis. But this symbolism may be hiding a dark side. While greenhouse gas limiting proposals may cost the industrialized West trillions of dollars, it is the effect on the developing world's poor that is being lost in this debate.

The Kyoto Protocol's post-2012 agenda, which mandates that the developing world be subjected to restrictions on greenhouse gases, could have the potential to severely restrict development in regions such as Africa, Asia, and South America, where some of the Earth's most energy-deprived people currently reside.

Expanding basic necessities like running water and electricity in the developing world are seen by many in the Green Movement as a threat to the planet's health that must be avoided.

Energy poverty equals a life of back-breaking poverty and premature death.

If we allow scientifically unfounded fears of global warming to influence policymakers to restrict future energy production and the creation of basic infrastructure in the developing world, billions of people will continue to suffer.

Last week, my committee heard testimony from Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg, who was once a committed leftwing environmentalist until he realized that so much of what that the movement preached was based on bad science. Lomborg wrote a book called ``The Skeptical Environmentalist'' and has organized some of the world's top Nobel laureates to form the 2004 ``Copenhagen Consensus,'' which ranked the world's most pressing problems.

Guess what. They place global warming at the bottom of the list in terms of our planet's priorities. The ``Copenhagen Consensus'' found that the most important priorities for our planet include combating disease, stopping malaria, securing clean water, and building infrastructure to help lift the developing nations out of poverty.

I have made a lot of trips to Africa. A lot of people know I have had a mission there for well over 10 years now. Once you see the devastating poverty--we think we have poverty in this country. Well, if you saw their poverty and the kids running through the junk piles and rats biting at the heels of their bloody feet, you would realize that these fears about global warming are severely misguided.

I firmly believe that when the history of our era is written, future generations will look back with puzzlement and wonder why we spent so much time and effort on global warming fears and pointless solutions, such as the Kyoto protocol.

One of your favorite Frenchmen, Mr. President, Jacques Chirac, the French President, provided the key clue as to why so many in the international community still revere the Kyoto Protocol, when in 2000 he said Kyoto represents not climate change but represents ``the first component of an authentic global governance.''

Furthermore, if your goal is to limit CO2 emissions, the only effective way to go about it is the use of cleaner, more effective technologies that will meet the energy demands of this century and beyond.

The Bush administration and my Environment and Public Works Committee--the committee I chair--have been engaged in these efforts as we work to expand nuclear power and promote the Asian-Pacific Partnership. This partnership stresses the sharing of new technology among member nations, including three of the world's top 10 emitters-- China, India, and Korea--all of whom are exempt from Kyoto.

Keep in mind, even if all these charts were true and everyone is going to comply with this, we passed in this Chamber just a very short while ago, by a unanimous vote, 96 to 0, legislation that said if you come back with any kind of treaty where we are going to treat developing nations differently from developed nations, we are going to oppose it. So it is unanimously opposed.

Many in the media, as I noted earlier, have taken it upon themselves to drop all pretense of balance on global warming and have instead become committed advocates for the issue.

Here is a quote from Newsweek. You have to listen to this, Mr. President. This is very important. I am going to quiz you later. This is a quote from Newsweek magazine:

There are numerous signs that the Earth's weather patterns

have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may

portend a drastic decline in food production--with serious

political implications for just about every nation on Earth.

A headline in the New York Times reads:

Climate Changes Endanger World's Food Output.

Here is another quote from Time magazine:

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather

pattern of the past several years, a growing number of

scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly

contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part

of a global climate upheaval.

All this sounds very ominous. That is until one realizes that the three quotes I just read are from articles in 1975 editions of Newsweek magazine and the New York Times, and Time magazine in 1974. They were not referring to global warming; they were warning of a coming ice age. The same people who were hysterical back then are using the same words to describe what is happening today.

Let me repeat: All three of those quotes were published in the 1970s warning of a coming ice age. An ice age is coming; we are all going to die.

In addition to global cooling fears, Time magazine has also reported on global warming. Here is an example:

[Those] who claim that winters were harder when they were

boys are quite right . . . weathermen have no doubt that the

world at least for the time being is growing warmer.

Before one thinks that this is just another example of the media promoting former Vice President Gore's movie, one needs to know that the quote I just read is from Time magazine and not a recent quote. It is from January 22, 1939. Yes, in 1939--9 years before former Vice President Gore was born and over three decades before Time magazine began hyping a coming ice age, and almost five decades before they returned to hyping global warming.

Time magazine, in 1951, pointed to receding permafrost in Russia as proof that the planet was warming.

In 1952, the New York Times noted that the ``trump card'' of global warming ``has been the melting glaciers.''

But the media could not decide between warming or cooling scares. There are many more examples of the media and scientists flip-flopping between warming and cooling scares. They don't really care. They just want to scare you. They want to make sure you are scared, and then they are satisfied.

Here is a quote from the New York Times on fears of an approaching ice age:

Geologists Think the World May be Frozen Up Again.

That sentence appeared over 100 years ago in the February 24, 1895, edition of the New York Times. Let me repeat, 1895, not 1995.

A front-page article in the October 7, 1912, New York Times, just a few months after the Titanic struck an iceberg and sank, declared that a prominent professor ``Warns Us of an Encroaching Ice Age.''

The very same day in 1912, the Los Angeles Times ran an article warning that the ``human race will have to fight for its existence against the cold.''

An August 10, 1923, Washington Post article declared:

Ice Age Coming Here.

By the 1930s, the media took a break from reporting on the coming ice age and instead switched gears to promoting global warming. This is the 1930s:

America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line

Records a 25-year Rise.

That was in an article in the New York Times on March 27, 1933.

The media of yesteryear was also not above injecting large amounts of fear and alarmism into their climate articles.

An August 9, 1923, front-page article in the Chicago Tribune declared:

Scientist Says Arctic Ice Will Wipe Out Canada.

The article quoted a Yale University professor who predicted that large parts of Europe and Asia would be ``wiped out'' and Switzerland would be ``entirely obliterated.''

A December 29, 1974, New York Times article on global cooling reported that climatologists believed ``the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade.''

The article also warned that unless Government officials reacted to the coming catastrophe ``mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence'' would result. In 1975, the New York Times reported that ``a major cooling [was] widely considered to be inevitable.''

These past predictions of doom have a familiar ring, don't they? They sound strikingly similar to our modern media promotion of the former Vice President's brand of climate alarmism, an alarmism he believes will put him back in the White House.

After more than a century of alternating between global cooling and warming, one would think that this media history would serve a cautionary tale for today's voices in the media and scientific community who are promoting yet another round of eco-doom.

Much of the 100-year media history on climate change that I have documented today can be found in a publication entitled ``Fire and Ice'' from the Business and Media Institute.

Which raises the question: How has this embarrassing 100-year documented legacy of coverage on what turned out to be trendy climate science theories made the media more skeptical of today's sensational promoters of global warming? You be the judge.

On February 19 of this year, CBS News's ``60 Minutes'' produced a segment on the North Pole. The segment was a completely one-sided report alleging rapid and unprecedented melting at the polar cap. It even featured correspondent Scott Pelley claiming that the ice in Greenland was melting so fast that he barely got off an iceberg before it collapsed into the water.

Mr. President, ``60 Minutes'' failed to inform its viewers that a 2005 study by a scientist named Ola Johannessen and his colleagues showed that the interior of Greenland is gaining ice mass and that, according to scientists, the Arctic was warmer in the 1930s than it is today. If you see this film, they will say it is the warmest it has ever been. It is just not true.

By the way, around the edges of ice caps there is a phenomenon known as calving. So when it becomes thicker in the middle, it melts a little on the outside, but the overall volume density increases.

On March 19 of this year, ``60 Minutes'' profiled NASA scientists and alarmist James Hansen who was once again making allegations of being censored by the Bush administration. In this segment, objectivity and balance were again tossed aside in favor of a one-sided glowing profile of Hansen.

The ``60 Minutes'' segment made no mention of Hansen's partisan ties to former Democratic Vice President Al Gore or Hansen's receiving of a grant of a quarter of a million dollars from the leftwing Heinz Foundation run by Teresa Heinz Kerry. I guess she is Teresa Heinz now. There was also no mention of Hansen's subsequent endorsement of her husband John Kerry for the presidency in 2004. He is a political activist. This was never mentioned in the ``60 Minutes'' segment.

Many in the media dwell on any industry support given to so-called climate skeptics, but the same media completely failed to note Hansen's huge grant from the leftwing Heinz Foundation.

The foundation's money originated from the Heinz family ketchup fortune. So it appears that the media makes a distinction between oil money and ketchup money.

Mr. President, ``60 Minutes'' also did not inform viewers that Hansen appeared to concede in a 2003 issue of ``Natural Science'' that the use of ``extreme scenarios'' to dramatize climate change ``may have been appropriate one time'' to drive the public's attention on the issue. In other words, it is all right to lie in order to drive the public's attention to an issue that you want them to have and to that opinion.

Why would ``60 Minutes'' ignore the basic tenets of journalism that call for objectivity and balance in sourcing and do such one-sided segments?

The answer was provided by correspondent Scott Pelley. Pelley told the CBS News Web site that he justified excluding scientists skeptical of global warming alarmism from his segments because he considers skeptics to be the equivalent of ``Holocaust deniers.''

This year also saw a New York Times reporter write a children's book entitled ``The North Pole Was Here.'' The author of the book, New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, wrote that it may someday be ``easier to sail to than stand on'' the North Pole in summer. So here we have a very prominent environmental reporter for the New York Times who is promoting the aspect of global warming alarmism in a book aimed at our kids.

In April of this year, Time magazine devoted an issue to global warming alarmism entitled ``Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid.'' This is the same Time magazine which first warned of a coming ice age in the 1920s before it switched to warning about global warming in the 1930s, before it switched again to promoting the 1970s coming ice age scare. The April 3, 2006, global warming special report of Time magazine was a prime example of the media's shortcomings, as the magazine cited partisan leftwing environmental groups with a vested financial interest in hyping alarmism.

Headlines blared: ``More and More Land is Being Devastated by Drought.''

``Earth is at the Tipping Point.''

``The Climate is Crashing.''

Time magazine did not make the slightest attempt to balance its reporting with any views of scientists skeptical of this alleged climate disaster.

I don't have journalism training, but I daresay calling a bunch of environmental groups with an obvious fundraising agenda and asking them to make wild speculations on how bad global warming might become is nothing more than advocacy for leftwing causes. It is a violation of basic journalistic standards.

To his credit, New York Times reporter Revkin saw fit to criticize Time magazine for its embarrassing coverage of climate science.

So in the end, Time's cover story title of ``Be Worried, Be Very Worried'' appears to have been apt. The American people should be worried--they should be very worried--of such shoddy journalism.

As to Al Gore's inconvenient truth, in May, our Nation was exposed to perhaps one of the slickest science propaganda films of all time. Former Vice President Gore's ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' in addition to having the backing of Paramount Pictures to market this film, had the full backing of the media, and leading the cheerleading charge was none other than the Associated Press, and of course they had the elitists, from Hollywood.

On June 27, the Associated Press ran an article by Seth Borenstein that boldly declared:

``Scientists give two thumbs up to Gore's movie.''

The article quoted only five scientists--two thumbs up, five scientists. They were praising Gore's science, despite the Associated Press having contacted over 100 scientists.

The fact that over 80 percent of the scientists contacted by the AP had not even seen the movie or that many scientists have harshly criticized the science presented by Gore did not dissuade the news outlet one bit from its mission to promote Gore's brand of climate alarmism.

Let's keep in mind, they said it is thumbs up, 100 percent of the scientists, and it was only 5 out of the 100.

I am almost at a loss as to how to begin to address the series of errors, misleading science, and unfounded speculation that appear in the former Vice President's film and in his book of the same name.

Here is what Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist from MIT, has written about ``An Inconvenient Truth.'' He is talking about Al Gore and his movie. This is a scientist, Richard Lindzen, a meteorologist from MIT:

A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to

ignore the fact that the Earth and its climate are dynamic;

they are always changing even without any external forcing.

To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do

so in order to exploit that fear is much worse.

That is exactly what Al Gore is doing.

What follows is a brief summary of the science the former Vice President promotes in either a wrong or misleading way:

He promoted the now debunked ``hockey stick'' temperature chart in an attempt to prove man's overwhelming impact on the climate.

He attempted to minimize the significance of the medieval warm period and the little ice age.

He insists on a link between increased hurricane activity and global warming that most scientists believe does not exist.

He asserted that today's Arctic is experiencing unprecedented warmth while ignoring that temperatures in the 1930s were as warm or warmer than they are today.

He claimed the Antarctic is warming and losing ice but failed to note that is only true of a small region and the vast bulk has been cooling and gaining ice. This is the Antarctic.

He hyped unfounded fears that Greenland's ice is in danger of disappearing.

He erroneously claimed that the icecap on Mount Kilimanjaro is disappearing because of global warming, even while the region cools and researchers blame ice loss on local land-use practices. What they are talking about here is they had deforested the area down below. That was the reason. It had nothing to do with CO2, obviously.

He made assertions of massive future sea level rise that is way outside of any supposed scientific consensus and is not supported in even the most alarmist literature.

He incorrectly implied that a Peruvian glacier's retreat is due to global warming, while ignoring the fact that the region has been cooling since the 1930s and other glaciers in South America are advancing.

He blamed global warming for water loss in Africa's Lake Chad despite NASA scientists concluding that local population and grazing factors are the more likely culprits.

He inaccurately claimed polar bears are drowning in significant numbers due to melting ice when in fact they are thriving.

He completely failed to inform viewers that the 48 scientists who accused President Bush of distorting science were part of a political advocacy group set up to support the Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.

That was just a brief sampling of some of the errors presented in ``An Inconvenient Truth.'' Imagine how long the list would have been if I had actually seen the movie. There wouldn't be enough time to deliver the speech today.

So along comes Tom Brokaw. Following the promotion of ``An Inconvenient Truth,'' the press did not miss a beat in their role as advocates for global warming fears.

ABC News put forth its best effort to secure its standing as an advocate for climate alarmism when the network put out a call for people to submit their anecdotal global warming horror stories in June for use in a future news segment.

In July, the Discovery Channel presented a documentary on global warming narrated by former NBC anchor Tom Brokaw. The program presented only those views of scientists promoting the idea that humans are destroying the Earth's climate. You don't have to take my word for the program's overwhelming bias. A Bloomberg TV news review noted:

``You'll find more dissent at a North Korean political rally than in this program'' because of its lack of scientific objectivity.

Brokaw also presented climate alarmist James Hansen to viewers as unbiased, failing to note his quarter-million-dollar grant from the partisan Heinz Foundation or his endorsement of Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry in 2004 and his role promoting former Vice President Gore's Hollywood movie. Brokaw, however, did find time to impugn the motives of scientists skeptical of climate alarmism when he featured paid environmental partisan Michael Oppenhimer, of the group Environmental Defense, accusing skeptics of being bought out by fossil fuel interests.

The fact remains that political campaign funding by environmental groups to promote climate and environmental alarmism dwarfs spending by the fossil fuel industry by 3 to 1. Environmental special interests, through their 527s, spent over $19 million compared to $7 million spent by the oil and gas industry through political action committees in the 2004 election cycle.

I am reminded of a question the media often asks me about how much I have received in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. My unapologetic answer is always: Not enough, especially when you consider the millions partisan environmental groups pour into political campaigns.

Continuing with our media analysis: On July 24, 2006, the Los Angeles Times featured an op-ed by Naomi Oreskes, a social scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of a 2004 Science magazine study. Oreskes insisted that a review of 928 scientific papers showed there was 100 percent consensus that global warming was not caused by natural climate variations. This study was also featured in former Vice President Al Gore's ``An Inconvenient Truth.''

However, the analysis in Science magazine excluded nearly 11,000 studies or more than 90 percent of the papers dealing with global warming, according to a critique by British social scientist Benny Peiser. Peiser also pointed out that less than 2 percent of the climate studies in the survey actually endorsed the so-called ``consensus view'' that human activity is driving global warming and some of the studies actually opposed that view. Oreskes called 2 percent, 100 percent. But despite this manufactured ``consensus,'' the media continued to ignore any attempt to question the orthodoxy of climate alarmism.

As the dog days of August rolled in, the American people were once again hit with more hot hype regarding global warming, this time from the New York Times op-ed pages. A columnist penned an August 3 column filled with so many inaccuracies it is a wonder the editor of the Times saw fit to publish it. For instance, Bob Herbert's column made dubious claims about polar bears, the snows of Kilimanjaro, and he attempted to link this past summer's heat wave in the United States to global warming--something even the alarmist James Hansen does not support.

Finally, a September 15, 2006, Reuters News article claimed that polar bears in the Arctic are threatened with extinction by global warming. The article by correspondent Alister Doyle quoted a visitor to the Arctic--now listen to this, Mr. President--a visitor to the Arctic who claimed he saw two distressed polar bears. According to the Reuters article, the man noted that one of the polar bears looked to be dead and the other one looked to be exhausted. The article did not state the bears were actually dead or exhausted, they merely looked that way. Have we really arrived at the point where major news outlets in the United States are reduced to analyzing whether polar bears in the Arctic appear restful? How reporting such as this gets approved for publication by the editors at Reuters, I don't know. What happened to covering the hard science in this issue?

What was missing from the Reuters News article was the fact that according to biologists who study animals, polar bears are doing quite well. Biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government of Nunavut, which is a territory of Canada, refuted these claims in May when he noted that--this is a quote. Keep in mind I am quoting the biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor from the Arctic government. He said:

Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are

stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct,

or even appear to be affected at present.

Sadly, it appears that reporting anecdotes and hearsay is now fast replacing the tenets of journalism for many media outlets.

It is an inconvenient truth that so far 2006 has been a year in which most major segments of the media have given up on any quest for journalistic balance, fairness, and objectivity when it comes to climate change. The global warming alarmists and their friends in the media have attempted to smear scientists who dare to question the premise of manmade catastrophic global warming, and as a result some scientists have seen their reputations and their research funding dry up.

The media has so relentlessly promoted global warming fears that a British group called the Institute For Public Policy Research--and this from a left-leaning group--issued a report in 2006 accusing media outlets of engaging in what they termed ``climate porn'' in order to attract the public's attention. Bob Carter, a paleoclimate geologist from James Cook University in Australia, has described how the media promotes this kind of fear:

Each such alarmist article is larded with words such as

``if,'' ``might,'' ``could,'' ``probably,'' ``perhaps,''

``expected,'' ``projected,'' or ``modeled,'' and many involve

such deep dreaming, or ignorance of scientific facts or

principles, that they are akin to nonsense.

He concluded this in an op-ed in April of this year.

Another example of this relentless hype is the reporting on the seemingly endless number of global warming impact studies which do not even address whether global warming is going to happen. They merely project the impact of potential temperature increases.

The media endlessly hypes studies that purportedly show that global warming could increase mosquito populations, malaria, West Nile virus, heat waves and hurricanes, threaten the oceans, damage coral reefs, boost poison ivy growth, damage vineyards and global food crops, to name just a few of the global warming-linked calamities. Oddly, according to the media reports, warmer temperatures almost never seem to have any positive effects on plant or animal life or food production.

Fortunately, the media's addiction to so-called ``climate porn'' has failed to seduce many Americans. According to a July Pew Research Center poll, the American public is split about evenly between those who say global warming is due to human activity versus those who believe it is from natural factors or not happening at all. This is significantly down from the previous polls. In addition, an August Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll found that most Americans do not attribute the cause of recent severe weather events to global warming, and the portion of Americans who believe global warming is naturally occurring is on the rise. It is nothing short of a miracle and amazing that the American people are not buying this alarmism. It is all they see on TV. It is all they hear about. I would rather believe the American people know when their intelligence is being insulted and they know when they are being used and when they are being duped by the hysterical left.

The American people deserve much better from our fourth estate. We have a right to expect accuracy and objectivity on climate change coverage. We have a right to expect balance in sourcing and fair analysis from reporters who cover the issue. Above all, the media must roll back this mantra that there is scientific ``consensus'' of impending climatic doom as an excuse to ignore recent science. I used to get this all the time from the left. They say: Well, the consensus is already there; we don't want to talk about science. No wonder they don't--because most of the science since 1999 has refuted everything they are asserting. After all, there was a so-called scientific consensus that there were nine planets in our solar system until Pluto was recently demoted.

I am a realist. I want to challenge the news media to reverse course and report on the objective science of climate change, stop ignoring legitimate voices in this scientific debate, and

stop being used by the hysterical left. Breaking the cycles of media hysteria will not be easy since hysteria sells and it is very profitable, but I really believe the issue is getting worn out. They have not been able to come up with anything to support their side. And as Winston Churchill said:

The truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it,

ignorance may deride it, malice may destroy it, but there it

is. And it will be there, and we will understand.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that will reauthorize a vital trade and development program--the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). This is a program I have worked to reauthorize in the past, and I think it is a vital program for both developing countries and the American economy. As someone who frequently works to assist those who face the direst of circumstances in the poor countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, I feel that we must reauthorize this program as a key component of our efforts there.

The GSP program is an effort of the United States and 19 other industrialized countries to aid developing countries through increased market access, which in turn fosters industrial development and enhanced opportunities for prosperity in some of the least-advantaged countries in the world. This program allows a specified list of developing countries, from the Asian Continent to Sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America, to export certain products duty-free to the U.S. market. A beneficiary country's GSP treatment is contingent upon that country's commitment to securing intellectual property rights and to protecting the rights of workers. In this way, the GSP program promotes the development of sound practices and institutions in those countries with which we are engaged in trade and thus fulfills some important objectives of U.S. trade policy. In sum, the GSP program promotes self- sustaining production development in developing countries--not dependence on foreign aid--and also encourages respect for human dignity and property.

While originally developed as a trade program to aid developing countries, GSP over the past 32 years has become an important component of the U.S. economy. American consumers enjoy lower prices on diverse products from oil to flashlights to broomhandles to cheese. Furthermore, numerous American small businesses retain their competitive advantage from the duty-free treatment of essential inputs, such as electrical equipment and automotive parts. American small businesses need every cost-cutting edge available to them in order to continue to create jobs and value. I first took an interest in the reauthorization of this program when a small business in Oklahoma that used GSP-covered drilling components to support domestic energy enhancement contacted my office and explained how failure to reauthorize GSP would seriously affect his business. After which, upon understanding how much this program also assists those in developing countries, its reauthorization became a priority for me. Very clearly, although designed to make other less-advantaged countries more competitive, GSP has contributed to our continued competitiveness here in the United States.

Workers, consumers, and businesses in nearly 120 countries including our own will benefit from the continuation of this program, which affects the price of over 5,600 finished and unfinished goods. Therefore, I ask that you join me in reauthorizing the Generalized System of Preferences.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce legislation that will reauthorize a vital trade and development program--the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). This is a program I have worked to reauthorize in the past, and I think it is a vital program for both developing countries and the American economy. As someone who frequently works to assist those who face the direst of circumstances in the poor countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, I feel that we must reauthorize this program as a key component of our efforts there.

The GSP program is an effort of the United States and 19 other industrialized countries to aid developing countries through increased market access, which in turn fosters industrial development and enhanced opportunities for prosperity in some of the least-advantaged countries in the world. This program allows a specified list of developing countries, from the Asian Continent to Sub-Saharan Africa to Latin America, to export certain products duty-free to the U.S. market. A beneficiary country's GSP treatment is contingent upon that country's commitment to securing intellectual property rights and to protecting the rights of workers. In this way, the GSP program promotes the development of sound practices and institutions in those countries with which we are engaged in trade and thus fulfills some important objectives of U.S. trade policy. In sum, the GSP program promotes self- sustaining production development in developing countries--not dependence on foreign aid--and also encourages respect for human dignity and property.

While originally developed as a trade program to aid developing countries, GSP over the past 32 years has become an important component of the U.S. economy. American consumers enjoy lower prices on diverse products from oil to flashlights to broomhandles to cheese. Furthermore, numerous American small businesses retain their competitive advantage from the duty-free treatment of essential inputs, such as electrical equipment and automotive parts. American small businesses need every cost-cutting edge available to them in order to continue to create jobs and value. I first took an interest in the reauthorization of this program when a small business in Oklahoma that used GSP-covered drilling components to support domestic energy enhancement contacted my office and explained how failure to reauthorize GSP would seriously affect his business. After which, upon understanding how much this program also assists those in developing countries, its reauthorization became a priority for me. Very clearly, although designed to make other less-advantaged countries more competitive, GSP has contributed to our continued competitiveness here in the United States.

Workers, consumers, and businesses in nearly 120 countries including our own will benefit from the continuation of this program, which affects the price of over 5,600 finished and unfinished goods. Therefore, I ask that you join me in reauthorizing the Generalized System of Preferences.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, something happened last Thursday in the Senate Armed Services Committee that many of us tried to stop, but we were unsuccessful. The weekend is over now. All we have heard from the liberal media and from the Democrats is: Republican rebellion, Republican rebellion, Republican rebellion--it has kind of a ring to it--a rebellion against President Bush.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth. It is not a Republican rebellion against the President. It is a Democratic denial to the President of that which he begged Congress for, and that was the ability to interrogate terrorists in order to save American lives, to use whatever methods available within the guidelines of the U.S. Supreme Court to get this stuff done.

I was at the White House when he made his presentation. I was sitting closer to him than I am to the Chair right now. I have never seen him with such an earnest plea in his heart pouring out because he wanted to have that ability to save American lives.

What passed the committee Thursday was the Democrats' program of leniency for the enemy, to be sure our interrogators don't get too aggressive with the terrorists, and also to tell the enemy what methods we will use so they can write their own manual.

Republican rebellion? Not hardly. It was the Democratic bill, and they got four Republicans to go along with it. But 100 percent of the Democrats voted for it. Nine of us Republicans on the committee spoke and voted against it--all Republicans. Clearly, this was a Democratic bill to undermine President Bush's plea to get the tools necessary to extract information from terrorists.

The High Value Terrorist Detainee Program, for all practical purposes, will stop, and I don't blame them. What rational interrogator would take a chance of going to prison, or even being executed himself, by trying to comply with the vague provisions of the Democratic bill passed out of the committee Thursday?

President Bush's bill would clearly define our Common article 3 obligations. No one is advocating torture. Torture is already illegal. The President never did that. Nobody wants to use cruel, unusual, inhumane, or degrading treatment that is against the law. It is already illegal. Nobody is advocating inhumane treatment that violates the U.S. Constitution. What the President wants is clarification under our Common article 3 obligations. The President's bill defines these obligations by equating the definition to last year's detainee treatment. The Democratic bill stays silent on this important topic. Their bill also makes it impossible in some cases to use classified information against the accused. Imagine that. We cannot use classified information against the accused when the terrorists are under our control.

It doesn't go far enough to protect our interrogators who may be accused of violating the vague definitions of article 3, especially as they pertain to degrading treatment. How do you define cruel, unusual, inhumane, or degrading treatment? Should we leave the definition up to the interpretation of the courts? Do you want to be an interrogator who is told not to worry, you will not be prosecuted even though what you are doing might be against the law? I don't. We owe it to them to clearly define the law by using the Detainee Treatment Act as the definition.

As the President said last week:

The bottom line is . . . the CIA program won't go forward

if there are vague standards applied like those in Common

Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.

Not having this program will put Americans at risk by leaving us unable to gather the vital intelligence needed to fight this enemy.

And where is the outrage of the American people? Do they have to ``drag their naked bodies through the streets of Mogadishu'' before there is a wake-up call?

I can't blame the American people. All they have heard all weekend is ``Republican rebellion,'' and the Senate Democrats are celebrating. So they should. They won, we lost. They successfully picked off four Republicans and passed their ``soft on terrorists'' legislation. But the plump lady hasn't sung yet. We can still reject this on the floor this week and pass the President's bill. But to do this, Senators are going to have to hear from the folks back home--the folks who believe we need to quit worrying so much about the treatment of terrorists and get to the business of serious interrogation, even if it hurts someone's feelings. Wake up, America; she is about to sing.

Mr. President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise today, along with my colleague, Ben Nelson, to urge support for resolution designating September 13, 2006, as National Celiac Disease Awareness Day. We come before the Senate today to seek your help in raising awareness of celiac disease. Celiac disease hits very close to home for me as I have a staffer with the disease and an Oklahoma Celiac Support Group working to promote awareness in my great State. There are many groups and organizations working to promote celiac disease, and we applaud all their efforts. We would like to give special thanks to Heather Cline, President, with the Oklahoma Celiac Support Group, and Tom Sullivan, President, and Mary Schluckebier, Executive Director, with the Celiac Sprue Association, located in Nebraska, for their help with this resolution and great work promoting awareness.

Celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder and a malabsorption disease that affects an estimated 2.2 million Americans which could mean as many as 22,000 in the State of Oklahoma. Celiac disease is, essentially, intolerance to gluten, a protein found in wheat, rye, oats and barley, as well as some medicines and vitamins. When exposed to gluten, the villi of the small intestine are damaged, interfering with the absorption of nutrients. Other problems can occur as a result of damage to the small intestine, including malnutrition, anemia, lymphoma, and adenocarcinoma, osteoporosis, miscarriage and congenital malformation, and short stature. Celiac disease is also linked other autoimmune disorders such as thyroid disease, systemic lupus erythematosus, type 1 diabetes, liver disease, collagen vascular disease, rheumatoid arthritis and Sjogren's syndrome.

Celiac disease has been widely underdiagnosed and misdiagnosed until recently thanks to an increase in research regarding the disease. It is easily detectable through tests measuring the blood for abnormally high levels of the antibodies of immunoglobulin A, anti-tissue transglutaminase and IgA anti-endomysium antibodies. Of the 2.2 million Americans who have celiac disease, 97 percent are currently undiagnosed, according to the University of Chicago Celiac Disease Program. Often the symptoms are attributed to other conditions as many doctors lack sufficient knowledge about the disease. In a study published by the American Journal of Gastroenterology, the average length of time for a symptomatic person to be diagnosed with celiac disease is eleven years, dramatically increasing an individual's risk of developing more serious conditions. To compound the situation, according to a study by Dr. Allesio Fasano, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, sixty percent of children and forty-one percent of adults diagnosed with celiac disease are asymptomatic, showing no symptoms of the disease.

Treatment for celiac disease involves following a gluten-free diet. The good news is that the treatment for celiac disease is highly effective. In most sufferers, the small intestines heal completely. However, failure to properly diagnose celiac disease could lead to some of the issues mentioned earlier, and most often malnutrition.

Awareness can go a long way toward diagnosing and treating the millions of suffers of celiac disease both in my home state of Oklahoma and across the nation. Therefore, we ask you to join us in this effort to raise awareness of celiac disease.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Clean Air Attainment Enforcement Act be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Clean Air Attainment Enforcement Act be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, first of all, let me say I have listened with some interest. Unfortunately, the committee I chair has had meetings all day, and I have not had a chance to really get involved in this discussion. But I have been listening to people criticizing Secretary Rumsfeld, talking about the war, and I just wonder what war they are talking about and what Secretary they are talking about because it certainly is not what is going on right now.

I can remember so many times during the 1990s when we had this euphoric attitude that somehow the Cold War was over and so we no longer needed a military and so we knew we could do some downgrading at that time. I can remember so many times on the floor saying we will rue the day we did this, we are going to have to rebuild, not knowing at that time that this would have to be during a time of war.

At that time, our Army divisions went down by about 50 percent. The tactical air wings went down by about 50 percent. Ships went down from 600 to 300. And again, people were thinking, there is no need to have this strong of a military. And they did not seem to think there was any kind of a threat out there. Nobody really thought about what we call today the asymmetric threat.

Now, that is what Secretary Rumsfeld inherited. I remember so well, about 6\1/2\ years ago, at his confirmation hearing, I asked a question. I said: Right now, we have downgraded the military to the point where we are going to have to build it up again. And as we try to anticipate the problems we will be facing that we must prepare for today, that will come 10 years from now, you are going to have all the four star generals, who are all smart people, but they are not going to guess it right.

I can remember one time, in 1994, I was in the House Armed Services Committee, and we had someone testify that in 10 years from then we would no longer need ground troops. That was in 1994. So I asked: What is the answer to this? If we are going to try to have our kids, our troops go into the field on some future date 10 years from now, how are we going to be sure they have the best of everything?

He said: Well--I am going from memory now, but he said--all throughout the 20th century the amount we spent on defense equaled 5.7 percent of GDP. At the end of the 1990s, we were down to 2.7 percent.

I said: Where should it be?

He said: Probably, in order to be prepared for any contingency in the future, we would have to be somewhere between 4 and 4.5 percent or maybe even 5 percent of GDP.

That is the problem he inherited. And he was hired because he has had the vision to restructure this and set about doing that job some 6\1/2\ years ago.

During his first month, he called for flowcharts to be created that would detail the interdepartmental relationships at the Pentagon. What he received back looked like a bowl of spaghetti.

It was totally disorganized. He had to expose this, and we all know now what he did. He started in on reforming the Pentagon. Nobody else did it prior to him. He was the one who did it. We know the big picture changes and takes time when we shake up the very foundation of the Pentagon, but he did it. We were shifting from a division-oriented force to a modular brigade combat force, from a conventional base enemy toward an asymmetric war, while maintaining our ability as a modernized nation. Much progress has been made in the Army's system of dealing with divisions and organizing them into modular brigades, combat teams that are more capable and faster to deploy. He increased force size from 33 brigades to 42 brigades. I didn't agree with him at first.

I remember that out in Oklahoma we were shocked when he made the announcement as to one of the programs that we had, that we were working on, the development of a modern nonline-of-sight cannon called the Crusader. It was going to take us out of the World War II technology. Right now, the best thing we have in terms of artillery is the Paladin, and that is World War II technology. It is one where you have to swab the breach after every shot. That is what we were faced with at that time. I criticized him for junking that program. He had a bigger picture in mind. It was a future combat system for the Army.

He looked at the Navy and said the biggest problem was spare parts. Donald Rumsfeld concentrated on that and now has ships ready to be deployable. Another change in the Navy was instead of bringing a ship all the way with a crew out to a battle area, he leaves the ship there and flies the crew back and forth and increases the ship's efficiency at sea by about 50 percent. That is common sense, but it is something that nobody else did. It took Donald Rumsfeld to come along with the idea to do that.

In the Air Force, he recognized at that time that--I think it was probably under his supervision that General Jumper had the courage to stand up and say: Now we are sending our airmen out with equipment that isn't as good, potentially, as the enemy's. He talked about our strike fighters, and the best that we had were the F-15 and the F-l6. We slowed down the F-22 development, the joint strike fighter. But General Jumper stood up and said--and Rumsfeld agreed--that now the potential is that the enemy has better equipment than we do. What he was referring to was the SU series the Russians were making, SU-27s, SU- 30s, and SU-35s were, in many ways, superior to what our airmen and women were flying.

So, anyway, we got this back on schedule and now we have some 66, 68 F-22s flying. I see a couple of the Senators on the floor who will join me in wanting to enhance that program of F-22s and move the joint strike fighter forward. That is something that this Secretary did, which others were not willing or capable of doing and didn't have the foresight to do.

I have to tell you this, Mr. President. I was there during the confirmation hearing, and I said publicly on the Senate floor that the liberals are not going to like Rumsfeld for one major reason: they cannot intimidate him. He is not one to be intimidated. He has stood up to them, and he tells the truth; he tells it like it is. People in politics, many times, don't like that.

Turning to Iraq, the positive things that have changed in Iraq are economic change, where the economy is recovering after 30 years of a bloody dictatorship that we are aware of. In 2005, the Iraqi economy grew an estimated 3 percent. It is estimated to be some 10 percent in 2006. The International Monetary Fund is anticipating that. Under Saddam Hussein's regime, the Iraqi standard of living deteriorated rapidly. The per capita income there dropped from $3,800 in 1980 to $715 in 2002. Today, the economic recovery is picking up, with GDP growing from $18.9 billion in 2002 to $33 billion in 2005.

I have to say this, also. So many of the people who criticize what is going on over there in the war don't go over there and see. If you watch CNN and the networks and read the New York Times, you will not get an accurate picture of what is going on. I have been there more than anybody else. I have been in the Iraqi AOR 11 times, during all of the elections. I was in Fallujah during that election. I recall very well a general there named Mahi, who had been the brigade commander for Saddam Hussein; he had hated Americans. He hated Americans until the Marines went into Fallujah and started this embedded training. He learned to love them so much that he looked across at me and he said, ``When they rotated the Marines out, we all cried.'' Then he renamed the Iraqi security forces in Fallujah to be the Iraqi Marines.

Then, up in Saddam's hometown, I was there when they blew up some of the Iraqi security forces who were training. Forty were either killed or near dead. What you didn't get in the media was the success story, the support from the Iraqis. Each family of the ones who were killed in Tikrit supplied another member of the family to take the place of the one who died. You don't see that in the news. I was fortunate to have arranged to be there at the same time that their Government took over. The Prime Minister, Defense Minister Jasim, and the National Security Advisor were there. I asked them basic questions. Some are talking about the civil war that is going on. A civil war is not going on. If you go there and sit down and talk to them, I believe it was Jasim who said that he is Shia and his wife is a Sunni. He didn't even know what some of the other members of the Cabinet were. I wasn't sure I believed this, I say to my friend from Alabama. I went out on my own with an interpreter and I saw an honor guard force, the very elite of the group; there were nine of them. One was the leader. I said to the leader: I would like to know about the civil war, about what is happening between the Shia and the Sunnis. He said: That is just not a real thing. I have been with these guys 8 days now, and I cannot tell you which are Shia and which are Sunni. He said--and this is interesting because he repeated what Dr. Rubai said--he said: That is a Western concept.

I wish that some of these people who are criticizing what is going on would hear the testimonials we hear. A woman told me ``now my daughter can get married.'' I said: Why couldn't she get married before? She said it was because the wedding celebrations take place outdoors. Many times, the forces would come by--and we know, of course, Saddam's sons would capture and rape all of the girls and bury them alive. That is not happening anymore. For the first time, we have women going to school there. You have to go there and talk to them before you realize it.

The security forces that we criticize on the floor of the Senate are up now to 275,000 trained and equipped. I have talked to them, visited with them. I was in Fallujah when they voted. They voted 2 days ahead of time because they were risking their lives to vote. They are looking forward to the day when they are going to be able to take care of their own security. It is difficult for people to say when that day is going to come. That is a military decision. Many of the military people tell me that when they have 10 divisions

trained and equipped, they will be able to do it. Now they have 275,000, so that would be about 325,000.

They are making great progress. I heard the distinguished minority leader of the Armed Services Committee talk about a poll taken about how the Iraqi people are responding to us. If a question is worded: Do you want to have the coalition forces here from now on? Of course, they don't. They are a very proud people. They want to take care of their own problems. But they are not ready for us to leave right now. In a poll taken about two trips ago, they said 94 percent of the Iraqis support a unity government. Now they have that unity government.

In the same poll, 78 percent of the Iraqis said they were opposed to Iraqis being segregated by religion or ethnicity. And so we can show you that the Iraqi people are so appreciative. It is spooky when they recognize you as an American and come running up to you. You never know for sure what they have with them. But they come up and embrace you and they are recognizing that what we and the coalition forces have done is a remarkable thing.

Also, what do a lot of these critics I heard on the floor have in common? They are all running for President of the United States. This is going to be their issue. If they can go to the Democrats and say, I am more liberal than anybody else, I am heading up the surrender, cut- and-run caucus, that is what they are going to try to do.

I suggest that we are very fortunate that Donald Rumsfeld was here at this time. I have thought often about what might have been the alternative. The greatest possible disservice we can do, not just to the Iraqi people but to our troops there, is to use Rumsfeld and the war for political advancement. I have spent time with them over there, and I assure you that we did the right thing.

People who say there is no connection between 9/11 and Iraq don't realize that three major terrorist camps were actually in Iraq at that time. They are not open for business anymore. So I am very proud to stand here and defend our Secretary of Defense, who has done a great job, and also to say that our troops are doing an incredible job under most difficult circumstances.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today along with my colleague, Tom Coburn, to proudly introduce legislation to designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 301 Commerce Street in Commerce, OK as the ``Mickey Mantle Post Office.''

Mickey Mantle emulates the Oklahoma spirit of hard work, charity, and sportsmanship. He is a shining example of how commitment and dedication can lead to great success. I seek to name the post office in Commerce, OK, in Mickey Mantle's honor. He is still known to Commerce by the nicknames ``Commerce Comet'' or ``Commerce Kid''.

At age 4 Mickey Mantle moved with his family to Commerce where he grew up, having been born in Spavinaw, OK. By his father who was an amateur player and fervent fan, Mickey Mantle was named in honor of Mickey Cochrane, the Hall of Fame catcher from the Detroit Tigers.

Signing with the New York Yankees in 1949, Mantle made his Major League Debut in 1951. He played his entire Major League career with the Yankees. He was a twenty-time All Star and named American League MVP three times. Mantle was a part of 12 pennant winners and 7 World Championship clubs. Some of Mantle's records still hold today. He holds the record for most World Series home runs (18), runs batted in (40), runs (42), walks (43), extra-base hits (26), and total bases (123).

Mantle announced his retirement on March 1, 1969. He actually retired on Mickey Mantle Day, June 8, 1969. In addition to the retirement of his uniform number 7, Mantle was given a plaque that would hang on the center field wall at Yankee Stadium, near the monuments to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Miller Huggins. In 1974, as soon as he was eligible, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame demonstrating his importance to baseball and community.

Sadly, Mickey Mantle's father died of cancer at the age of 39, just as his son was starting his career. Mantle said one of the great heartaches of his life was that he never told his father he loved him.

After a bout with liver cancer himself, Mickey Mantle was given a few precious extra weeks of life due to a liver transplant. The baseball great was overwhelmed by the selfless gift of a liver from a stranger; therefore, Mickey became determined to give something back at the end of his life. Thus, in 1995, the year he died, the Mickey Mantle Foundation was established to promote organ and tissue donation, and Mickey Mantle will be remembered for something more than his heroic baseball career.

I encourage my colleagues to join me in support of this legislation as we commemorate an outstanding athlete so that future generations will be as inspired by his example of sportsmanship and charity as we have been.