Is Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. This is what he said on CNN’s Late Edition today:
BLITZER: There has been a lot of outrage here in the United States, indeed, around the world in recent days to this judicial ruling in Saudi Arabia that a woman — a 19-year-old woman who was gang-raped, was herself sentenced to 200 lashes, six months in prison for even speaking out about this.
How would you as president, Governor, go ahead and balance U.S. strategic, national interests, working with Saudi Arabia, while at the same time they have these policies towards their own — half of their population, namely women?
HUCKABEE: Well, I have been very outspoken about some of the dissatisfaction I have towards the House of Saud. I think that our country, the United States, has been far too involved in sort of looking the other way, not only at the atrocities of human rights and violation of women.
But, look, we have allowed ourselves to become so completely attached to Saudi oil, it essentially is now where Americans are financing both sides of the war on terror. Our tax dollars pay for the military side. Every time we put our credit card in the gas pump, we are paying so that the Saudis get rich
- filthy, obscenely rich, and that money then ends up going to funding madrassas…
BLITZER: Well, what would you do about…
HUCKABEE: … that train the terrorists.
BLITZER: What would you do about that — Governor, excuse me for interrupting, what would you do about…
HUCKABEE: Yes.
BLITZER: … their religious edicts involving the way they treat women while at the same time U.S. dependence on Saudi oil and U.S. hope that the Saudis will cooperate in the war on terror?
HUCKABEE: I would make the United States energy independent within 10 years and tell the Saudis they can keep their oil just like they can keep their sand, but we won’t need either one of them.
America has allowed itself to become enslaved to Saudi oil. It is absurd. It is embarrassing. Since 1973, we keep talking about project independence. We never have the political will to do it.
It is high time that we stop this sense of almost being subordinated by the Saudis as well as the rest of the Middle East, particularly countries who do not like us, who do not have our best interests at heart.
We need a self-sustaining, environmentally friendly energy source or energy sources. And that is no longer a matter of just environmental concern and our economic interest, it is now really a matter of utmost national security.