[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.

                          ____________________