[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 190 (Monday, December 12, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H8345-H8350]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ETERNAL VIGILANCE
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
There is so much going on these days, and we have to trust the United
States, the Federal entities of the executive branch to keep us
protected. That's why our hearing last week with the Attorney General
of the United States, Eric Holder, before the Judiciary Committee of
the House was very disturbing. We had Attorney General Holder before
our committee back on May 3 of this year; and at that time, the
Attorney General said, with regard to this horrible project, this
undertaking called Fast and Furious, the Attorney General said he had
only known about it ``a few weeks.'' To most of us, ``a few weeks''
means about 3 weeks. However, in testifying under penalty of perjury
last week, the Attorney General said in essence, Look, 3 weeks, 3
months--a few weeks is 3 months; there's not really any difference.
When you have the highest-ranking person in the United States
Department of Justice who plays so fast and loose while testifying
under oath, who plays so fast and loose with the facts, it is quite
disturbing, and it's time for a change.
Our Attorney General testified that there were a certain number of
guns, 94,000 firearms, submitted for tracing and that 64,000 of those
firearms were sourced to the United States. The further we get into
that, the more inaccurate we find out those figures are; and of course
we recall--and it's understandable that with a boss like the United
States President who has previously said, 90, 95 percent of the guns
seized at crime scenes in Mexico came from the United States, it's
understandable that if the boss is making those kinds of glaring errors
on numbers, then perhaps the head of the Department of Justice would
make substantial mistakes in numbers.
But, fortunately, the Department of Justice is not the only source of
information regarding those types of matters. The Congressional
Research Service is a bipartisan group. They do an extraordinary job.
I've gotten the impression that potentially the majority may be
Democrat, but it doesn't matter to those folks. They do a very good job
of researching thoroughly whatever project they're given.
And the information that we were able to get back from the
Congressional Research Service indicates that there are maybe only 25
percent of the weapons that Mexico has seized that are capable of being
traced back to their original source and that most of the weapons that
Mexico seizes are never offered for the process of tracing because they
know there's no way to trace them. So if only 25 percent of those that
are seized in Mexico are asked to have tracing done, then it is very
clear that not 95, not 90, not even 70 percent of the weapons seized
can be traced to an American owner first.
{time} 1950
We also know from the testimony and the information about this Fast
and Furious project of the ATF Department of Justice, because the ATF
is a subsidiary of the Department of Justice, but we know that gun
dealers were pushed into making sales to people they didn't believe
should be sold the weapons; and our own Federal Government, our own
Justice Department, urged them to go ahead and make the sales on behalf
of their country anyway. Then some in this administration have the
nerve to say this, too, was Bush's fault, and they point to programs in
the Bush administration as being the source.
Andrew McCarthy, back November 8, had a great article in National
Review Online, ``Fast & Furious Was . . . Bush's Fault.'' He goes on to
point out that Fast and Furious did not begin until 2009, months after
the end of the Bush administration, and he also goes on to point out a
number of things.
For example, Wide Receiver, which was a project under the Bush
administration, involved what were considered controlled deliveries. As
a former judge, we'd hear constantly about controlled deliveries where
the government would have people--find out people were inquiring about
making drug sales, and they would set up a delivery. There would be
plenty of agents there to intervene as soon as the transaction had
actually been made. The controlled delivery meant not only do you have
people watching, you may even have some way to follow what is being
transferred in that controlled delivery. That's what was anticipated
with Wide Receiver, the project under the Bush administration.
Unfortunately, there was an incident where Wide Receiver, apparently
that project had a controlled delivery setup of weapons, the intent
never ever to allow them to actually leave this country or to actually
have the individuals involved get away with those weapons, but actually
to have them have an interdiction, have them arrested. And also, one
other thing, they had homing devices on the weapons. Well,
unfortunately, everything went wrong. The homing devices were detected,
they were removed, the controlled delivery went bad, and folks got
away.
That is a far sight different from this administration deciding we're
going to see that massive number, at least a couple of thousand
weapons, are put in the hands of criminals who will likely take them
across the border. They will certainly end up in the deaths of
Mexicans, and there's a good chance will result in the deaths of
Americans. Anyone in any administration who thinks such an idea is a
good one needs to go from that administration. Anyone from any
administration who allows something so insane to take place does not
need to be in that administration. Anybody who has such lax control
over his department that though those directly under him know about it,
they leave him plausible deniability to come in and say: I didn't know
anything about it. Maybe Lanny Breuer; yeah, apparently he knew all
about. Yeah, I see
[[Page H8346]]
Lanny quite a bit, but I didn't know anything about it. Anybody that
sets up a structure to allow themselves that kind of plausible
deniability--so-called plausible--and would allow something that
results in a foreseen death, much less hundreds of deaths, does not
need to be head of that department.
Now, this should not be a partisan issue. Back when President Bush,
George W. Bush was President, we had been told in our Judiciary
Committee in the House by the Attorney General at that time that there
were no known abuses of the national security letters. The national
security letter powers bother me greatly. I'm extremely concerned about
them. I've been very concerned about them, and we had the report from
the Attorney General, no, there are no known abuses. Well, that is an
awfully powerful weapon, but we were assured under the PATRIOT Act it
is only allowable that those letters be used to gain information about
foreign nationals--not American citizens--or people who are associated
with known foreign terrorist organizations. It would never be used
against American citizens. We were assured of that.
So some of us wanted to make sure that there were no abuses, no
American citizens were being pursued internationally or nationally. We
were assured they weren't. The Attorney General in July had testified
before--this was, I guess, 2007; I believe it was July--that there were
no known abuses by Federal agents of the national security letter where
they demand information, documentation, all that's in the possession of
the person to whom the letter is sent. It turns out, three days before
the Attorney General testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee,
there had been a report that was placed on his desk. The Attorney
General's defense was: I never read it before I testified before the
Senate, so I was certainly testifying honestly; I just didn't know.
That was enough, though, to have people on both sides of the aisle,
Republican and Democrat, House and Senate, agree we need to change
something, and we got it changed within about six weeks.
This administration is so used to obfuscating, hiding the ball,
preventing documentation that is requested from coming to light, this
administration thinks that it can keep protecting people who need to go
for the good of the country.
Then we find out there's emails in the documents that were provided
by the Justice Department. There are emails indicating that, gee, maybe
it would be a good idea if we could use Fast and Furious numbers to get
more regulation. Sharyl Attkisson has an article--this was part of
CBSnews.com--where she indicates:
ATF officials didn't intend to publicly disclose their own
role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but
emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales
encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called
``Demand Letter 3''. That would require some U.S. gun shops
to report the sale of multiple rifles or ``long guns.''
Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third
ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.
On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C.
received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops
Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF's
Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:
``Bill--can you see if these guns were all purchased from
the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are
looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long
gun multiple sales. Thanks.''
{time} 2000
Amazing. The ATF, the Justice Department, creates this horrible
program that would get people killed and then wants to use that as a
basis for further regulation and further elimination of our Second
Amendment rights to the United States Constitution. Unbelievable. They
have Senator Feinstein down the Hall when questioning Lanny Breuer, who
apparently indications are was not truthful with regard to Fast and
Furious, and Senator Feinstein says, ``We have very lax laws when it
comes to guns. I think this, to some extent, influences the ATF and how
they approach the problem as to whether they have political support or
not. But I think these numbers are shocking. And I think when you know
the numbers of deaths these guns have caused used by cartels against
victims, it's literally up in the tens of thousands. So the question
comes as what we can do, and I would really rather concentrate on the
constructive rather than other things. And so the question comes, do
you believe that if there were some form of registration when you
purchase these firearms that that would make a difference?''
Again, a deadly program that would kill innocent people is put in
place by the Justice Department's ATF, people are killed, and then
people around this town want to use this horrible program's results to
justify taking away Second Amendment rights. It's staggering.
Staggering. It's bad enough that anybody would think this type of
program, Fast and Furious, was a good idea, but then to turn around and
use it to try to destroy Second Amendment rights under the Constitution
is simply unconscionable.
Well, the Attorney General also, when asked about his testimony last
week, he said, yes, he had ordered in February an Inspector General
study, an inspection of the Fast and Furious program. It was pointed
out to the Attorney General that in the big document dump that they
had--and it was clearly a document dump intended to mask and hide
anything therein. A good piece of evidence of that is the fact that 92
pages, at least, of the documents were Senator Grassley's own request
for information about Fast and Furious. Those were just duplicated
dozens and dozens and dozens of times, and that was part of the
document dump just to hide what little bit of information was in there.
And yet despite all those documents produced and despite information
that was inquired about at the hearing, the Attorney General does use
government email, he does use private email, he does sign things, not
one email of the Attorney General, not one letter, not one order of any
kind by this Attorney General was part of that record.
If we have an Attorney General who believes in playing so fast and
loose with the laws that it really is more about who you know in this
administration rather than what the law says, it's time for another
Attorney General. Nothing was produced. When I asked about his
testimony that an IG inspection was ordered, our Attorney General
indicated basically that he had such a great relationship with the
Inspector General he could just pick up the phone and ask her to do an
inspection, a study.
If that's the way this Attorney General operates, which he testified
under oath that it was, we need a new Attorney General. Those kinds of
things are so serious they require something signed.
And as far as being so chummy with the Inspector General, it also
makes clear this is no way to run a Justice Department, because it
makes clear that the Justice Department is run by a man who is so
chummy with the one person that may be able to do an independent study
that there really is no independent study done.
That also became clear, and Darrell Issa who has been pursuing this--
and I'm thankful for it. He has been relentless. But the information
has not been forthcoming. But from what information has been gleaned,
we find out that this Inspector General, the very, very, very close
chum of our Attorney General, had found out that there was a gun dealer
who became so concerned about this egregious thing being done where he
was being forced to sell guns to people to whom he did not want to sell
guns, that he began recording conversations, things that were told him
by Federal agents so that he would have some protection. When the
Inspector General found out, she got the recorded conversations.
Now, a good Inspector General who is not extremely chummy with the
person heading up the Department she is supposed to independently study
and inspect would go forward, talk to witnesses and see if they said
anything inconsistent in their statements to the Inspector General so
that the Inspector General could determine if these people were being
honest.
Instead, what this very close ally and chum of the person whose
Department she is supposed to be inspecting, she apparently took the
recorded statement, gave it to the Federal agent and said, hey, you
better listen to this before you give any statements so you
[[Page H8347]]
can make sure your statements are consistent.
Inspectors General aren't supposed to do that. They're supposed to
conduct a thorough, independent investigation. All the indications are
that this Inspector General is, just as Attorney General Holder
testified, so chummy, so close, that she doesn't need a written order.
It works out better if we can just say, we just talked about it over
the phone. And, in fact, wouldn't that be great, too, if we could do
that here in Congress? Do you know what? We passed a law, but we just
talked about it, and you don't get to find out what it is, but we'll
come after you if you violate it.
You can't run a government that way. There needs to be documentation
for decisions that are made so we know who made them. And that brings
us to one of the more egregious factors in the poor management of the
Justice Department. When the Attorney General was asked who it was by
my friend, Judge Poe from Texas, now in Congress, who it was that made
the decision to go forward with Fast and Furious after lo these many,
many months, the Attorney General said he just really didn't know, and
he didn't know if he was going to be able to find out.
Since we have an Attorney General that has no way of knowing who is
making the decisions in his Department that are getting innocent people
in the United States and Mexico killed, it's time to have an Attorney
General who does.
{time} 2010
We cannot survive as a country when the Federal Government plays so
fast and loose with orders that mean the difference between people
being killed and not killed.
It's time for a change. America deserves better. Mexico deserves
better. And you can't help but wonder what kind of pressure was put on
Mexico's government not to raise holy Cain about having all these
illegal weapons forcibly sold that were going into Mexico. We had no
intention--or this Justice Department had no intention of following
them, no method of getting them back, no method of finding out where
they were. And in fact, it appears the whole goal was to wait and see
when they showed up at crime scenes--which normally meant somebody had
been killed--then check the serial numbers against those the ATF had
forcibly required the sale of, And if they matched, then we could blame
American gun dealers. It's understandable a gun dealer in the U.S.
could become concerned, that maybe he ought to start taping Federal
agents giving him instructions. Things are not going well in this
Justice Department.
One other area of concern--has been for some time--is the fact that
there are organizations in the United States that are raising money and
then funding terrorist organizations abroad. Hamas is one specifically.
And since this government continues to send money to the Palestinian
Authority, which has now got an agreement with Hamas, our own
government is in cahoots in funding terrorism. At some point the
insanity has got to stop.
We know that this kind of thing has gone on by organizations in the
United States because in November of 2008 the Bush administration
obtained five convictions, 105 counts of funding terrorism. Most people
refer to the litigation as the Holy Land Foundation trial. And there
were over 200 named coconspirators with the Holy Land Foundation and
the individuals named, and those coconspirators, many of them were
implicated through evidence that was introduced at trial in the Holy
Land Foundation trial.
Now, they were named coconspirators, but the others were not actually
indicted. My understanding is that the Bush administration intended to
try to get those first convictions--the first time the case was tried
to a hung jury, an 11-1 split, as I understood it, for guilt. The
second time they got the 105 counts of conviction against the five
individuals. And their intent was, if they could get those
prosecutions, get those judgments, get those findings of guilt, then it
would proceed on with others of the 200-plus named coconspirators. And
in fact, some of the named coconspirators, like CAIR, ISNA, had filed a
motion with the Federal court in Dallas that ended up at the Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. They wanted their names struck
from the pleadings, but the Fifth Circuit in essence said there is a
prima facie case. There is sufficient evidence here to show that these
named coconspirators were coconspirators and therefore, no, they're not
going to have their names struck from the pleadings; they're part of
the evidence. It's clear, or there is evidence to support their being
coconspirators with the Holy Land Foundation. Some folks have been
trying to get documentation from the Holy Land Foundation trial. We've
gotten some, but there were a massive amount of documents that were
turned over to the five defendants, the Holy Land Foundation people.
And since we know beyond a reasonable doubt they were funding
terrorism, there is not really any doubt in most thinking peoples'
minds that those documents all found their way back to Hamas, the
terrorists.
But this administration, led by Attorney General Eric Holder, has
decided they're not going to prosecute any of those people. Even after
the Fifth Circuit said there is prima facie evidence, there is
sufficient evidence to go forward and to keep their names because they
are coconspirators, according to the evidence produced, this
administration has chosen to protect those individuals by not
prosecuting them, much like this administration did in failing to
prosecute the individuals involved in the new Black Panther movement--
who one African American involved in the civil rights movement of the
sixties said was the worst case of voting rights abuses that he had
ever seen. And yet this Attorney General, who could have gotten a
judgment and prevented at least these two individuals from ever
appearing at a voting place like this and intimidating voters, chose to
water down the judgment with one so that he just didn't go back to that
same voting place in the next election. And with the other, who was
certainly, from the videotape, involved in violating people's civil
rights, didn't even take the judgment against him. And then to turn
around and refuse to prosecute people who there is sufficient evidence
to show that they are funding terrorism is horrendous.
There is an article, December 7, ``Holy Land Foundation Hamas Support
Convictions Affirmed.'' And this is from Andrew McCarthy, who was the
prosecutor in the first World Trade Center prosecution, 1993, when the
attempt was made to blow up the World Trade Center the first time,
successfully prosecuted. And at the time, America didn't realize we
were in a war. We were in a war, but only one side knew that they were
in a war, and that was the radical Islamists.
As Mr. McCarthy indicates, the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit,
upheld the convictions of five jihadists behind the Holy Land
Foundation, the piggybank set up by the Brotherhood in the U.S. under
the guise of charity to fund Hamas to the tune of tens of millions of
dollars during the deadly Intifada. The three-judge panel's unanimous
170-page opinion recounts that Hamas was created by Brotherhood
operatives--that's Muslim Brotherhood--in 1987 as the Brotherhood's
``Palestinian branch.'' Thereafter, ``the Muslim Brotherhood directed
its worldwide chapters to establish so-called `Palestinian committees'
to support Hamas from abroad.''
McCarthy continues:
In the U.S., the ``Palestine Committee'' was led by Mousa
Abu Marzook (who for a time in the early nineties actually
ran Hamas from his home in Virginia). The Palestine Committee
created not only the Holy Land Foundation but a number of
other Islamist entities in the U.S. The leaders of one of
those entities, the Islamic Association for Palestine,
subsequently created CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic
Relations, which was cited as an unindicted coconspirator in
the case.
Mr. McCarthy goes on to point out that documents recovered by the FBI
at the home of a Brotherhood operative established the Brotherhood's
overarching role in the Hamas support scheme, including bylaws showing
the Brotherhood had directed the collection of donations for the
Islamic Resistance Movement, which is Hamas.
{time} 2020
Also recovered at the time was the internal memorandum in which the
Brotherhood's American leadership asserted:
[[Page H8348]]
The Ikhwan [i.e., the Brotherhood] must understand that
their work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating
and destroying the Western civilization from within and
`sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands
of the believers, so that it is eliminated and God's religion
is made victorious over all other religions.
And, in fact, you get a copy of the Fifth Circuit's opinion, there
are a number of interesting things addressed by the Fifth Circuit with
regard to the Holy Land Foundation. The Fifth Circuit said:
We are satisfied that independent evidence also established
the existence of a joint venture or combination among the
declarants and the defendants to support Hamas through the
Holy Land Foundation and the zakat committees. For example,
participants at the Philadelphia meeting discussed Hamas and
its control of the zakat committees. The participants
referenced the importance of the Holy Land Foundation in the
Committee's goals, and they identified as ``ours'' various
zakat committees to which Holy Land Foundation donated funds.
The Government also introduced evidence of numerous financial
transactions and personal contact between the defendants and
Hamas leader Marzook, who was listed in the Elbarasse and
Ashqar documents as chairman of the Palestine Committee.
Marzook also had in his personal phone book the contact
information for Baker, Elashi, El-Mezain and Elbarasse.
Further, Hamas leader Mishal spoke at a meeting attended by
Baker, Elashi, El-Mezain and Ashqar about supporting Hamas.
According to Shorbagi, who was present, El-Mezain led a
break-out group at that meeting to discuss the financial
issue of raising money. Moreover, Shorbagi specifically
testified from personal knowledge that the Holy Land
Foundation was part of Hamas.
Well, the Fifth Circuit, talking about the Holy Land Foundation
trial, said the evidence at issue was offered to show the defendant's
connection to terrorists and his predisposition to terrorist
activities.
It goes on to cite much of the evidence. And the Court says:
The evidence in this case does show a relationship between
the defendants and Elbarasse and Ashqar, as well as their
connections to Hamas leaders.
It goes on to say:
The record here showed the defendants' joint participation
in a shared undertaking involving the Committee--that's the
Palestine Committee--and the documents were properly
admitted.
The Court goes on, makes numerous findings, discusses the law, but
also says:
The defendants here ``are wrong to suggest that it is
necessary to know the precise identity of'' the declarants in
the Elbarasse and Ashqar documents.
They go on to conclude:
It's ``inescapable'' that the declarants were joint
venturers with the defendants in support of Hamas through the
Palestine Committee.
It goes on to cite some examples there. The Fifth Circuit did an
excellent job of going through reciting the evidence, and they said
this:
They were also consistent with security ``guidelines''
found among Holy Land Foundation's materials stored at
Infocom, which directed that there should be cover stories
agreed upon to explain things like meetings and travel.
Now, if this group that worked through the Holy Land Foundation to
send money to Hamas were perfectly innocent, then it seems interesting
that the Foundation's policies and guidelines that were found in
Virginia in a sub-basement which contained much of the Muslim
Brotherhood's archives would say the following--and this is from a
footnote on page 84 of the Fifth Circuit's decision. They said:
The document, which was labeled ``The Foundation's Policies
& Guidelines,'' included comprehensive policies for ensuring
the secrecy of the organization's activity. For example, the
policies directed that documents should be arranged at
meetings so that they could be easily gotten rid of in an
emergency; that measures should be taken before a meeting to
be sure there is no hidden surveillance equipment; that an
alert signal should be given if the location is monitored or
if a member of the committee is followed; and that documents
should be hidden when traveling and a pretext should be
devised in case they are discovered in a search. The
possession of such a document by a purportedly charitable
organization was clearly suspicious.
And the Fifth Circuit there is a master of understatement.
It is amazing what was found in the documentation in Virginia, and
that's after a couple were arrested as they went across the Chesapeake
Bay Bridge, photographing construction columns of the bridge. And on
further search of their home in Virginia, sub-basement, they found the
Muslim Brotherhood archives that gave us so much information.
The trouble is, there were massive numbers of boxes of information.
And as we understand it, much of that was provided to the defendants in
the Holy Land Foundation trial.
I made the request of the Attorney General last week that, since
those documents were provided to defendants who were convicted of
funding terrorism, funneling money to Hamas, that surely the Justice
Department would now allow Congress to see those boxes of documents.
The Attorney General, once again, didn't know what was furnished. He
would look into it.
We need an Attorney General that knows what's going on when there are
organizations in America who are financing, by millions and millions of
dollars, people who are conducting terrorism efforts around the world.
Well, the Attorney General said he'd look into it. An official request
was made at the hearing. And yet, we're waiting to hear from the
Justice Department.
It just seems to make sense to me that if this Justice Department
will provide documentation to people who are part of a terrorist
network, then surely they'll provide it to Congress. But then again,
that remains to be seen.
We had an article here from Fox News on December 7. It reports that
Susan Collins, Senator Susan Collins, on Wednesday blasted the Defense
Department for classifying the Fort Hood massacre as workplace
violence, and suggested political correctness is being placed above the
security of the Nation's Armed Forces at home.
{time} 2030
During a joint session of the Senate and House Homeland Security
Committee on Wednesday, the main Republican referenced a letter from
the Defense Department depicting the Fort Hood shootings as workplace
violence. She criticized the Obama Administration for failing to
identify the threat as radical Islam. Thirteen people were killed and
dozens more were wounded at Fort Hood in 2009, and the number of
alleged plots targeting the military has grown significantly since
then.
Lawmakers said there have been 33 plots against the U.S. military
since September 11, 2001, and 70 percent of those threats have been
since mid-2009, during this administration.
Major Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist who is being held for
the attacks, allegedly was inspired by radical U.S.-born cleric Anwar
al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in late
September and who parenthetically was leading a prayer session of
Capitol Hill Muslim staffers just years before here in our Capitol
complex.
Continuing with the article, the two men exchanged as many as 20
emails, according to U.S. officials, and Awlaki declared Hasan a hero.
Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Connecticut
Independent Senator Joe Lieberman, said the military has become a
direct target of violent Islamic extremism within the United States.
Senator Lieberman's words: ``The stark reality is that the American
servicemember is increasingly in the terrorist scope and not just
overseas in a traditional war setting,'' Lieberman told Fox News before
the start of Wednesday hearings.
In June, two men allegedly plotted to attack a Seattle, Washington,
military installation using guns and grenades. In July, Army Private
Nasar Abdo was accused of planning a second attack at Fort Hood.
With regard to Private Nasar Abdo, it's worth noting that we have
people who have been banned now from briefing our justice officials,
intelligence officials, State Department officials on the threat of
radical Islam. There was even a memo put together provided in this
administration which by name pointed to Army Private Nasar Abdo and
said this guy has been in uniform on Al-Jazeera basically saying he's
going to do what Major Hasan did at Fort Hood. He's going to do it at
Fort Hood.
This administration is so interested in protecting radical Islam and
not offending radical Islam that that memo was trash-canned, never went
anywhere. And the only way this private was stopped was not by our
intelligence community, not by our Justice
[[Page H8349]]
Department, not by our State Department, and not with all of the
information they could have. It was stopped by a gun dealer who just
believed something was wrong, and he notified law enforcement.
Now we know from the 9/11 Commission, I mean, we've known since the
Commission came out with their report, there are hundreds of mentions
of things like ``jihad,'' ``Islam,'' not that there is any war on
Islam. There is not. Thank God that the vast majority of Muslims know
that we're not at war with them and they are not at war with us. But it
is insanity not to protect ourselves and educate ourselves on that
small group, that small percentage--it's a large group--of radical
Islamists who have declared war on us.
Now this administration, though originally after 9/11 the Bush
administration, the independent 9/11 Commission that was appointed,
came out saying this is a result of radical Islam. Now the Justice
Department, the intelligence community, the new lexicon will not allow
the usage in training of words like ``Islam,'' ``jihad,'' the very
things that led to over 3,000 Americans being killed and brought about
wars that killed thousands more.
The war goes on; but as one individual who is fighting for us said,
this administration is making us blind ourselves so we cannot see the
people we are fighting.
There was a conference at Langley, CIA headquarters, that was
canceled by this administration. Why? Because CAIR complained to the
White House, and the report is that that's how the conference was
stopped. CAIR complained to the administration, and they stopped it;
and now the administration has gone through and come out with a new
methodology of selecting people who will be allowed to brief our
intelligence officials, will be allowed to brief our justice officials,
will be allowed to brief our military; and they will not be allowed to
use terms like ``radical Islam,'' that those are, in this
administration's mind, hateful terminology rather than helping us
classify and figure out who it is that is on our side and who it is
that is against us.
There's even a report out that this administration now in the last
week is going to create a new category on the terrorist watch list
which would be called ``former military detainees.'' If that ended up
being true, makes you wonder why they'd create a new category now. Are
they about to release military detainees and so when they come into the
country, or they're in our country trying to fly, we'll know who it is
trying to kill us here?
This administration has blinded the people that are trying to fight
the war against radical Islam, which is at war with us. We've seen to
it that it looks like a procedure in both Libya and in Egypt are going
to likely result in radical Islamists controlling those countries. The
Middle East has become a powder keg far more so than it ever has. And
if you go back and look at the President's speech, back I believe it
was in May, recently looked at a transcript where our own President
said Israel is going to have to defend itself by itself.
Now, thankfully, as we saw when Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke here
in this body, we had both sides of the aisle repeatedly stand in
support of the things Prime Minister Netanyahu was saying.
Israel has been our friend; they've been our ally. Muslims are
allowed to worship Islam in Israel just as Muslims are allowed to do
here in the U.S. It would be nice if Christians were allowed to worship
in Muslim countries, but their definition of freedom does not allow
people to freely worship whom they wish. It only allows them the
freedom to worship under Islam.
Even in Afghanistan, the last Christian church has now closed. The
kind of freedom that American lives and treasure brought to Afghanistan
now means you can't have an open Christian church in Afghanistan.
Then we find out this administration was indirectly negotiating with
terrorists, with the Taliban, with regard to Afghanistan about a year
and a half ago. There were a few of us that met with leaders of the
Northern Alliance a year and a half or so ago, and they're the first
ones that told us your administration is indirectly meeting and
negotiating with terrorists, with the Taliban, the people we fought
with you to defeat.
{time} 2040
After we defeated them in 3 or 4 months, then we started putting in
tens of thousands of soldiers--military--into Afghanistan. We went from
being embedded to being occupiers, and we oversaw the creation of a
constitution in Afghanistan that says sharia law will reign, which
means there will be no Christian churches in Afghanistan when true
sharia law is in charge.
One of the things that was found in the archives of the Muslim
Brotherhood is a 10-year goal that began in 2005. For one thing,
anybody who raises any issue about the small, tiny percentage of
Muslims who are at war with us, the radical Islamists, is to be called
an ``Islamaphobe.'' That term originated with the Organization of the
Islamic Conference, composed of 57 states. They're the ones who came up
with that. They came up with the notion of branding anyone an
Islamaphobe who says anything negative about radical Islam's trying to
destroy America.
So any time people see the term Islamaphobe or Islamaphobia, they
should know exactly where it originated. It originated with the OIC,
the 57 states of the OIC, which are also helping fund through other
entities and individuals courses at some of our Nation's formerly best
schools that have shown they're for sale, that their souls are for
sale, in that if someone will give them enough money, then they will
put on seminars and put on classes that will also call people
Islamaphobes and talk about Islamaphobia--about anyone who raises any
issue about radical Islam's trying to destroy our way of life.
The goal mentioned from 2005 is part of a 10-year goal, by 2015, to
have subverted our U.S. Constitution to sharia law; and the method for
doing that--we've been seeing it take place--is to subvert America's
First Amendment rights to sharia.
One of the ways that that is being effectuated is when some nut burns
a Koran in Florida, then people get killed in some riot in Afghanistan.
Then even fine, upstanding Americans say, See, we probably need a law
that prohibits the burning of a Koran, that prohibits saying anything
bad about the Koran or radical Islam because that's going to get
Americans killed. So let's have a law banning people from saying
anything negative or from burning a Koran.
Never mind the fact that, in our country's history, we find out it's
not against the Constitution to burn an American flag, that it's not
against the Constitution to burn a Bible, that it's not against the
Constitution to take a cross, symbolizing that thing on which Jesus was
crucified, and put it in a beaker of urine. In fact, the Federal
Government will even give money to have that done. But if anybody says
anything negative about the Koran, let's make that a crime.
There are well-intentioned people in this Capitol who are thinking
maybe we need a law like that; and when people push that kind of law,
they are moving to subvert our United States First Amendment rights
under the Constitution to sharia law. Once that happens, then that goal
can be checked off of the goals that were established by the Muslim
Brotherhood in 2005. They're hoping to get that done by 2015.
A great way to do that is to brand people like me or people in the
Justice Department or trainers who would teach people about the ideas
of radical Islam as Islamaphobes and continue to have courses they fund
to encourage laws to prevent Islamaphobia so that they have laws that
prevent anybody from saying anything negative about sharia.
Never mind, even on a television program today, an atheist called
Christianity a hate religion. He said it's hateful, basically, in
effect, because Jesus, he said, created a hell and that that's why we
shouldn't admire Christmas. Well, some of us know that Jesus was not
likely born in December, but more likely in the springtime, when
shepherds are on the hills.
But to declare what our Founders knew would be an important core
building block of this country, when they knew that the best things
that ever happened to this country would come as a result of the
reliance on the
[[Page H8350]]
teachings of Jesus and the teachings in the Bible, you had comments
like George Washington in his resignation, saying--and I'll close with
this:
He prayed that Americans would follow the teaching of the Divine
Author of our blessed religion without a humble limitation of whose
example in these things we can never hope to be a happy Nation.
He was right.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________