[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 17 (Wednesday, January 29, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H1506-H1509]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
AMERICA'S FOREIGN POLICY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 40 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it has been an honor and a privilege and a
pleasure to work with Trudi Terry here in the House. I really hate to
see her retire. She has put up with me more times than most people have
had to, and kept a wonderful spirit and cooperative atmosphere in this
body, in this Chamber, and I will be forever grateful. Thank you. I
really hate to see you retire. So I guess to add to the bad news of
Trudi Terry retiring, there are other things going on.
One story that hits home for me as someone with other friends like
Dana Rohrabacher and Steve King, who have met with Baloch leaders from
the Balochistan area of Pakistan--it is the area where most of
Pakistan's minerals are located. It is an area where Pakistan has, for
many years, terrorized the Baloch people, persecuted them mercilessly.
They want the Baloch area's minerals and assets to keep Pakistan going
and basically radicalized, but they don't want to let the Baloch people
live in peace.
I proposed in a previous op-ed a couple of years ago that perhaps it
is time to look at encouraging a new Baloch state, a new country of
Balochistan as independent of Pakistan so that the people can live in
peace, so they don't have to be worried about Pakistan officials and
military coming through and committing, really, crimes against these
people. After I wrote that op-ed and included a statement that perhaps
it is time to join in the encouragement for a new Balochistan state,
there was an article in a Pakistani daily paper that said in essence
maybe it is time to quit persecuting the Baloch, reach out to them and
figure out a way to let them live in peace because to Pakistan that
area was important. The op-ed from the Pakistan paper also indicated
that perhaps they needed to quit funding and helping the Taliban defeat
the Americans in Afghanistan and just concentrate on their own country.
That would have been wonderful, and would still be.
This story is out from the Toronto Sun, and it regards the
Balochistan province in Pakistan. By the way, I have heard from
numerous members of our American military and from others in
Afghanistan that most of the supplies to the Taliban are coming from
Pakistan through the southern Baloch area of Pakistan, and that is why
the thought was triggered, maybe if Balochistan was independent of
Pakistan, that would cut off the supply to the terrorist Taliban in
Afghanistan and would save a lot of American lives. Since that has been
said, we have lost hundreds more American soldiers. More American blood
has been shed because we have failed to neutralize the Taliban, and
they have continued apparently to grow in their efforts to take over
Afghanistan shortly after we leave.
This article, though, says:
It would have been inconceivable that any U.S. official,
let alone a Secretary of State, would host a delegation from
Serbia the day after mass graves were discovered in
Srebrenica in 1995. Yet on Sunday, a day after bullet-ridden
bodies were discovered in suspected mass graves in Pakistan's
military-controlled province of Balochistan, Secretary of
State John Kerry was toasting a delegation of Pakistan
security officials at the State Department. Balochistan and
human rights officials say 169 bodies have been uncovered so
far. Pakistani officials put the number at 15. Victims and
families of Baloch youth who have disappeared and who are
feared to be among the decomposed bodies being unearthed from
the mass graves had hoped that Kerry would raise the issue
with his Pakistani counterpart.
Instead, they heard Kerry say to the Pakistanis, ``We are
really delighted to have you back, and I look forward to our
continued conversation.'' America looked the other way in
1971 when the Pakistan Army slaughtered a million of its own
citizens in what is now Bangladesh.
What emerged was a country that hosted the mastermind of
the 9/11 attacks, allowed Osama bin Laden to operate on its
soil for more than a decade, and whose terrorists have been
involved in numerous jihadi attacks around the world ever
since the bombings of U.S. embassies in East Africa and the
attack on USS Cole off Yemeni waters.
Yet America continues to give Pakistan billions of dollars
in aid, which is then turned around to generate more hatred
toward the West and produce more jihadi terrorists.
Inserting parenthetically into this article is my oft-quoted
statement that you don't have to pay people to hate you; they will do
it for free. We continue to send billions of dollars to nations that
hate us and want us gone from the map. They want to see us suffer, and
we keep sending them money to hate us. We can use that money here. We
could save raising some taxes. We could get some roads and some of the
infrastructure that the President promised if we gave him $900 billion,
basically, in a stimulus package right after he took office, and that
was going to fix all of the infrastructure, but maybe 6 percent of $900
billion went for infrastructure, and so the President is back out
saying we have got to build these roads.
I mean, we have been talking about this for 5 years. He has. So you
didn't do it with the stimulus money--why don't we just save some of
the billions that we are giving to people who hate us, and then we
don't help them kill Americans. We don't continue, as this
administration is doing, to assist Syrian rebels who are killing
Christians.
For anyone who happens to believe that there is a God as reflected in
the Bible, the question will have to be asked: If there is such a God
as reflected in the Bible, which I believe, is it going to bode well
for a Nation which is funding and helping nations that are killing,
torturing, kidnapping Christians around the world?
{time} 1200
This article goes on:
Now the U.S. is giving the same Pakistan army another pass
as it carries out the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous
Baloch people from their homeland.
In response, the Baloch have taken up arms and are fighting
their fifth war of independence since 1948, when the Pakistan
army invaded and captured the independent and sovereign state
of Kalat.
The article goes on.
But the fact is we have people in this administration demanding that
what they say are indigenous people--despite the fact that the children
of Israel occupied the promised land 1,600 years or so, 1,700 years at
least, before a man named Muhammad was born. There are people who say:
Oh, but these Palestinians--a name that arose as Newt Gingrich pointed
out in the last 40 or so years--these Palestinians are indigenous, so
you have got to give them their land.
Yet they are not saying it about Balochistan. They are not saying it
about the Baloch people that are being killed and persecuted by
Pakistan. Oh, no. We are helping kill and persecute the Baloch people
by giving aid and assistance to a government that is killing and
persecuting them.
If there is a just God in the universe, would there not be a price
for a country as powerful as the United States that continues to
support those who kill, maim, torture, horrify innocent
[[Page H1507]]
people, Christians, Jews, secularists, and oftentimes they are even
more brutal to moderate Muslims that are not as radical as they think
they should be?
That is why in Egypt, for those who really have eyes and really have
ears to hear, we had an incredible event last summer. This was the real
Arab Spring, but it came in summer. This is when moderate Muslims,
Christians, Jews, secularists rose up, some reports of 30 to 33 million
people, larger than any demonstration in the history of the world. They
rose up and said: We don't want radical Islamists running Egypt. The
radical Islamists, the Muslim Brotherhood that were controlling Egypt--
as we knew they would if they had election too quickly--the Muslim
Brotherhood became desperate because they knew, to have a new Ottoman
Empire running around the Mediterranean that would become a worldwide
caliphate, they could not afford to lose Egypt from under their iron
fist.
So what do they do? They immediately start burning down churches,
killing Christians particularly, and so many others. That is why I was
so encouraged. Over 90 percent of the people voting--which was a higher
percentage than we have voting here in the United States--came out and
voted for the new constitution that has been drafted under the
chairmanship of Amr Moussa.
I was very pleased that Chairman Moussa was willing to come on the
Sean Hannity radio show a few weeks ago when I was guest hosting for
Sean Hannity. It is really encouraging what is going on in Egypt by
those who want a democratic form of government and who do not want
terrorists running Egypt, who don't want a worldwide caliphate, who
don't like the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood, who are not as blind to
the goal of the Muslim Brotherhood as the leaders of this
administration are.
If one will just go look at one of the symbols used by the Muslim
Brotherhood these days, you find the crossed swords, the signs and
wording in their language denoting the Muslim Brotherhood, and that is
fixed over a globe of the world. It is not just Egypt, Iraq, Iran, not
just in the former Ottoman Empire. Oh, no. This is fixed over a globe
that is revolving, and the United States of America passes under those
swords of the Muslim Brotherhood.
It is true that the Muslim Brotherhood here in the United States does
not want to utilize violence right now because they have made so much
progress in this administration that they are afraid violence right now
might do damage. Violence in Egypt, the same Muslim Brotherhood feels
it was necessary because they had just been caught. They had been
rejected by moderate Muslims--the majority of Egyptians--and they
became desperate. So their violence had to occur. Christians, according
to these radical Islamist Muslim brothers, had to die.
Once America starts figuring out that the goal is global caliphate--
including the United States--then they will be participating in
horrendous violence here, as they have in other places in the world.
Some of our moderate Muslim friends in the Middle East asked some of
us last September: What is wrong with you in America? Don't you
understand? You call it al Qaeda, but that is really just an offshoot
of the Muslim Brotherhood. They are the ones that attacked you on 9/11/
2001. These are moderate Muslims asking these questions.
Why do you not understand: Yes, it was the Taliban, but it is really
the Muslim brothers behind it that you were at war with in Afghanistan?
They are the ones that did more killing of Americans in Iraq, and yet
you are helping the Muslim Brotherhood, you are running to their aid
and assistance; and in Egypt you are demanding that either they put the
radical Islamists back in charge of Egypt or we are not going to
provide them the Apache helicopters, the tanks, and the jets that we
were going to provide to the Muslim Brother leaders of Egypt.
They asked: What is wrong with you people? What are you not getting?
You are helping the people that want to destroy you. People can see
that around the world, but here in Washington, D.C., it is apparently
one of the hardest things to find and see.
We hear people saying: Well, we really need all the people's most
private information about phone calls, every phone call they make; we
need to have that as part of the government because one time we believe
it may have stopped a bombing.
Well, if this administration would do their homework, they wouldn't
need the logs of every phone call of every American. We could go back
to what the Constitution does require and the Court should require, and
that is probable cause, before you start giving out personal
information, before you let the government start monitoring every email
of every person in America.
We were promised my freshman term that if the PATRIOT Act were
extended, specifically section 206 and 215, that that would only apply
if someone were in contact with a foreign terrorist, but Americans
would never have to worry unless they were in touch with foreign
terrorists. Then after Edward Snowden, we find out that actually what
they promised was not true. And yes, that was during the Bush
administration. I don't care. I don't care if it was a Republican or
Democrat. I don't care where it started. When we find out it is still
going on, it has got to stop. We are supposed to have some privacy in
this country.
Those Democrats that were suspicious of the Bush administration
wanting that much power were right. Where have my friends gone now that
it is a Democrat administration? I certainly don't have a problem
calling out a Republican administration when they are not doing the
right thing. I wish my friends across the aisle would do the same thing
and join me.
What about the Boston bombing? The Russians took a huge risk in
giving this administration information and saying: Look, Tsarnaev, this
guy has been radicalized and you are letting him back in America. You
are headed for trouble. This is a bad guy. They took a risk in giving
us that information because, when any country gives intelligence to
another country, then sometimes it allows that country that gets the
information to figure out how that other country is getting
intelligence just by the information they get.
So now we have people here in this administration saying: Oh, the
Russians, shame on them. They didn't give us enough information.
Are you kidding me? They told you a person had been radicalized.
When I asked the Director of the FBI in our hearing about not even
going to the mosque to investigate, he says, ultimately: Yeah, we did
go to those mosques--and I didn't hear it at the hearing. I didn't hear
it until the replay. And he said: Under our outreach program.
Under the outreach program? Well, that is the FBI's ridiculous former
program where they have special outreach to Muslim communities to try
to be friends with them. It is not the FBI's job to be friends with
people. It is the FBI's job to enforce the law and, in so doing,
protect us.
When Tsarnaev, the older brother, came back into this country from a
place on the globe where we know radicalization is occurring--and as I
understand it, he didn't even have his passport; he had his legal
permanent resident card--he wasn't even pulled aside for extra
questions when there should have been bells and whistles going off
everywhere. The best I can find out, all they did, basically, was talk
to him and his mother, and he said: No, I am not radicalized.
No, my son is not radicalized.
They didn't go to the mosque and start asking questions that would
tell them has he been reading Qutb, which is the author, the Muslim
brother from the sixties that was involved in trying to commit
assassinations and other terrorist activities, and he wrote a booklet
called ``Milestones'' that Osama bin Laden credits with helping turn
him radical.
If you know about the people that hate you and want to destroy you,
then you can ask intelligent questions to find out if someone is your
enemy. But because of the purge of training materials at the FBI, the
intelligence departments, at the State Department--as one intelligence
officer told me, we are blinded to our ability to see our enemy,
because there was a young man named Tsarnaev who wanted to kill
innocent Americans at a Boston Marathon and they got a heads-up from
the Russians. They got all the information
[[Page H1508]]
right before them that they could possibly need, and we don't even stop
him coming into this country after he has been radicalized. What more
did you need? We shouldn't have needed a heads-up from the Russians.
All the signs were there for those who have eyes to see and ears to
hear.
But we were so busy in our outreach program to a mosque that was
founded by the Islamic Society of Boston, the founder of which is a man
named al-Amoudi, who is in prison today for 24 years, I believe, for
supporting terrorism, despite all the assistance he allegedly gave to
the Clinton administration helping them find good Muslims to help in
that administration. After 9/11, a couple of years or so after 9/11, it
has been determined that he has been supporting terrorism, and now he
is in Federal prison.
A man named al-Awlaki, who this President ordered a drone strike on
in Yemen, though he was an American citizen, because his parents came
over on a visa to study, had him, he is an American citizen. They take
him back to Yemen. He learns to hate America, comes back and works on
radicalizing Americans, except, of course, when he led prayers of
Muslim staff members here on Capitol Hill.
{time} 1215
Otherwise, this President determined that he needed to be killed
without a trial because he radicalized Americans, and he was a threat
to this country. al-Awlaki had attended the Boston mosque where the
Tsarnaevs attended.
I mean, how many heads-up notices do you need to figure out there is
a problem, and innocent Americans are going to be killed and maimed as
they were in Boston? It is time to wake up. Yet we get this story from
Matt Apuzzo. The picture was from the Associated Press, January 15:
``U.S. to Expand Rules Limiting Use of Profiling by Federal Agents.''
The Attorney General, who came here last night, sat here for the
State of the Union address while he is in contempt of Congress, while
he is being lawless in not following the law and providing information.
They wouldn't even give me all of the documents that they provided to
convicted terrorists in the Holy Land Foundation trial in Dallas. I
asked repeatedly. We finally got a letter many months after the
request, basically saying, We will give you the 500-or-so documents
that were entered into evidence in the trial, and we have got some
others you can come look at.
I still don't understand, Mr. Speaker. If they will give boxes and
boxes of information to the terrorists who are convicted ultimately as
terrorists, why can't you give that to Members of Congress? Is it
because the convictions occurred in 2008 under the Bush administration?
Then this Justice Department came in and stopped any further
prosecutions from going forward even though there were a couple-
hundred-or-so named coconspirators in that case who were unindicted. My
understanding from former Justice Department folks is that the plan
was, if they could get the first convictions, then they would move
forward with more and continue to follow up until they got this network
that was allegedly supporting terrorism. We know five of them were
supporting terrorism.
Could it be that this Justice Department doesn't want us to see all
of the documents that they provided to the terrorists that actually
show they are terrorists? Could that be the reason they don't want
Members of Congress to see?
It is because then we might realize, wow, they convicted those five
in 2008 under President Bush. They could surely have gotten a lot more
convictions if they had just used this same evidence. Oh, sure.
Congressman Gohmert, come over here, and we will show you some of the
documents. We will let you see some of the electronic versions.
You gave them to terrorists for heaven's sakes. You can't give them
to me so I can look at them in my office? It is unbelievable what is
going on here.
Then there is a story from Kerry Picket from Breitbart. The story
starts:
Senator Dianne Feinstein--a Democrat from California,
chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee--told
Breitbart News on Monday that she did not know a CIA annex
existed in Benghazi, Libya, before the deadly September 2012
attack--which took the lives of four Americans--on the U.S.
compound happened. Feinstein could also not confirm if other
Members of Congress knew about the CIA annex prior to the
attack.
Senator Feinstein and I disagree on many things, but I know she wants
what is best for America even though we have staunch political
disagreements on how we do that and what that is. My understanding is
that, with anything of that nature, it would have been required that
the Super 8, as they are sometimes referred to, would be briefed--the
top Republican and Democrat on the Intelligence Committee in the House
and in the Senate and the Republican leader in the House and the
Democratic leader in the House and the Democratic leader in the Senate
and the Republican leader in the Senate. Yet Senator Feinstein said, I
didn't know there was a CIA annex at the Benghazi consulate.
What else is this administration doing to help rebels, who include al
Qaeda--as it did in Libya? What else is it doing that it is not
following the law and briefing the people who are required to be
briefed in Congress?
I heard the President, who was standing right here last night, get
applause when he, in essence, says, If Congress doesn't change the law,
then I will do it--and he got applause. To thinking people, when you
hear somebody say, ``if Congress doesn't do what is necessary,'' which
is required by the Constitution, ``I will do it,'' it sounds like I am
going to chuck the Constitution and do what I think is best.
Now, I have read about those situations, of countries that had a fair
and representative form of government. Ancient Greece and ancient Rome
had senates that were somewhat representative. There have been types of
representative governments, and you would always find that, eventually,
people had that desire for one rock solid leader. They would get tired
of the disagreements because, as one of the English leaders had said--
and it may have been Churchill--democracy is the worst form of
government except for all of the others. It isn't a pretty thing to
watch, as has been said. It is like watching sausage being made. Yet
when you strip away the checks and balances that the Founders put in
place to keep one executive officer from just doing whatever he wanted,
then you don't have a democratic Republic as we are supposed to have;
you have one man making the rules or one woman making the rules. It is
time America woke up and realized their constitutional rights are at
severe risk, and we are at risk as a result.
I wanted to mention something else that happened here at the State of
the Union. A wonderful young man got the longest, best applause of the
evening here as the President recognized Cory sitting up there.
In addition to Cory--the hero that that dear man is--I could see
other uniformed people. In fact, there were some uniformed people up in
that section up there, one of whom was not Cory but was Alonzo. The
President didn't recognize Alonzo because Alonzo was a staff sergeant
at Fort Hood. With Nidal Hasan, people kept looking the other way. They
kept giving him good officer evaluation reports because they didn't
want to be deemed to be profiling or doing something that was
considered racist when the man made clear over and over that he was
going to have to take action--violent action--against his country if
they tried to ship him over and order him to fight Muslims overseas.
I did not get to meet Alonzo last night. I looked up and waved a few
times, but I have great respect for that man, and he deserves so much
better than he has been treated. He was shot six times; and apparently,
while he is lying with six bullets in him, he realizes, as the shooting
continues by Major Hasan, that he is not going to be able to pass off
as dead because he is sweating profusely. As he says, dead people don't
sweat, so he figured he had better get out of there, as I understand,
and he took off. That is when he got shot and lost one of his eyes.
This administration has prevented Alonzo from getting the benefits he
deserves because of an act of war, an act of terrorism. He is not even
considered at the level of the 9/11 victims. He heard, Allah akbar, and
he knew it was not going to go well. Everybody who heard that radical
Islamist yell before
[[Page H1509]]
the murders began knew this was not workplace violence, that this
wasn't a postal employee going postal. This was a radical Islamist who
was carrying out a war against what they consider to be infidels in
America. They deserve to be treated as victims of an act of war--an act
against them as uniformed military--and to get the benefits coming to
them. That is what should have happened.
We heard the references last night to health care, and it kind of
sounded like applause started when he was talking about how they were
helping to reform health care, and then it died so quickly they must
have realized, ooh, I don't want to be on camera clapping for the
reform of health care when people are hurting across America who have
lost their insurance--people like me, who liked my insurance, but
ObamaCare said your insurance policy is not good enough. So I lost it.
Thank you very much. There are people in really tough shape around
America who deserve better health care than what ObamaCare is doing to
them.
There were so many things in the State of the Union address. He was
talking about raising the minimum wage with Federal contractors with a
stroke of the pen. I mean, how many other laws does the President want
to pass with a stroke of the pen? It is not constitutional to make laws
with one man's pen. That is not the democratic Republic we are supposed
to be. There was even, it sounded like, some snickering when he said
that. He didn't talk about the millions who have lost their insurance
as a result of ObamaCare. If it were only about trying to ensure the 30
million people who reportedly didn't have health insurance--they had
health care; they didn't have insurance--then let's direct it at those.
Let's don't take millions and millions of Americans' insurance away in
the process.
As far as illegal immigration, one of the newspapers in my district--
Longview--had an article, an op-ed, in which they were saying I was
opposed to immigration reform. Obviously, they read left-wing blogs and
don't read and talk to me and understand what I have said repeatedly.
We desperately need immigration reform in America, but every time
anybody here starts talking about legal status--amnesty--the ICE agents
and the ICE union representatives tell us repeatedly that more people
try to rush into the United States, that more people die trying to come
across the desert, that more people fall into human trafficking and a
horrible life. My position has been clear for anyone who cares to see
or hear, and it is supported by so many other Republicans.
Mr. President has the money; he has got the wherewithal; he has got
the manpower to secure our border. As soon as it is secured, as
verified by the border States, we will come to an immigration reform
bill so fast that people won't be able to believe it; but until the
President enforces existing law, there is no sense in talking about it
and luring more people to their deaths, more people in here. Control
the border. Secure it. Don't close it. We need that water continuing to
flow into this pond, but secure it so we know who is coming in, and
when people are here without valid visas, we need to pick them up.
{time} 1230
Nearly 40 to 50 percent of the people that are here illegally came
legally and overstayed their visas. Enforce the visas.
And so when a guy has been radicalized, do your homework. Don't let
Tsarnaev back in when he doesn't have a passport and there are all
kinds of indications he is now a terrorist. Don't let him in. We could
have done without that one.
Secure the border. We will get an immigration bill done immediately
after that. But before that, there is no reason to expect the President
will ever secure the border.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________