[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 119 (Wednesday, September 11, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H5494-H5497]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TODAY IS A DAY OF REMEMBRANCE
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Valadao). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, this is a day of remembrance. It is a
solemn day. It is a day that brings back tragic memories for all of us.
And then, in some ways, it brings great hope.
We all remember where we were on
9/11/2001. And I know there are some that say, I just can't take seeing
what happened that day; I don't want to see any more video. And I would
only submit, it is important not to forget.
To fly planes into buildings, use them as bombs, is an act of war,
just as dropping bombs in Pearl Harbor was an act of war. Even though
there were no boots on the ground at Pearl Harbor, even though there
were no boots on the ground in New York City or Washington, D.C., using
bombs, whether planes or missiles are personally set, they're acts of
war.
I wasn't aware until this past weekend that there's only been one
time when article 5 of our NATO alliance has been triggered. That
article of the NATO alliance is a mandatory requirement, and it
requires that when any signatory to NATO, any member of NATO is
attacked in an act of war, then all other members of NATO must take it
as if they've been attacked in an act of war and go to war against
whoever attacked one of the NATO members.
The only time that's been triggered was 9/11 of 2001 when the United
States was attacked. Because of the treaty, it's not a voluntary act on
behalf of the member states of NATO. It doesn't require the request of
the attacked country.
But it had gone without my notice, but the countries that were part
of NATO immediately, that day, 9/11/2001, were instantly at war with
whatever country attacked us. The problem was we didn't know who
attacked us; and, as a result, it did end up eventually causing other
countries to go with us into Afghanistan and Iraq.
Actually, within about 4 months of going into Afghanistan, with less
than 500 special ops and intelligence individuals, the Taliban was
defeated. And then came our mistake, where we added tens of thousands
of American troops and allied troops and we became occupiers instead of
those that defeated the Taliban, and left the country back in the hands
of those who should have had it.
But 9/11 should truly evoke the emotions that we had that day, as
people were trapped 1,000 feet or so above the street surface and had
to make a decision, do I want to burn up in a horrible burning death,
or do I jump to my death?
I think most all of us resolved that day, including those of us who
were not in Congress, that it should be our job, as a Nation, to ensure
that Americans were never put to a choice like that again, ever.
Actions we knew had to be taken, and authorization of use of military
force was passed. In the haste to get it passed to give the President
authority to go forward, it had far too much flexibility. So we have
been able successfully to rein some of that in in the past months. More
work has to be done.
But in the Middle East, the question is coming up in the last few
days from leaders over there who did not wish to be identified
publicly, but the questions were asked:
Do the people in your government not understand that on 9/11 you had
radical Islamists, Muslim Brotherhood people, al Qaeda, trained by the
Taliban, but Muslim Brotherhood at the core, that attacked you?
And you went to war, you said, against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and
that the Muslim Brotherhood supports them. And you're at war with them.
And then do you not remember that that's who you've been at war with?
And this administration, the Obama administration, has said they're
not engaged in a war on terror. They're only at war with al Qaeda. And
they mistakenly thought al Qaeda was on the run. Well, if they were on
the run, it was a run toward killing more people.
And these leaders in the Middle East have asked: If you could
remember that, then why did you come into Egypt and demand the ouster
of your ally, with whom you had agreements, with whom you were working,
with whom you were making sure, as best that you could, and the
Egyptian leader Mubarak could, that he would try to maintain as much
peace with Israel as possible?
So you had all these agreements with him, just like you do with us.
And then Qadhafi was a bad man. But after 2003, when you invaded
Iraq, it scared him so badly that he became your ally. You had many
agreements with him, he and family members, particularly family
members. I remember meeting his son here, who said he was
[[Page H5495]]
meeting with people in the administration, was going around Capitol
Hill meeting. I didn't have a meeting with him, other than just meeting
him, someone introducing him. But this was Qadhafi's family here
because after 2003, he had become our ally.
And as some in the Middle East have pointed out, he was doing
everything he could to provide you information with who the terrorists
were. He was your partner. You had agreements with him. You had signed
agreements, verbal agreements. He was your partner, and you turned on
him.
And even Assad, as bad a guy as most people knew he was and is, you
had Secretary Clinton out there saying, oh, Assad's a reformer. He's
going to be okay.
But we have watched you, with the Northern Alliance, with Mubarak,
with Qadhafi, with all of these people who were your friends, your
allies with whom you had agreements, and you tossed them aside and ran
them out of office, only to give control to the Muslim Brotherhood.
We do not understand what you're doing; and privately we ask among
ourselves here in the Middle East, Which one of us, your allies, will
you turn against next?
Which one of us will you decide is a throwaway, you don't need us
anymore?
We're concerned, but we don't want to tell people because we don't
want them to take that as a sign they need to be coming after us and us
be the ones they discard next.
That's no way to have an international policy. It's no way to be the
greatest peacemaker in the world, when your allies worry because
they've seen you completely disregard signed agreements, verbal
agreements, pats on the back.
I mean, you know, when you see the videos of our great Secretary of
State Kerry sitting with Assad, having lavish meals and meetings and
then all of a sudden he's such a horrendous ogre that you've got to
hurt him somehow.
And this stuff about America is the only one that can effectively hit
Syria, so we have to be the ones. Why wouldn't it be someone who is in
harm's way who actually could perhaps put boots on the ground, go in
and destroy chemical weapons?
{time} 1515
For heaven's sake, to see Vladimir Putin end up playing the high
card, being the diplomat was incredible. It should have been the U.S.
administration that said that we're going to do, actually, what George
W. Bush did before the Iraq war. He tried every diplomatic approach he
could. He went to the U.N. repeatedly. They got resolutions passed
ordering Iraq to open up their weapons systems, ordering Iraq to do the
right things, which they refused to do. The first reaction of the much-
maligned George W. Bush administration was to go to the U.N., get
agreements, get resolutions passed, and then enforce those resolutions.
So we've come to a sad day, now 12 years after 9/11 of 2001, where
we're not the ones who proposed diplomacy before we come in and act
like a bully in a country in which there was no national security
interest, just as our Secretary of Defense Bob Gates said before the
administration bombed Qadhafi, destroyed his air force, and made it
possible for the rebels, including all the al Qaeda that were immersed
within them, to take over Libya; and that ultimately led to a year ago,
when our Ambassador, Sean Smith, Ty Woods, and Glen Doherty were killed
and others wounded.
Bad decisions have consequences. Most everyone is familiar with the
old adage that those who refuse to learn from history are destined to
repeat it. The trouble is you cannot learn from history until you learn
what the history was. So when some may be tempted to ask what
difference it makes with what happened at Benghazi a year ago, it makes
a difference in avoiding repeating history because we could not learn
from history because the administration was hiding the truth.
I have come to meet and know surviving family members of those we
lost in Benghazi. They feel like the blood of their loved ones should
be enough to require truth. They would like to think if there was
anything accomplished by the loss of their loved one, it could be that
we could learn our lessons to be sure it didn't happen again.
Unfortunately, after two U.S. Embassies were attacked and people died
in the late 1990s during the Clinton administration, the truth was not
effectively and completely learned, and we didn't learn properly from
those lessons. So we have to learn another lesson at Benghazi, which
was a year ago today. But we can't learn a lesson when we don't know
what the truth is.
And it scares our allies. They don't know if they can trust us.
Members of Congress can be a big help in letting allies know that, hey,
we appreciate the peace you're trying to bring. We appreciate what
you're trying to do. Let us know if there's something we need to take
up, hearings we need to have in Congress, an appropriation we need to
get rid of because it's doing more harm than good. Let us know. It's a
wonderful thing to have working relationships with people on the other
side of the world that are in the hotspots.
I continue to communicate with Ty Woods' widow. Ty and Dorothy have a
young son. She said he's got so much of Ty in him that he's more than a
handful. Because that's an American hero. Ty and Glen were two men who
heard that our people were under attack; and rather than go on planning
for a campaign trip the next day or sitting down and having meals with
others, casually going through conversations, whatever is done, that's
not what these two former SEALs did. We knew there were two former Navy
SEALs, but it's outrageous that when the names were released, this
administration used the words ``they were killed while seeking cover.''
I didn't know Ty Woods and I didn't know Glen Doherty. I had never met
them personally. I certainly have come to know them vicariously since.
But I know enough SEALs, former and present, to know that those two
former Navy SEALs did not die seeking cover. I knew it instantly when I
read that. What an outrage.
When I was in the Army at Fort Benning, we were not at war. We should
have gone to war with Iran over the attack, the act of war in 1979
against our Embassy. And I think if we had demanded their return within
48 hours or it would be the entire hell that America could bring to
bear would come down on Iran if one hostage was harmed, and I always
felt during those first few days when they kept saying the students had
these hostages, that if we had had a backbone and made a demand and
been willing to back it up, they would have released them. And if they
had not and we had shown them we were not a paper tiger or a toothless
tiger, that we would not have lost the thousands and thousands of
Americans we have since. And it would not have been able to be used as
a recruiting tool to recruit radical Islamists by telling them, look at
what they did in Tehran. They fled Vietnam. The next incident is 1979.
They did nothing. They were totally helpless, begging us to let their
people go. That's all they would do.
There was a failed rescue attempt, which I would submit failed
because of the leadership at the White House and the restraints that
were put on them from the beginning. But there is a price when proper
decisions are not made. And that weighs heavy on any President. I know
it weighs heavy on President Obama. But, for heaven's sake, we have got
to learn. It's been 12 years. A year ago, when it was just 11 years,
our lessons had not been learned. And so more Americans die in Libya.
I know that people in this administration mean that they have love
and respect and admiration for those who were killed in Benghazi; but I
would humbly submit that love, respect, and admiration that leads to
lies and coverups are not actually love, respect, and admiration. It is
the lowest form of contempt. These heroes deserve better.
One of the greatest speeches I ever heard was by a man named Barack
Obama. I heard the speech. It touched me deeply. We shouldn't be a red
State or a blue State. We shouldn't be black or white. We should be
Americans. And I want so desperately for this country to come together
in that way, and I know it can happen, because I saw it happen on
September 12, 2001.
I was a judge at the time, and I watched as hundreds of people came
into our town square, as they did all over the country. America came
together. There was no red America, blue America. There was not a
single hyphenated America in this country on 9/
[[Page H5496]]
12. We all held hands, embraced, touched in some way, as we sang ``God
Bless America'' and ``Amazing Grace'' and prayed together. And I looked
around and my heart soared as I saw Americans--skin color didn't
matter, creed didn't matter, national origin didn't matter, age didn't
matter. We were Americans standing together. But you can't have trust,
you can't stand together when you know someone next to you is not being
truthful. They are being deceptive. They are covering up.
So it's heartbreaking that this article today from CBS Interactive,
Inc., says:
One year after the September 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on
Americans in Benghazi, Libya, no arrests have been reported
but the Justice Department says investigators have made very
significant process.
On down, it says:
Last month, government officials confirmed that sealed
criminal charges have been filed against suspects. They're
said to include Ahmed Khattala, who gave interviews in
Benghazi with several news organizations, admitting he was at
the scene of the attacks but insisting he was not the
ringleader. Khattala also said nobody from the U.S.
Government had attempted to question him.
On further, it says:
The Obama administration continues to keep a great deal of
information under wraps, citing an ongoing investigation,
national security, and other reasons. The secrecy is an
ongoing point of contention with Republicans in Congress.
The article goes on to say:
Tuesday, the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to
Secretary of State John Kerry, demanding the Benghazi
survivors be made available for interviews with Congress or
else they may be subpoenaed. According to the letter, the
State Department told Congress on August 23 that it was not
prepared to support the request for transcribed interviews.
If that doesn't change within 2 weeks, Committee Chairman
Darrell Issa, Republican of California, said, I will have no
alternative but to consider the use of compulsory process.
The FBI, CIA, Director of National Intelligence, Defense
Department, State Department, National Security Agency, have
all rejected or failed to answer multiple Freedom of
Information requests made by CBS News, as well as appeals of
the denials. The agency cites exemptions related to ongoing
investigations of national security.
There's an article today by John Sexton from Breitbart, saying:
It's been nearly a year since the attack which killed four
Americans in Benghazi. During that time, various minute-by-
minute accounts of the attack have been published. In
addition, the administration's decisions to refuse additional
security requests and to revise its talking points after the
attack have been examined in detail.
Further down, it says:
The general outlines of the CIA effort have been reported.
One fact which has not been highlighted is that the U.N. arms
embargo of Libya, which the United States helped pass in
2011, makes shipping weapons in or out of the country of
Libya a violation of international law. Indeed, the way the
U.N. resolution is written, even knowingly allowing such
shipments to take place may be a violation of the agreement.
{time} 1530
Yet we keep hearing that guns were being shipped from Libya, perhaps
to Turkey, perhaps making their way to al Qaeda rebels. Because the
rumor that keeps surfacing is that the Turks that we got weapons to are
the ones that decided where the weapons would go. And those did not go
to people who had any abiding love or even patience with Christians, as
we have seen as Christians have been decapitated, killed, maimed in
horrendous ways in Syria by those this administration would have been
supporting had we bombed Assad. This is all tragic. We need to learn
from history, but we've got to know the truth to do that.
I love Darrell Issa, but the quote should not be that if the
information is not forthcoming, as he says, ``I will have no
alternative but to consider the use of compulsory process.'' In the
name of Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Ty Woods, and Glen Doherty, it
should not be considered; it should be done. There should be a select
committee to get to the truth. We should use all compulsory methods at
our fingertips, including cutting off funding to any Federal agency
that refuses to comply with proper oversight by Congress, because a
Constitution that can be nullified by one of the three branches is a
worthless Constitution. And if Congress cannot do meaningful oversight
and examine what the money we are appropriating is going for, then that
money should not continue to be appropriated to anyone who will not
allow knowledge of how it's being spent and if it is being misused.
This has to stop. On 9/12/01, as a district judge in Texas, I was so
heartened that on 9/12 we came together. On the congressional
delegation trip last week in the Middle East, two Democrats I don't
agree much with politically, but I got to know them a lot better, and I
care deeply about them. They are very, very good people. We have the
same desire for this country's freedom, liberty, peace, longevity of
life--different ideas of how to get there.
I've been encouraged over the last week because of the way we can
talk honestly, without impugning anyone's motives, and try to work
toward answers. That's what I saw on 9/12, people wanting to work
together. But I keep coming back to this fact that people in this
administration need to understand, and our own Republican leadership
needs to understand: we have got to get to the bottom of these matters;
we have got to get the truth.
Jesus said, ``You will know the truth, and the truth shall set you
free.'' He was talking about a particular truth. But sometimes the
truth comes out and it hurts the person that was seeking the truth or
the people who were seeking the truth. And I would humbly submit, here
it doesn't matter. We just need the truth.
One of the things that people around the world, as I've talked to
people around the world, even going back to my summer in '73 of being
an exchange student in the Soviet Union, people have admired the way
the United States would expose the truth no matter how ugly it made it
appear. People admired that.
Even in the Soviet Union, when they were not getting truth,
privately--they couldn't say it publicly, but privately there were
college students that pointed this out, We really do admire the way you
bring out truth. And your own government's embarrassed, but somehow you
manage to keep going on because you deal with truth.
One, in particular, said, I am concerned about my country because we
don't get the truth.
Standing and looking at an exhibit in Moscow with a couple of Russian
college students, I was amazed. One of them pointed to Gagarin. And I
said, wow, Gagarin, the world's first man in space. There was an
account that he had been killed during test piloting a jet in the
Soviet Union. I was surprised that the two Russian college students
would say, Yeah, we know that didn't happen.
I said, You don't believe what your government is telling you?
And he said, No, our government frequently does not tell us the
truth.
Well, I didn't know if Gagarin was killed testing a jet plane or not,
but I was struck by the fact that these Soviets, college students, knew
that their government lied to them routinely. And they said, You seem
to get to the truth in your country--it has taken a while with
Watergate, but you seem to keep working toward the truth, and we don't
do that here. We just have to accept what we're told.
I believe the expression was ``there's nothing to be done.''
Well, in America, there is something to be done. We have got to get
to the truth. We owe it to the heroes that have given their last full
measure of devotion for this country. We owe it to those who have put
their lives on the line.
That means getting to the bottom of the rule of engagement for our
military as well so that we don't have situations as we just read about
this summer, a lieutenant--obviously very young--in charge of a
roadblock at a security checkpoint. From the account--and I do want to
do further investigation to get to the bottom of it--when waving,
trying to get the attention of three people on motorcycles to slow
down, to stop for the security--they were going fast, with no
indication of slowing down--the lieutenant ordered shots be fired above
their head. They didn't slow down. Knowing there had been people
killed, Americans killed by so many green-on-blue attacks, knowing that
his men were at risk if they had a bomb, he finally ordered his men to
fire on the motorcycle riders; two died, one lived. That lieutenant is
now reported to be doing 20 years in Leavenworth. That's just wrong.
That's just wrong.
[[Page H5497]]
I've been in Afghanistan and talked to our soldiers there--soldiers,
sailors, marines--and they tell me privately, Look, we have a hard time
deciding, do I want to risk just letting someone kill me or going to
prison when I get home? I kind of think I'd rather die as a hero and
have an NAS burial than to be an embarrassment to my family by going to
Leavenworth when I get back to the U.S.
We owe the 9/11 victims, the 9/11 survivors, the Benghazi victims,
the Afghanistan soldiers, sailors, and marines that we have lost, we
owe those who died in Afghanistan and Iraq, we owe them the truth. We
owe them good rules of engagement so their lives are not needlessly put
in jeopardy because of political gamesmanship.
We are owed the truth. And when Ambassador Chris Stevens' last words
to his State Department colleague and friend, Greg Hicks, were, ``Greg,
we're under attack,'' everything should have stopped. The personal,
hand-picked representative of the United States President was under
attack. Everything should have stopped. I really think if it had and
this administration had done everything they could to get help to these
people, this President would have won in a huge landslide because he
stood up for people, our Americans who were in harm's way.
A year later, we don't even know what he was doing. We don't know
what the Secretary of State was doing. We can't talk to the CIA agents,
and they keep getting polygraphed every 30 days to make sure nobody's
leaking any information to Congress because apparently that would be
embarrassing.
I mentioned to some people earlier today about the doctrine of
spoliation. It's a legal doctrine that applies in courts of law. And
whether in a court of law or in the court of public opinion,
credibility always matters.
We have seen, this week, a briefing by people who may well have
gotten their talking points from the same person or persons who altered
the talking points a year ago, falsified them, and handed them to what
I believe was an innocent Susan Rice and sent her out to unknowingly be
a dupe to spread things that weren't true about a video when it wasn't
true at all. How do we know what we get in a classified briefing if we
don't know who it was that made true intelligence into lying
intelligence a year ago? We need to know so we know we can have more
faith in what Susan Rice, John Kerry, Secretary Hagel, General Dempsey,
in the things they're saying. Where did your information come from? Is
it somebody that created some of the lies we got in the past or is this
a totally truthful source? It matters. It matters.
It matters when we have Christian Navy SEALs killed in Afghanistan
and American flag-draped coffins are mixed with Afghan flag-draped
coffins. And an American chaplain is not even allowed to pray in Jesus'
name, even though a chaplain may be a Christian and be taught that
Jesus said, ``If you ask for it in my name, it will be given.'' Being
prevented--as the First Amendment said the Federal Government should
never do--from freely exercising his religious beliefs, and then
compounding the problem by bringing an imam in Afghanistan to stand and
give a Muslim prayer over our SEALs that includes basically the words
that, in the name of Allah, the merciful forgiver, the companions of
hell, where the sinners and infidels are fodder for hellfire, are not
equal with the companions of Heaven. The Muslim companions of Heaven
are always the winners. We let an imam speak in his language, say words
that, when examined, appear to be gloating over the dead Navy SEALs
that should have never been allowed to take off in that chopper, that
should never have been allowed to stay on after the Afghans pulled out
the Afghan soldiers on the manifest and put other Afghan soldiers on
that apparently were disposable to them. It should have stopped there.
There were so many places it should have stopped. But we can't get
all the answers about that, how it came about, why our best and
brightest were put in harm's way. We can't really get to the truth as
to why a good man--I've spoken with him personally, privately; I like
him very much--Leon Panetta, why he would tell people who did not have
security clearances that it was SEAL Team Six that took out Osama bin
Laden; why Joe Biden, as Vice President, I know he meant no harm to our
SEAL Team Six, but when he outs a SEAL team as the one that took out
Osama bin Laden. And as one SEAL called his mother and said, Mom,
you've got to get my name off all of our family stuff online; we've
been outed. One parent said his daughter-in-law looked out the window
right after Vice President Biden outed his SEAL team took out Osama bin
Laden, the Marines had provided her a guard because they knew what it
meant. It meant this administration had exposed our valiant fighting
forces, our SEALs, to danger they should never have been in.
This is a day of remembrance, but if it is not used to get to the
bottom of what happened a year ago and what has happened in the 12
intervening years since then, find out where we've made our mistakes so
that we can correct them so that we do not have more Boston bombings or
attempts like we had in Times Square--thank God for local police and
people paying attention there. And thank goodness for a sweaty rear end
of a bomber that was prepared to take out a plane and was attempting to
do so on Christmas.
The Divine Providence, as our Founders and George Washington so often
referred to as God's overseeing, will not protect us forever when we
will not protect ourselves. God is good all the time. All the time God
is good. But it's time to be better friends to our friends. It's time
to stand up and be better enemies to our enemies. It's time that the
blood of those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice was honored with
the truth.
I hope and pray in the days ahead we will have the resolve, as
Members of Congress across the aisle, to stand firm and say, Give us
the truth. We don't care who is made to look bad, Republican or
Democrat, let the chips fall where they may. The blood of our devoted,
life-giving patriots cries out for truth. Let's finally get to it.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________