Claim: Rep. Gabrielle Giffords asked Gen. David Petraeus what he was "doing to reduce carbon emissions in the war on terror."
Example: [Collected via e-mail, July 2010]
Poster child for what is wrong in Congress
You will simply not believe this. Our 8th District US Congressional representative, the
"General Petraeus, what are you doing to reduce carbon emissions in the war on terror?"
Wow. I had to read, and re-read this several times to believe it. Folks, there are American sons and daughters dying every week on the foreign battlefields of southwest Asia. The nation is completely bankrupt and ... quite literally, borrowing
We have the largest environmental disaster in the nation's history in the Gulf of Mexico, and we have Mexican drug armies invading our nation.
And yet ....
A member of Congress from Arizona's 8th congressional district took the time to ask our battlefield commander what he is doing to curb carbon emissions in the war.
Gabrielle Giffords is the poster-child for what is wrong with the US Congress. We are being led by imbeciles. To the rest of America reading this blog, and to
General... I am sure you have better things to worry about than carbon emissions on the battlefield. I assure you, as a registered voter in Arizona's
Origins: When
During that session, Rep. Giffords posed a general question to Gen. Petraeus about efforts to utilize renewable energy in Afghanistan, an exchange which has since been mischaracterized
(by a political opponent campaigning for her House seat) as
There's been a lot of attention back in the United States on what's happening with the BP oil spill, and we all know the largest user of energy on the planet is actually the United States Air Force and the DoD is the largest user of energy in the United States, and I really want to commend the work done on the behalf of DoD and also what's happening in the field with our energy, but it's an area that I just really want to focus on, and I know a lot of questions have been asked, but in the last few years supply lines have been increasingly threatened either by enemy action or through international crises, and in places like Kandahar, where we have a large presence, we've been plugged into a very unsustainable and really an incapable grid system.
We know that a major part of the upcoming Kandahar offensive will include some serious repairs and upgrades to the energy system which will include small-scale solar and hydropower systems and also some solar-powered street lights. I'm just curious whether or not there's plans to utilize any of those same technologies at our bases around Afghanistan, and wouldn't that greatly reduce our need for fuel?
Rep. Giffords' office later elaborated on the background behind her concerns about renewable energy use by the U.S. military in Afghanistan:
Arizona National Guardsman Mark Cardenas saw firsthand the dangers of our military’s dependence on fuel. Cardenas guarded more than 4,000 miles of convoys during his The Defense Department's renewable energy initiatives began in earnest in 2007 at the urging of top military commanders. In numerous reports, military leadership expressed great concern about the strategic disadvantage placed upon our military by its dependence on fuel and a vulnerable electrical grid. Troops and military facilities are hamstrung by the dangerous process of supplying and transporting fuel deep into theaters of conflict such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Marine Corps General James Mattis, Commander of the
The Army Counterinsurgency Field Manual Gen. David Petraeus developed in 2006 states that stable electricity is a vital element to defeating the insurgency, a point he reiterated multiple times at the hearing. Crucial too is the military's ability to sustain itself and access the supplies they need to keep going.
After Rep. Giffords was shot outside a supermarket where she meeting with constituents in January 2011, the following material was added to the earlier
It was a tragedy that 19 people were shot and six died. As a result Giffords will be held out as a saint, when in fact, she is an idiot, a left wing "enviro-nut" who should not be in Congress. The media only cares about her because she is a Democrat. Had she been a Republican, like the federal judge who was killed, she would have been off the front page the next day, as he has been.
I had forgotten she was the Congresswoman that was involved in the following exchange with General Petraeus:
Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Az) took Afghan Commander, General David Petraeus, to task for what she characterized as "willful disregard of the environmental impact of our war effort."
"There is no policy, no plan to minimize carbon emissions in our military activities," Giffords charged. "Bombs are dropped and bullets are fired without considering the environmental impact."
Giffords insisted that she was "not demanding an immediate halt to current military operations in the Middle East. I’m just saying that battle plans should include an environmental impact assessment as a regular part of the process before attacks are launched."
She also suggested that the Army "put more emphasis on less environmentally damaging methods, like stabbing or clubbing enemy forces in order to minimize the carbon output."
This additional material (below the horizontal line) was taken directly from the writings of
John Semmens, a political satirist.
Last updated: 7 March 2011