EDMOND — U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe felt relieved when the military took over the Egyptian government during the recent revolution, he said. The 2011 Egyptian revolution began with Cairo street protests on Jan. 25, then climaxed on Feb. 11 when President Hosni Mubarak resigned from power, leaving Cairo.

Inhofe spoke to The Edmond Sun Saturday morning at the 15th Annual Deer Creek Classic & Military Appreciation Day. Inhofe gave the countdown to the race which included a 1-mile fun-run and a 5K & 10K beginning at Deer Creek High School. Fort Sill’s Cavalry Half Section fired an early 20th century cannon to begin the races.

Inhofe returned from a trip last week to Africa where his 115th visit took him to Burkina Faso, Uganda, Ethiopia and Djibouti before further travels to Israel, Turkey and Germany. Inhofe is a senior member of the Armed Services Committee and serves on the Foreign Relations Committee.

The U.S. has a program supported by Inhofe in which military officers are brought for training from foreign countries to the U.S. Once they are trained, they go back to their respective countries with an allegiance to the U.S., Inhofe said. That’s been happening for 30 years in Egypt, he added.

Inhofe said he flew over the Suez Canal thinking of U.S. dependence on Middle East oil to run America.

“It just reminds us that the far left in Washington trying to shut us down for providing our own energy and how destructive that is for our country,” Inhofe said. “You don’t realize that until you see the Middle East with the problems that are there right now.”

Inhofe said the U.S. has a supply of natural gas to power the country for 110 years.

“The problem is politically they won’t let us exploit our own resources,” Inhofe said. “We’re the only country that doesn’t exploit our own resources because the far left extremists want to shut down all fossil fuels.”

Inhofe said natural gas, oil, coal and nuclear energy are rejected by the far left.

“I had an opportunity to spend a lot of time with (Israeli) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Inhofe said. “…He looks at this and he believes and I believe that this is the most threatened we’ve been in the history of the world.”

Inhofe warned that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will control nuclear weapons by 2013, according to U.S. intelligence. Netanyahu reminded Inhofe that the Cold War was predictable between the U.S. and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. But Netanyahu said mutual self-destruction is not a negative for Iran and Middle East extremists.

“They want to die anyway,” Inhofe said. “So that’s the really scary thing about it.”

Inhofe said it’s humorous that Iranian leadership encouraged the Egyptian revolution until the Iranian people became inspired by the Egyptians.

“Now all of the sudden they don’t want protests,” Inhofe said. “That’s one of the few things that we can look at and say are good things that might happen.”

Ahmadinejad has said he will control Iran no matter how many of his people he would have to kill to stop revolution, Inhofe said. Netanyahu said he thought the U.S. would have learned its lesson with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists attacks on U.S. soil. So the U.S. must do everything it can to defend Israel, Inhofe said. Israel is the only friend of the U.S. in the Mideast, he added.

“It’s a hotbed as it’s never been before in history and I agree with everything that Netanyahu says about the problems,” Inhofe said.

Democrat John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has called for the U.S. and its allies to set up a no-fly zone over Libya. He was supported by ranking senior Republican Senate Armed Forces Committee member John McCain. McCain is the only Republican who is senior to Inhofe on the committee.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said that planning a no-fly zone to paralyze Libyan air forces would begin with an attack on Libya’s air defenses.

“Perhaps Sen. McCain, he kind of dug himself into that hole before he knew what Gates’ response was,” Inhofe said. “So I’m just not in that fight.”



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