|
|
Press Releases
Seals Campaign Calls on Mark Kirk to Retract Misleading Statements About China Drilling Off the Florida Coast
June 26, 2008
DEERFIELD—Today, the campaign of Democratic Congressional Candidate Dan Seals called on Mark Kirk to retract his recent misleading comments about China drilling off the shore of the United States. While Kirk has been advocating for offshore drilling by saying that the Chinese are drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, this claim was recently debunked by Vice President Dick Cheney.
“For weeks, Mark Kirk has engaged in tired scare tactics to justify his support for environmentally destructive drilling,” Seals Communications Director Elisabeth Smith said. “Once again, he has shown how far he is willing to go to enrich the big oil companies that have funded his campaigns. Mark Kirk owes it to his constituents to apologize for these grossly misleading comments after even Dick Cheney acknowledged this information to be false.”
During a June 18th radio interview, Kirk argued for offshore drilling saying that “we’ve got the Venezuelans, the Dutch and the Chinese all drilling in the gulf under leases from Cuba because it’s on their side of the line.... It makes perfect sense that the United States makes sure our teams gets that same oil before Castro does.” [Don Wade & Roma Morning Show, WLS-AM, 6/18/08]
However, in the week prior to the interview, Vice-President Dick Cheney was forced to retract a statement he had made about China drilling off the U.S. Coast, acknowledging that “no Chinese firm is drilling there” Cheney’s apology came after U.S. Senator Mel Martinez (R-FL) criticized his fellow Republicans for spreading the China claim, asserting that it was "simply false" and that "any talk of using some fabricated China/Cuba connection as an argument to change U.S. policy, has no merit. [Associated Press, 6/12/08; Miami Herald, 6/12/06]
|
|
