[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 25 (Friday, February 15, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H572-H576]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 50 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield such time as he may
consume to my friend from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer).
Federal Permit Streamlining Pilot Project
Mr. CRAMER. Thank you to my colleague from Texas.
Mr. Speaker, today, I dropped in the hopper my first bill as a Member
of the United States House of Representatives. And while it's a simple
bill, it's a big day for me. It's a bill that simply corrects an
oversight in previous legislation.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 established a Federal Permit
Streamlining Pilot Project to improve the processing of oil and gas
permitting for onshore Federal lands. The Miles City, Montana, BLM
field office was included in this pilot project. But unknown to the
drafters of the legislation, the Miles City office also serves North
and South Dakota. Without the Dakotas included in the language of the
law, North and South Dakota permits are excluded from this program.
Permitting to drill on Federal lands has exceeded 225 days for the
past 4 years when State permits on non-Federal lands in North Dakota
take only 10 days to process. With the passage of this bill, more land
will be opened to a program that seeks to reduce this sluggish pace,
and oil and natural gas explorers and their many supporting businesses
will have more work to do sooner.
Beyond the immediate benefits of this bill, Mr. Speaker, I hope it
begins
[[Page H573]]
a conversation on more extensive reform of the permitting process for
Federal land. The new oil and gas revolution in the United States has
the potential to lead us out of this economic slump. I believe
America's national security and America's economic security are tied
directly to America's energy security, and I urge my colleagues to pass
this bill as my friends work to pass the same legislation in the
Senate.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on what my friend from
Arizona (Mr. Franks) was talking about with regard to Iran. It should
be pretty clear to most people that Iran is a threat to any group of
people who believe that we do not need a religious zealot telling us
how we have to live; that we do not need someone taking over, arising
out of the chaos to create a one-world caliphate under which we have to
live with a ruling religious zealot making sure that we do not get
involved in any type of self-government that they believe inevitably
leads to depravity. So some of us don't think it's a good idea to give
Iran more power to carry out the threats of wiping out Israel, which
they refer to as the ``little Satan,'' or to wipe out the United
States, which their leaders refer to as the ``big Satan.''
Yet we have nominated by the President of the United States a man who
thinks we need to cozy up to Iran. His idea of national security is
cozying up to a country who's made very clear they want to destroy
Israel and they want to destroy us. So for those yesterday who saw that
the Senate did not move forward, was not able to get the votes to move
forward on a confirmation vote on former Senator Hagel, they must be
very upset if they think cozying up to Iran and betraying Israel
further than this administration already has is a good idea--get closer
to Iran, further betray Israel, yesterday was a bad day, and you should
be very angry with most of the Senate Republicans, and especially my
friend, Senator Ted Cruz. Because they have to be concerned about our
ally, Israel. They have to be concerned about the threats of madmen
running the country of Iran.
So look, though, at the speeches that have belatedly come out after
all the things were made public. And then this stuff keeps trickling
out. Another speech saying, Hey, let's put a consulate in Iran--while
they're trying to destroy us.
{time} 1210
Apparently, some people just cannot remember past 10 or 12 years. I
think it's very important to remember our history. In 1979, I was at
Fort Benning, Georgia, in the United States Army, and we were paying
attention to what was happening. Some of us haven't forgotten what was
happening.
As we have seen new things arise, as we have seen the horrors of what
is going on in the Middle East, it is just heartbreaking to see people
proposed as leaders who absolutely refuse to learn from history: a man
proposed for Secretary of Defense who cannot recall what those of us
who were in the military in 1979 recall, and that is that we had a
President in Jimmy Carter who thought it was a good idea for the Shah
of Iran to be gone--not a nice man, had not treated well the people of
Iran, but had been able to hold down the radical Islamic jihadists that
want to terrorize everybody who don't believe exactly like they do.
In fact, it was President Carter that, as Ayatollah Khomeini came
back from exile and took over control of Iran, it was President Carter
that hailed him as a man of peace, not realizing that what President
Carter, by his actions and inactions, had allowed to happen was the
arising of the radical Islamic jihadists that would bring about, for
over 30 years to come, the deaths of thousands and thousands of
Americans, some civilians, some from foreign countries, but all
innocent; some military; some having to fight the people that President
Carter, in his naivete--he had no ill will, he wanted what was best for
America, but he was just ignorant of what he was doing. He was a
President about whom could have been said, Forgive him, Lord, he knows
not what he has done, and he led to the consequences we're suffering
still today.
Radical Islam is not our friend. They want to eliminate us from the
map. They think that moral depravity is the rule in this Western
Civilization and that we need a grand imam. They're anticipating the
12th imam to come and establish the global caliphate.
Now we have a Secretary of Defense proposed who wants to repeat the
same errors that led to the deaths of so many Americans. He wants to
put a consulate in Tehran. He thinks that would be a grand idea to help
our relations. I don't personally understand how it will help the
United States' relations to put a consulate back in Tehran, with
leaders of Iran saying they want to wipe out infidels like those that
would be put at the consulate, like those who were at the consulate in
Benghazi, only to have that horrible chapter and nightmare for over a
year replayed before new generations.
Yet there are people like Majority Leader Harry Reid, who say it's
games being played, schoolboy games being played by people who have a
genuine interest in not repeating the errors of our recent history.
Is 34 years ago so far away that we cannot remember, that we want a
Secretary of Defense that thinks it's a good idea to try to placate
radical jihadists? About the only thing that Senator Hagel hadn't done
is repeat the phrase ``man of peace,'' talking about the leader of
Iran.
So I am very grateful to all of those, like Ted Cruz, who stood up
yesterday and said there's too much information we do not know and what
we know causes concern. Now, we have some Senators that say we have to
have information about Benghazi and what really happened before we can
go forward in voting on this nomination. Some say: What does that have
to do with defense, and, therefore, what does it have to do with the
Secretary of Defense?
There are some that might be tempted to repeat Secretary Clinton's
question of: What difference does it make? As a history major in
college who continues to read and study all the history I can--history
in the making now--I would like for the Secretary of State and
Secretary of Defense to be able to recall 34 years and note the
mistakes that have been made that got Americans killed.
1979 was an act of war against the United States. Instead of
defending ourselves and putting down what had occurred in the attack on
our Embassy--which under everybody's definition of international law is
an act of war--instead of doing that, we had a weak administration that
simply begged the Iranians to let our people go--please. That is seen
as weakness when you're dealing with terrorists, when you're dealing
with people who promote terrorism, when you're dealing with people who
pay for terrorism and encourage terrorism. That is what we have
reigning in Iran.
So it's a legitimate concern about who the Secretary of Defense will
be, and will it be a throwback to the Carter years of thinking the best
way to deal with radical Islamic jihadists is to give them whatever
they want. That's been tried; it doesn't work. Heck, this
administration is still trying to buy off the radical Islamic jihadists
that make up the Taliban. This administration has gone so far as to
say, look, you don't even have to agree to quit killing Americans if
you'll just agree to sit down with us and negotiate. If you'll just do
that, you can keep killing American soldiers. That's okay, if you'll
just agree to sit down with us. And while you're killing American
soldiers, we'll show our good will. We'll buy you an incredibly nice
office in Qatar that will give you an international presence and will
give you credibility around the world as you keep trying to kill
Americans and continue to actually kill Americans.
About 3 years ago, Dana Rohrabacher asked me to go with him to meet
with Northern Alliance leaders, and we met with them. These were
leaders who put their lives on the line to fight with and for America.
They're Muslims, but they did not like the idea of radical Islamic
jihadists being in control of Afghanistan. They were and are the enemy
of our enemy. So with less than 500 people, 500 Americans put into
Afghanistan--after we figured out that's where the attacks emanated
because that's where the training occurred, that's where the terrorist
camps were--less than 500 Americans,
[[Page H574]]
Special Ops and intelligence, those 4 months that followed should be
hailed as one of the greatest days for American Special Ops and
intelligence. The intelligence community has made plenty of mistakes--
continues to make some--but that was a great time in their history and
our history.
{time} 1220
Without a single loss of American lives, the Northern Alliance, these
tribal groups that this administration now refers to as war criminals
because they defeated our enemies for us, they fought and defeated the
Taliban. By early 2002, the Taliban had been routed. Some people forget
nowadays that during the course of the Iraq war, they would refer back
to Afghanistan and say, now, that's how you fight in a foreign country
like Afghanistan. You let their patriots who know the country, know the
terrain and know the tactics of our enemy, let them fight them.
We gave them arms, we gave them aerial support, and they defeated the
Taliban for us.
Then, as our Northern Alliance allies told Dana and me--Steve King
was there for the first meeting--they told us, Look, then, after we had
defeated the Taliban for you, then you tell us we've got to turn back
in the arms that gave us the ability to defeat the Taliban because you
told us, Look, we're the United States. Now that the Taliban has been
defeated, we've got you covered. There won't be any more problems.
We're in charge.
Then we added tens of thousands of people to Afghanistan and became
occupiers in Afghanistan. Then, again, those who know history, and I do
mean distant and more recent history, you know that occupiers really
don't do well in that part of the world. Someone said, Well, Alexander
the Great conquered the Afghanistan area. And my reply would be, He
died on the way out. I don't consider that a real great victory.
But we had a grand strategy letting the enemy of our enemies, the
Northern Alliance, defeat the Taliban for us. And, now, 11 years later,
we have been occupying Afghanistan, and we forced a constitution on
them that required a centralized government in a place where
centralized governments have not done well. We forced that on them, and
we included the provision that made Afghanistan all under shari'a law.
The results of that grand victory in early 2002 and our ominous
occupation for the 11 years since has been that the last Christian
public worship service has happened. There are no more public Christian
worship services in the country where we have lost so many valiant
American heroes. The last person who admits to being Jewish in
Afghanistan has left--that's what we've been advised--all under our
watch and what we have done in that country.
The President announced right here just Tuesday night of this week
about his plans to draw down American troops and to be all out within
the next couple of years. I would humbly submit that if he had a better
plan, and it is very simple, we could be out of there within the next 6
months. It would be far more effective. As our Northern Alliance
friends, former Vice President Massoud, who knows about losing loved
ones having lost his brother, the Lion of Panjshir, great hero of
Afghanistan, he knows about losing his father-in-law to the Taliban to
a man, a Taliban member who was invited to sit down with Massoud's
father-in-law to talk about potential peace. Karzai had appointed
Massoud's father-in-law to be his peace emissary to deal with, sit down
and negotiate with the Taliban to try to work out an agreement.
So the Taliban emissary for peace came in to sit down with Massoud's
father-in-law and blew himself and Massoud's father-in-law to pieces--
great gesture of peace. That's the kind of people we're dealing with.
That's the same kind of people that are in leadership in Iran that
Chuck Hagel wants to go have better relationships with.
I would submit that whoever he was willing to see in Tehran as our
emissary there, as our ambassador there, would have a high probability
of suffering the same consequences that Massoud's father-in-law did,
the same that his brother did. His brother, such a great warrior,
political figure, great charisma, in his case, he was asked if he would
give an interview to a television crew. He consented, not being aware
that the television camera was full of explosives and that the
cameraman and the reporter were willing to blow themselves up so they
could kill such a great Afghani hero. So they did, and he's gone. How
many Americans are we going to have to continue to lose in Afghanistan?
I talked to Billy and Karen Vaughn, the parents of great American
patriot Aaron Vaughn, a SEAL Team Six member, one of the SEAL teams
that went after Osama bin Laden. They don't want publicity while they
are SEAL members actively. They don't seek it, don't want it, and
there's always been the agreement that no administration will out who
goes in and does the kind of actions that SEAL Team Six did, taking out
Osama bin Laden. That's classified information, who went and got him,
and then we have the Vice President of the United States stand up in
front of a crowd and congratulate the SEAL team for taking him out.
One SEAL team member, his father, he's deceased now, but his father
said that his daughter-in-law called and said within an hour of the
Vice President's outing SEAL Team Six, they had a marine guard outside
her quarters because they knew this administration just put a big red
target on his entire family.
Billy and Karen say after that happened, Aaron called and said, Mom
and Dad, there's been chatter. You're not safe. Take any reference to
me off Facebook, off any e-mail, off anything. You cannot have
references that you're connected with me, or you will be a target.
These people are ruthless.
So after SEAL Team Six was outed and having visited Afghanistan, I
was surprised, as widespread as Taliban reach has become again in
Afghanistan, missions were run through the Afghan Government so that
the Afghans would have known exactly where SEAL Team Six was and where
they were being sent.
When one of the surviving parents of one of our heroic SEAL Team Six
members asked at the briefing as to what had happened to their loved
ones in the Afghanistan ambush of our troops, of our SEAL Team Six
members, one of the parents asked, Look, since you knew this was such a
hot spot, since you knew this information had been cleared through the
Afghan Government, which has Taliban running through it, since you knew
all these things about how desperate the situation was in that space,
why didn't you just send in a drone? And the admiral briefing the
family members said, Because we're trying to win their hearts and
minds.
Now, that sounds like something the new Secretary of Defense might
say, since he's all for buddying back up to Iran while they want to
destroy our way of life and all Americans: Yeah, we're trying to win
their hearts and minds, so let's send more people into Tehran. That's
the proposal, or was the proposal, of Secretary of Defense nominee
Hagel: Let's send some people, yeah, maybe they'll get blown up. That's
what he should have said, because there's a good chance they will.
{time} 1230
Some of us warned about the dangers of helping the revolutionaries in
Libya. Qadhafi had blood on his hands. But ever since 2003, he had
helped suppress radical Islamic jihadist activities. He had become an
ally. His own son had been here negotiating with this White House.
Yet the White House has no problem, as they did with our Northern
Alliance allies, throwing them under the bus, throwing Mubarak under
the bus, throwing Qadhafi under the bus, and even our own Ambassador
was a sacrificial lamb.
They should have known. Some of us pointed out, look, this is not a
good idea to be helping revolutionaries in Libya when we already know
there are al Qaeda involved in this revolution. We don't know how
widespread it is, but you can't be helping people that want to destroy
us. You're going to give them more arms, you're going to give them more
power, they'll have a greater reach to wipe out Israel, or try--and to
wipe out us, or to try.
But this President didn't listen. His Cabinet members didn't listen.
We were told he didn't care what Congress thought. He was listening
more to European members who wanted help protecting their oil they were
buying from
[[Page H575]]
Libya, and because of the OIC, the 57 states that make up the OIC.
I'm like the President. I get mixed up. He said he had been to all 57
States, our President had, and I get confused. Do we have 57 States and
the OIC have 50? Or they have 57, we have 50? It's confusing. I
understand the President having that problem, but apparently they have
57 States because they count Palestine.
They don't learn from history. And as a result we helped--we provided
weapons--those are the latest reports--and some of those weapons then
found their way to Algeria where more Americans were killed even more
recently than 9/11 of last year--with people that we helped empower so
they could go about killing more people.
I like President Obama as a person. He's a good family man. I was
hoping that with all the disclosures that have come out since 9/11 of
last year and since we now know from former Secretary Panetta and from
other witnesses that after the President learned that our Ambassador
was under attack, he may have known that he had already been abducted
and that a long battle was being undertaken by radicals against our
Americans in Benghazi. We now know the President did nothing else. He
said, well, do what you can, in essence, and went home. Or maybe he was
home when he talked to them. And did nothing else.
I have no idea if the President required a sleep aid that night; but
if he did, anybody else in America that has trouble sleeping, you
better get what he had, because it works well--how the President of the
United States could sleep that night as the Ambassador that he put in
place, that he put in harm's way, was either under attack, had already
been kidnapped, being brutalized, unspeakable things being done to his
person, his body.
I remember Senator Clinton running a commercial back in 2008 that
asked the question, Who do you want to take that phone call at 3 a.m.?
This would have been exactly the kind of situation, except there was no
phone call at 3 a.m. The phone call had been at 5-or-so in the
afternoon. And there was no effort to find out, by the way, what
happened to Ambassador Stevens that I put in harm's way, considered the
equivalent of a four-star general in the civilian service, to awake to
find out the next day that it had been over 7 hours of attacks, that
our last American that we know of killed was killed in the last hour of
that 7-hour attack.
And I can appreciate the loyalty of Cabinet members, Joint Chiefs,
trying to protect the President, coming forward and saying, well, you
know, we didn't have planes. They would have had to be refueled; they
would have had to be armed.
Well, I would submit if we can't get a jet that will fly 600 miles or
700 miles an hour, 600 miles or so to Libya, if we can't get them there
in an hour, an hour and a half, then it's time to clean house at the
top of our Defense Department and get people that can get planes to
help our embattled American civilians and Ambassador, get them some
help.
I mean, I would think that if you're concerned enough to sit and
watch footage of the hurricane coverage, people that you didn't put in
the harm's way they were in, that you would at least be concerned about
the people you did put in harm's way.
And certainly the President and Secretary Clinton and Secretary
Panetta, certainly those people did not want them hurt. But it's
important to learn from history. It's important to understand what
difference it makes as to what happens about fiascoes that get
Americans killed. It is important. It does make a difference.
We've read reports that Secretary--Ambassador now--Rice may have been
involved with the decision not to send more security to our Embassy
that was attacked back in the nineties that got Americans killed. And
apparently no one learned from that, because if someone in the nineties
after our Embassy had been attacked had had adequate hearings and
gotten to the bottom of that, they would have learned, uh-oh, what
difference does it make? Well, it makes a difference because now we
know when an Embassy requests more security and we refuse to provide
it, there's a good chance it's going to get hit and they're going to
get killed.
And that would have been very helpful to have had that conventional
wisdom and that institutional knowledge on 9/10 of 2011 when in Egypt
we were hearing that, gee, if you don't release the Blind Sheikh,
you're going to get attacked, your Embassy and Embassies may get
attacked. And if we had had people in this administration with
institutional knowledge from the nineties, and from '79, they would
have said, you know what, on 9/9 of 2011, they're giving us a warning,
you're about to be attacked unless you release the Blind Sheikh.
We weren't releasing the Blind Sheikh and I hope and pray we don't.
He is a killer and will kill again. He doesn't carry them out. He plots
and plans them and gives instructions. And under all criminal law in
the U.S. or abroad, you plan it, you instruct on it and if your
instructions are followed and people are killed, then you committed
murder as well.
So the Blind Sheikh is a murderer.
{time} 1240
If we'd learned from those lessons of the past, the difference it
would have made is Ambassador Stevens should still be alive today, and
he could be coming before Congress and explaining what goes wrong so
that we'd know the difference that would make, which is that, in the
future, we could save other Ambassadors and other consulate workers.
Now, I've read accounts that, apparently, the former SEAL team
members--the two who responded--had been advised, Don't go. So it has
to be a little bit hurtful for their families to know that their sons,
their husbands, their brothers had been ordered not to go help at
Benghazi and that they disobeyed their instructions and went and helped
anyway and that, as people came before Congress to testify, the
military, having given them the instructions not to go--the civilian
service giving them instructions not to go--took credit for their
disregarding their instructions and going and trying to save lives
anyway. How ironic.
American lives are still at stake in North Africa, in the Middle
East, in Afghanistan, around the world, and here at home. If we
continue to put people in place in decisionmaking positions who do not
understand that you cannot buy off a schoolyard bully and that you
cannot buy off radical Islamic jihadists who want to destroy you, we're
going to continue to have Americans lose their lives. I've mentioned on
this floor before what one American soldier in Afghanistan told me over
there.
He said, Look, I don't mind laying down my life for my country, but
please don't waste it.
We have such heroes in the service of the United States, and they're
asking, Please, we'll follow orders. Just don't waste our willingness
to lay down our lives for others.
But that's the American tradition.
We were talking about some people this week even going back to
Hawaii's statue just in the hallway directly below where I am right
here, directly below. Father Damien was a Catholic priest who'd heard
about the lepers being thrown off ships, being put on an island in
Hawaii to die, having no quality of life--horrors of existence. So he
went to give them a quality of life, to give them a society so they
could live out their last diseased years. Eventually, as he knew he
would, he acquired leprosy and died.
The words that are at the top of the plaque on Father Damien's
statue, which is right below me, apply to our military members, apply
to those in our U.S. service, because the words on those top two lines
of that plaque say:
Greater love hath no one than this: that a man lay down his
life for his friends, John 15:13.
We've got people willing to lay down their lives for their country.
We would beg the President to appoint a Secretary of Defense who will
not waste American lives in trying to buddy up to radical Islamic
jihadists in control in Iran, who will not demonize any further than
former Senator Hagel already has the Israelis and the Jewish members of
an administration who just want to protect our country, because we find
out in prior speeches, in prior comments from the Secretary of Defense
nominee Hagel, that he has complained before that one of the big
problems is that the State Department is controlled by Jews.
That's fine by me--they're Americans. They care about America, but
[[Page H576]]
that's a problem for him. It's not a problem for me as long as any
Jewish or any Caucasian or any minority serving his country understands
Israel is our friend--they're our ally--and they're the greatest
democracy anywhere in that area.
So let's don't disparage our ally. Let's don't think we can throw
Israel under the bus as we did Mubarak, as we did Qadhafi, as we did
the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, as this administration has done
with others. Don't throw Israel under the bus. Let's stop doing that to
our friends, and let's recognize the real enemy.
I hope and pray the President will withdraw this nomination and, if
he doesn't, that we will continue to have Senators to say, you can't
have somebody serve as a Cabinet-level position, like former Senator
Hagel, who thinks Israel is the problem and that Jews in the State
Department are the problem and that Iran has a group of leaders in it
that we need to buddy up to. If the President will do that, he will see
a welcoming of bipartisanship. He will see it explode on both sides of
the aisle, welcoming the President's doing the right thing by our
friend Israel.
If the President refuses to do that, I still hope and pray that the
people will stand as firmly as did the Republicans who voted against
bringing Chuck Hagel to the floor for a vote for a nomination. I hope
they'll stand firm. I'm so proud of the new Senator, Ted Cruz. He's
doing great. Lindsey Graham made some great points yesterday, and I
hope he'll stand by those. He's a good man. He just needs to stand by
what he said yesterday. If we do that, we will help make the world a
better place, and we'll show the country true bipartisanship.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________