[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 29, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H3279-H3284]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    CURRENT EVENTS AFFECTING AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. 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, at this time I yield to my dear friend, Dr. 
Virginia Foxx.
  Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Congressman Gohmert, my classmate and friend. I 
appreciate very much you yielding time.
  Mr. Speaker, last week, I had the opportunity to visit a remarkable 
public school in Kernersville, North Carolina. In addition to preparing 
students academically for college, the North Carolina Leadership 
Academy is publicly committed to giving their 400 students ``the 
opportunity to develop true leadership qualities and become creative 
thinkers and problem-solvers while retaining a sense of responsibility 
for their families, their community, and their country.''
  NCLA has an ambitious mission, and they are executing it so well that 
last year this charter school had over 700 applicants for 95 openings. 
The wait list has over 600 names, and is growing.

                              {time}  1630

  It was a privilege to spend time with the remarkable students and 
faculty of NCLA. I was truly impressed by their commitment to 
scholarship, by the leadership skills of the students, and by the 
remarkable academic progress that was on display.
  All NCLA students in grades 7-12 participate in Civil Air Patrol, a 
program established by Congress in 1946 that uses military-style 
uniforms, customs, courtesies, ceremonies, and drill in order to 
improve student leadership skills, fitness, and character. This program 
is working.
  NCLA places a strong emphasis on family involvement; and the level of 
commitment demonstrated by parents, families, and the Piedmont 
community at large was impressive.
  Community engagement is a key to success of any school, and the 
community's support for NCLA is a good reminder that decisions about 
the education of our youth should remain local.
  I have been a strong supporter of charter schools for my entire 
legislative career. In the North Carolina State Senate, I supported 
charters as one of the best hopes to genuinely reform our school 
system.
  In Congress, those of us who support charter schools should express 
that support by ensuring that Federal policy encourages States to adopt 
expansive charter laws.
  Further, we need to ensure that Washington does not put up 
bureaucratic roadblocks that would keep State, city, and county 
governments from experimenting with new ideas and establishing 
effective charter school programs.
  Mr. Speaker, I cannot say enough about how impressed I was to spend 
time with the educators of the North Carolina Leadership Academy, 
individuals who seek daily to impress upon the students the values 
encapsulated in the school motto of ``Scholarship, Leadership, 
Citizenship.''
  I expect many good things from the remarkable young scholar leaders 
currently being educated by this wonderful school. The community will 
reap the benefits of having this school in its midst for years to come.
  Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate so much my colleague from North Carolina. 
Having been a president of a university, she knows all about education.
  It is certainly one of the areas where we are failing American youth 
these days, and you would have thought that, if the Federal Government 
were the answer to everybody's problems, then when President Carter 
started the Department of Education, everything would have gotten 
instantly better; but over 35 years later, it turns out the Federal 
Government is not the answer to better education.
  I have talked with enough high school students who also say the 
Federal Government is not the answer to their food problems. I have met 
with cafeteria workers and leaders who say that kids are not eating the 
food. They are required to choose from lists of foods to put on the 
plates that they had heretofore not heard of before that students don't 
want, don't like.
  The football players were saying last fall: How in the world can we 
go to football practice and all we get is this piddly little bit of 
meat and other stuff we can't eat?
  So obviously, education, food has not been helped, certainly not 
according to my constituents in east Texas, the vast majority; and 
education itself does not seem to have made all that great or 
remarkable progress since the Carter administration started the 
Department of Education and Congress began putting strings on virtually 
everything they did in the way of educational support.
  The 10th Amendment had some real meaning and was really visionary. It 
was the last of those first 10 Bill of Rights and, in essence, said 
everything that is not specifically enumerated as a power of the 
Federal Government is reserved to the States and the people; that is 
because the genius of our

[[Page H3280]]

Founders collectively was the best answers are found locally, not by 
bureaucrats in Washington, D.C.
  I was shocked to go online years ago and see that one of my school 
districts was bragging that, gee, about half of their employees were 
actually teachers. I was shocked. I would have thought that, if we 
really cared about education, the big bulk of employees would be 
teachers.
  So I did further investigation and found out that before the national 
Department of Education was created under Jimmy Carter, there was 
between 70 and 80 percent of the Texas educational employees who were 
teachers.
  Naturally, when Washington gets involved, there are more requirements 
for the State agency--education agency in each State; then with more 
State education accountability and requirements to Washington, there 
became more bureaucrats there, which meant there had to be more 
bureaucrats in the local school districts.
  If we want to ever get back to having the best education that we can 
get for our dollar, we need to get back to observing the 10th 
Amendment. The best educational accountability comes not from some 
bureaucrat on his buttocks here in Washington, but from those who are 
there locally that see what is happening in the school.
  We have done enough damage. One of the disagreements I had with 
former President George W. Bush, who I like and admire--I think it 
unfortunate that people do not appreciate either his intelligence or 
his very, very clever wit.
  Unlike Mr. Gore, who seemed to have trouble being able to make good 
enough grades to stay in graduate programs, former President Bush 
didn't have any problem getting through and getting an MBA from 
Harvard; though obviously, Harvard is not what it used to be when it 
would embrace and allow debate from all sectors. Now, it is the liberal 
sector, or they don't really appreciate you.
  So, anyway, No Child Left Behind was a big mistake. When Governor 
George W. Bush pushed accountability at the State level, he was acting 
within the bounds of the Constitution.
  I had hopes that this administration would actually keep the promise 
that they would dismantle No Child Left Behind. It has been eased, but 
not nearly what should have happened.
  It turns out that the administration has been so busy with other 
aspects that, apparently, it has not had the time to devote to 
dismantling No Child Left Behind, as they might have hoped.
  We have this story from today, April 29, 2014, Washington, D.C., from 
Judicial Watch, ``Benghazi Documents Point to White House on Misleading 
Talking Points.''
  The article says that--as a release from Judicial Watch, that they 
announced today that, on April 18, 2014, it obtained 41 new Benghazi-
related State Department documents.
  They include a newly declassified email showing then-White House 
Deputy Strategic Communications adviser Ben Rhodes and other Obama 
administration public relation officials attempting to orchestrate a 
campaign to reinforce President Obama and to portray the Benghazi 
consulate terrorist attack as being ``rooted in an Internet video and 
not a failure of policy.''
  Other documents show that State Department officials initially 
described the incident as an attack, a possible kidnap attempt.
  The documents were released Friday as a result of a June 21, 2013, 
Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against the Department of 
State to gain access to documents about the controversial talking 
points used by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for a series of 
appearances on television--Sunday news programs--on September 16, 2012.
  Judicial Watch had been seeking these documents since October 18, 
2012. The Rhodes email was sent on Friday, September 14, at 8:09 p.m., 
with the subject line, ``Re: Prep call with Susan: Saturday at 4 p.m. 
ET.''
  The documents show that the prep was for Ambassador Rice's Sunday 
news show appearances to discuss the Benghazi attack. The documents 
list as a goal, ``to underscore that these protests are rooted in an 
Internet video and not a broader failure of policy.''
  I might insert parenthetically here that, actually, this must be 
taken in context in 2012 because there was an election only weeks 
following this incident, and the big campaign line that Osama bin Laden 
is dead, GM is alive, al Qaeda is on the run, didn't look nearly as 
tantalizing if it turns out al Qaeda--al Qaeda may be on the run, but 
if they are, they are running toward American interests and killing an 
American Ambassador and other State Department personnel.
  This article goes on to say:

       Rhodes returns to the ``Internet video'' scenario later in 
     the email, the first point in a section labeled ``Top-
     lines.''

  And here is the quote:

       We have made our views on this video crystal clear. The 
     United States Government had nothing to do with it. We reject 
     its message and its contents. We find it disgusting and 
     reprehensible, but there is absolutely no justification at 
     all for responding to this movie with violence, and we are 
     working to make sure that people around the globe hear that 
     message.

  Mr. Speaker, it also should be noted here that it was not only 
sending Susan Rice out to mislead the American people before the 
election into believing that this was not a failure of policy by the 
Obama administration, which it clearly was, but actually, it was all 
about a video.
  To perpetuate this misleading, some might argue, fraudulent 
presentation of anything but facts included producing a commercial with 
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying the United States had nothing 
to do with that video, repeatedly making the point to add cover to 
their cover story that it was not a failure of policy by the Obama 
administration that caused and failed to suppress the attack at 
Benghazi, but it was some video by some lone person out in California 
who must be stopped.
  They spent tens of thousands of dollars running this commercial in 
foreign countries to help give cover to what were the true facts, the 
true facts being that this was nothing about a video; it was all about 
a planned concerted attack, which it turns out may have even utilized 
weapons that the United States provided to these rebels over many of 
our objections on this House floor, and with the President saying he 
really didn't need congressional support because he had Islamic 
countries and France wanting us to get in there and provide weapons and 
air cover to the al Qaeda-backed rebels.

                              {time}  1645

  We knew there was al Qaeda involved. As we said on the floor back 
during those days, we just don't know how extensive it is. We think we 
ought to wait until we know how extensive the al Qaeda involvement is. 
But this administration wouldn't have that. They moved ahead. They 
furnished weapons. And it could very well turn out that there were 
people in our party that said, okay, all right, if that is what you 
want to do, but it certainly wasn't this congressional body that did 
that.
  The President got his will. They furnished weapons to rebels that 
included al Qaeda. This administration refused to provide the security 
that was requested by more than one person, but including Chris 
Stevens, himself. It refused to provide it.
  How bad would that look right before the election: A mere matter of 
weeks before early voting started, and it turns out that not only did 
they not provide security as requested, when it was requested, heck, 
they may have even provided the weapons to the rebels who killed our 
Ambassador. It was the first time an Ambassador had been killed since 
the Jimmy Carter administration, and here it was happening again.
  This administration knew exactly what would happen when America finds 
out that an administration is toothless, is ineffectual, and has 
actually brought assistance to radical Islamists becoming in charge of 
a country. Because, after all, it was the Carter administration that 
did as this administration did with Mubarak and Qadhafi in saying they 
have got to go, pushed an ally out. It was not a very nice one by any 
stretch, but an ally.
  And then President Carter welcomed the Ayatollah Khomeini as a man of 
peace. So then for the first time in what was a long period, a radical 
Islamist got control of a major country. That opened the door to many 
thousands and thousands and thousands of Americans being killed in the

[[Page H3281]]

decades ahead. That kind of ineffectual foreign policy that Jimmy 
Carter had saw the results at Benghazi.
  But this article goes on to point out that:

       Among the top administration PR personnel who received the 
     Rhodes memo were White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, 
     Deputy Press Secretary Joshua Earnest, then-White House 
     Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, then-White House Deputy 
     Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, then-National 
     Security Council Director of Communications Erin Pelton, 
     Special Assistant to the Press Secretary Howli Ledbetter, and 
     then-White House Senior Advisor and political strategist 
     David Plouffe.
       The Rhodes communications strategy email also instructs 
     recipients to portray Obama as ``steady and statesmanlike'' 
     throughout the crisis. Another of the ``goals'' of the PR 
     offensive, Rhodes says, is ``to reinforce the President and 
     Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with 
     difficult challenges.'' He later includes as a PR ``top-
     line'' talking point:
       ``I think that people have come to trust that President 
     Obama provides leadership that is steady and statesmanlike. 
     There are always going to be challenges that emerge around 
     the world, and time and again, he has shown that we can meet 
     them.''
       The documents Judicial Watch obtained also include a 
     September 12, 2012, email from former deputy spokesman at 
     U.S. Mission to the United Nations Payton Knopf to Susan 
     Rice, noting that at a press briefing earlier that day, State 
     Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland explicitly stated 
     that the attack on the consulate had been well planned.
       The email sent by Knopf to Rice at 5:42 p.m. said:
       ``Responding to a question about whether it was an 
     organized terror attack, Toria said that she couldn't speak 
     to the identity of the perpetrators but that it was clearly a 
     complex attack.''
       In the days following the Knopf email, Rice appeared on 
     ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX News, and CNN still claiming the assaults 
     occurred ``spontaneously'' in response to the ``hateful 
     video.''

  And it is worth noting, there were people that used those words, 
``steady'' and ``statesmanlike.'' And certainly this would have 
appeared to be a real problem for the administration that someone 
speaking soon after the attack and the murder, the assassination of 
Chris Stevens and three American patriots, Ms. Nuland, not knowing that 
she was supposed to use talking points and mislead the American public 
and the world, spoke the truth because she hadn't gotten the email, the 
talking points to mislead Americans and the world. So she spoke the 
truth.
  It was very clear, as it was to those in Libya, that this was a 
complicated attack. It was well planned, well coordinated, and it had 
nothing to do with the video.
  This article goes on:

       On Sunday, September 16, Rice told CBS's ``Face the 
     Nation":
       ``But based on the best information we have to date, what 
     our assessment is as of the present is, in fact, what began 
     spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had 
     transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as 
     you know, there was a violent protest outside of our Embassy 
     sparked by this hateful video.''
       The Judicial Watch documents confirm that CIA talking 
     points that were prepared for Congress and may have been used 
     by Rice on ``Face the Nation'' and four additional Sunday 
     talk shows on September 16 had been heavily edited by then-
     CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell. According to one email:
       ``The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable because they 
     seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the 
     CIA had warned about a specific attack on our Embassy. On the 
     SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and he had 
     taken a heavy hand to editing them. He noted that he would be 
     happy to work with then deputy chief of staff to Hillary 
     Clinton, Jake Sullivan, and Rhodes to develop appropriate 
     talking points.''
       The documents obtained by Judicial Watch also contain 
     numerous emails sent during the assault on the Benghazi 
     diplomatic facility. The contemporaneous and dramatic emails 
     describe the assault as an ``attack.''

  Just as State Department number two person in Libya said Chris 
Stevens described it: We are under attack. There was nothing about a 
video. The American people were duped right before the election, as was 
the intent.
  Back to the article:

       September 11, 2012, 6:41 p.m., Senior Adviser Eric Pelofsky 
     to Susan Rice:
       ``As reported, the Benghazi compound came under attack and 
     it took a bit of time for the `annex' colleagues and Libyan 
     February 17 brigade to secure it. One of our colleagues was 
     killed--IMO Sean Smith. Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was 
     visiting Benghazi this week is missing. U.S. and Libyan 
     colleagues are looking for him.''

  Further down, it notes how much material is blacked out in so many of 
the emails. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said: ``Now we know the 
Obama White House's chief concern about the Benghazi attack was making 
sure that President Obama looked good.'' ``And these documents 
undermine the Obama administration's narrative that it thought the 
Benghazi attack had something to do with protests or an Internet video. 
Given the explosive material in these documents, it is no surprise that 
we had to go to Federal court to pry them loose from the Obama State 
Department.''
  Well, that has led to this printing that I did of another Judicial 
Watch FOIA request. This is an article from here in D.C.:

       Judicial Watch announced today that on March 25, 2014, it 
     filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the 
     Federal Bureau of Investigation seeking agency records 
     related to the awarding of the Louis E. Peters Award in 2011 
     to Mohamed Elibiary, a member of the Department of Homeland 
     Security Advisory Council. Elibiary is alleged to have close 
     ties to radical Islamist organizations, including the Muslim 
     Brotherhood.

  And I will insert parenthetically here that, actually, when a Muslim 
Brother, Morsi, was President of Egypt, a periodical there was bragging 
about six top Obama officials who were Muslim Brothers, and one of them 
was Mr. Elibiary from Texas.
  This points out here:

       Judicial Watch seeks the following documents in its June 
     24, 2013, FOIA request:
       Any and all records regarding, concerning, or related to 
     the awarding of the Louis E. Peters Memorial Award to Mr. 
     Mohamed Elibiary on September 8, 2011.

  Further down, it says:

       Elibiary, who in his role as Homeland Security adviser has 
     regular access to classified information, most recently came 
     under fire in November 2013 for tweeting out the message that 
     America is an ``Islamic country with an Islamically compliant 
     constitution.'' In its December 2013 ``Special Report: U.S. 
     Government Purges of Law Enforcement Training Material Deemed 
     `Offensive' to Muslims,'' Judicial Watch identified Elibiary 
     as one of nearly a half dozen ``Islamist influence 
     operators'' within the Obama administration ``seeking to 
     advance an ideological agenda completely at odds with our 
     constitutional system.''

  Of course, that was December of 2013 when actually it was December of 
2012 when the Egyptian Muslim Brother-controlled government had a 
periodical that talked about, a year before this, the six Muslim 
Brothers who had such powerful influence and roles in this 
administration.
  This goes on to talk about Mr. Elibiary and his role in the Homeland 
Security Department. Personally, I had an opportunity to question Janet 
Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security more than once about Mr. 
Elibiary.
  And actually, on the night before one of our hearings, I had talked 
to the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Steve McCraw, a 
great man, a great patriot, a former FBI agent. He understands what is 
going on in this country. And he was alerted that Mr. Elibiary had 
downloaded two documents from a classified database that Mr. Elibiary 
only got access to because Janet Napolitano, to the best we can find 
out, just unilaterally gave him a security clearance so he could go 
into these Web sites. And he did it from his own computer, and he did 
it at his home. They could tell all of this by the intelligence they 
were able to gather, and it was clear he had downloaded two documents.
  What was in an article and published was that the article writer said 
that he had talked to someone in the national media who said that 
Elibiary had shopped those two documents to this national media source, 
and they didn't accept it. They were concerned about accepting 
classified documents and printing them, and so they didn't.

                              {time}  1700

  The next day at our hearing I brought this up to Secretary 
Napolitano. She said she didn't know what I was talking about, 
basically, and she would look into it. What she didn't know is that I 
knew when she made those false statements that her chief of staff the 
night before, her chief of staff had talked to Steve McCraw and had 
told him, look, I know you are concerned--basically that is what he 
said:

       I know you are concerned, but I have given a full briefing 
     of what happened to the Secretary herself. She knows what is 
     going on. She is fully briefed on the matter.

  So either Secretary Napolitano lied to me and the Congress in our 
hearing

[[Page H3282]]

under penalty of perjury, or her chief of staff just completely made up 
that he had just briefed the Secretary on this troubling security 
breach.
  I would like to think that if the Secretary, as here, had 
unilaterally put what Egypt considered a member of the Muslim 
Brotherhood into our very tight inner circle and given him a secret 
security clearance without going through the normal vetting that is 
supposed to be required, and if that person that she unilaterally got 
that position had breached the protocol and downloaded documents from a 
classified setting, that somebody, for Heaven's sake, would have 
alerted the Secretary of Homeland Security. But she sat right there and 
told me that, no, she didn't know anything about it.
  The next time I asked her about it, however, she said she had looked 
into it and there was nothing to it. Unfortunately for her, and 
unfortunately for our country and its own security, no one had bothered 
to properly look into the matter because the reporter who published the 
article that he had talked to, a national media source, said Elibiary 
tried to get him to publish the classified documents. Nobody called 
that reporter. Nobody talked to that reporter. He probably wouldn't 
have disclosed his source, but nobody bothered to even talk to the 
reporter that knew Mr. Elibiary had shopped those documents.
  If homeland security could be so poorly run at the highest level, 
over its own security, is the rest of America really very safe? The FBI 
in 2011 gave their highest civilian award, or one of the highest 
awards, to this same person who was a featured speaker at the tribute 
to the Ayatollah Khomeini. In fact, the tribute was entitled, ``A 
Tribute to the Great Islamic Visionary, Ayatollah Khomeini.'' Well, 
there were no cameras allowed in that big tribute, so we don't know 
exactly what Mr. Elibiary had to say in tribute to this great Islamic 
visionary, the Ayatollah Khomeini, who was responsible for kick-
starting this radical Islamic effort against the Great Satan, the 
United States, from their way of thinking.
  So he is entitled to the FBI's great tribute to civilians? It kind of 
gives you a little insight, Mr. Speaker, into how in the world the FBI, 
after the United States got two heads-ups from a foreign government 
that was not necessarily our friend, that Mr. Tsarnaev had been 
radicalized. They talked to Tsarnaev. The best we could get from the 
hearings that we had when we questioned Director Mueller, the FBI 
Director at the time--apparently they talked to Mr. Tsarnaev, and he 
didn't confess to them that he had become radical. They talked to his 
mother, and she didn't confess that he had become radical. And when I 
said that you didn't even go out to the Muslim temples there in Boston 
where the Tsarnaevs attended to ask questions--you can ask questions if 
you had proper training. Oh, yes, that is right, because CAIR and ISNA 
were identified by a United States District Court, that was upheld by 
the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, that CAIR and ISNA are front 
organizations for the Muslim Brotherhood. Yes. CAIR and ISNA, they 
regularly complain. They give instructions. They give insights to this 
administration. And CAIR, particularly, had complained about things 
that radical Islamists might find offensive in the FBI training 
material, so they were purged.
  A couple of us went through these documents that were purged, but we 
were told the setting and the information was classified so I can't go 
into it. But, Mr. Speaker, I can tell you it was shocking that some of 
that stuff was purged. Some of it was stupid. It didn't have to be 
there. But when, as one of our intelligence officers told me, we blind 
ourselves to our ability to see our enemy, then when you go investigate 
someone that you have been given a heads up is radicalized and is a 
threat to kill Americans, you don't know what to ask. Because if you 
knew what to ask, you would go to the mosque and say, who knew 
Tsarnaev? Have you ever heard him talk about ``Qutb's Milestones,'' 
that publication he wrote, you know, the one that Osama bin Laden said 
helped to radicalize him?
  If you know about radical Islam, you would know the questions to ask. 
But our FBI, our intelligence, they are not allowed to get that 
information anymore because it might offend a radical Islamist. Thank 
God for the moderate Muslims around the world who do not want radical 
Islamists in charge of their country. And our friends that originally 
helped to defeat the Taliban, the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, are 
in trouble because we have abandoned them, and this administration now 
won't have anything to do with them. They fought the Taliban. They 
defeated the Taliban, and the last great fight consisted of Northern 
Alliance leader, General Dostum, a legend, riding with about 2,000 
Northern Alliance tribesmen on horseback. Dostum said they had to go on 
horseback because they knew soldiers on foot would never make it up the 
hill, that mountain, to get to the Taliban stronghold. Their only 
chance to get through the rocket-propelled grenades and the bullets was 
to ride on horseback. And they knew many of them wouldn't make it, but 
they really believed enough of them would that they could defeat the 
Taliban. That is the kind of courage--and, yeah, they fight the Taliban 
the way the Taliban fights. They are pretty tough folks. But they are 
the enemy of our enemy, the Taliban.
  So this administration doesn't really want to have anything to do 
with the Northern Alliance that were our allies. Instead, they keep 
wanting to cut some kind of a deal with the Taliban. And all the 
Northern Alliance said was, Look, you know, you helped force this 
constitution upon Afghanistan that centralizes the government when we 
are really more tribal, we are more regional. But you gave us a 
government where the president gets to appoint every governor, every 
mayor, every police chief, most of the higher level teachers, a slate 
of many of the legislators that has some powers of the purse. All they 
ask is let us elect our own governors, mayors, and pick our own police 
chiefs, and that way the Taliban just can't knock off the president or 
co-op the president and take back over Afghanistan, which is what is 
about to happen the way this administration has so poorly handled our 
foreign policy.
  They said that if you could at least push through an amendment that 
let us elect our governors, mayors, and get our own police chiefs, then 
we could be regionally strong. So maybe the Taliban gets one region, 
but the rest of us could rise up and put him out of business again.
  Mr. Speaker, why wouldn't that be a good strategy? We don't even need 
Americans to carry that out. We don't need Americans sitting and 
hoping, as John Kerry once said about Vietnam, that they are not the 
last one to die leaving Afghanistan. I have been to too many funerals 
of people who gave the last full measure for this country in 
Afghanistan. We owe it to them not to let it fall immediately back into 
Taliban hands, and we could prevent that without any more American 
blood being shed.

  We prop up financially the Afghan Government to the point that if we 
put enough pressure on--and I know this administration always puts 
pressure on the wrong people. Instead of the Palestinian terrorists, we 
put pressure on Israel to keep giving away their security and safety. 
In Afghanistan, we pressure the people of Afghanistan to give up their 
security and safety because we want to cut a deal with the Taliban. The 
thing to do is to empower the enemy of our enemy, and they will keep 
our enemies at bay. That is what needs to be done in Afghanistan.
  That is why it is so important lest anyone is attempted to ask the 
question about Benghazi, what difference, at this point, does it make 
how our four Americans were killed? Well, it makes a difference because 
if we had learned the specific breakdowns and causes during the Clinton 
years of two Embassies being attacked and Americans dying, then perhaps 
we would have been better prepared at Benghazi. But since we didn't 
learn the lesson under the Clinton administration because people in 
that administration apparently were wondering what difference does it 
make how or why these people died and let's just move on, and so 
Americans died in the future. If we are going to stop that in the 
future from here, we need to know at this point what happened in 
Benghazi.
  Now, not only is this administration continuing to thwart efforts to 
get to the bottom of what happened at Benghazi, it also sends our 
Secretary of State to insult the Israelis yet again.

[[Page H3283]]

  This time, as this article from the Daily Beast, 4/27, points out:

       The Secretary of State, that is John Kerry, said that if 
     Israel doesn't make peace soon, it could become 'an apartheid 
     state,' like the old South Africa. Jewish leaders are fuming 
     over the comparison.
       If there is no two-state solution to the Israeli-
     Palestinian conflict soon, Israel risks becoming 'an 
     apartheid state,' Secretary of State John Kerry told a room 
     of influential world leaders in a closed-door meeting Friday.
       Senior American officials have rarely, if ever, used the 
     term 'apartheid' in reference to Israel, and President Obama 
     has previously rejected the idea that the word should apply 
     to the Jewish state. Kerry's use of the loaded term is 
     already rankling Jewish leaders in America--and it could 
     attract unwanted attention in Israel, as well.
       It wasn't the only controversial comment on the Middle East 
     that Kerry made during his remarks to the Trilateral 
     Commission, a recording of which was obtained by The Daily 
     Beast. Kerry also repeated his warning that a failure of 
     Middle East peace talks could lead to a resumption of 
     Palestinian violence against Israeli citizens. He suggested 
     that a change in either the Israeli or Palestinian leadership 
     could make achieving a peace deal more feasible. He lashed 
     out against Israeli settlement building. And Kerry said that 
     both Israeli and Palestinian leaders share blame for the 
     current impasse in the talks.

  Yeah, let's figure that out, Mr. Speaker. Israel and Palestinians 
share the blame for the breakdown of Palestinian peace talks because 
Israel says you just have to recognize we have a right to exist as a 
Jewish state so we don't suffer another Holocaust.

                              {time}  1715

  And the Palestinians say: you are the little Satan, America is the 
great Satan, we intend to wipe you off the map. At no time will we be 
willing to recognize your right to exist. So no, we are not going to 
agree to allow you to exist, so the only agreement we will enter is if 
you agree that we have to still plan on wiping you off the map.
  And this is the kind of agreement that Kerry thinks should be made.
  According to the 1998 Rome Statute, the crime of apartheid is defined 
as:

       Inhuman acts committed in the context of an 
     institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and 
     domination by one racial group over any other racial group or 
     groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that 
     regime. The term is most often used in reference to the 
     system of racial segregation and oppression that governed 
     South Africa from 1948 until 1994.

  So let's see, in Israel, Palestinians get the best jobs anywhere 
between their Palestinian area and Israeli area, and they are allowed 
to hold those jobs, make the money, and go back into the Palestinian 
area; and let's see, why does Israel want to protect itself? Oh, yes, 
before they put up a fence, it made it too easy for Palestinian suicide 
bombers to just walk into a school yard, walk into an area where 
innocent children, women, and men are occupying or having a good time 
and blow them up.
  Finally, as a matter of their own self-security, they said: no, we 
are going to have to have fences, so you can't just walk in and blow up 
innocent people.
  How have the Palestinians taken to that? Well, they have taken to it 
by continuing to have, in their textbooks, references to Jewish people 
as rats or vermin and other such references.
  They elicit hatred from the little schoolchildren against Jews. They 
name holidays and landmarks and monuments and streets after people who 
have been able to kill innocent people in Israel.
  You know, that is one thing about the United States, we don't 
normally name holidays and streets and landmarks and monuments for 
people who kill innocent other people. We name holidays and streets for 
people like Martin Luther King, Jr., an ordained Christian minister who 
said, by his life, you don't use violence to kill innocent people.
  Those are the kind of people we respect here in America. Those are 
the kind of people we name holidays and streets for, but not in 
Palestine. Oh, no. Oh, no. And this Secretary of State blames Israel. 
He does say there is some blame to share, but as the Prime Minister of 
Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, said standing at that podium right there:

       If the Palestinians lay down their weapons, there will be 
     peace; if the Israelis lay down their weapons, there will be 
     no Israel.

  After World War II, when it was learned the extent of the Holocaust, 
of killing 6 million or so Jewish people simply because of their race, 
simply because of who they were, the world reacted so strongly and 
appropriately, they said: we can't allow this to happen again, we need 
to create the nation of Israel where Jews can go and be protected in a 
Jewish state, the only Jewish country in the world.
  Amazingly, people that had no concept of what the Bible were actually 
carried out prophesies from the Old Testament, to the letter, by what 
they did. Maybe there is something to that Old Testament and its 
prophesies.
  For those in this administration, perhaps they are hoping that is not 
the case because this Secretary of State has, in essence, cursed Israel 
more than once and that Old Testament that prophesied Israel would be 
reborn, as it has been exactly, it says those who curse Israel will be 
cursed and those who bless Israel will be blessed.
  You only have to go back a year before or just last year, November 
13, 2013. Here is another article about our Secretary of State from 
Haifa, Israel:

       America's Ambassador to Israel has been in damage-control 
     mode after his boss, Secretary of State John Kerry, wondered 
     rhetorically if Jewish opposition to peace negotiations with 
     Palestinians was driven by a desire for a third intifada. 
     Intifada is an Arabic word for uprising and was the term 
     given to intensified Israeli-Palestinian violence from 1987-
     1993 and from 2000-2005.

  Our Secretary of State is saying out loud in a foreign country that, 
gee, he is wondering if the Israelis want an intifada again in which 
hundreds and hundreds of Israeli citizens will be senselessly killed 
again.
  You know, there was a reason--and I was talking to one of my 
Democratic colleagues yesterday about Secretary Kerry's remarks. There 
was a reason the majority of the United States said: you know what, we 
are concerned about some aspect of John Kerry. We don't want him to be 
the spokesman around the world for the United States of America. So it 
could be credited to President Obama, we will give him another chance. 
We will let him speak for America, I will appoint him Secretary of 
State.
  And he has shown yet again, you know what, there really was a reason 
that the American people did not want him to be the international 
spokesman for America. It is time, I believe, he came home and ceased 
being Secretary of State.
  Here is an article from yesterday by Ben Shapiro. He is a Jew. He is 
brilliant. He is a friend. He wrote yesterday an article titled, ``The 
Anti-Semitism of the Obama administration.'' He talks about Kerry's 
comment about the apartheid state. Ben says in his article:

       This is pure anti-Semitism. Blaming Israel for its 
     incapacity to make peace with people whose stated goal is to 
     murder Jews cannot be construed as anything other than Jew 
     hatred. Likening the Jewish state to South Africa, despite 
     the fact that there are well over a million Arab citizens 
     with full voting rights and despite the fact that the 
     Palestinian territories are completely Judenrein, is more of 
     the same.
       Upon tape of his remarks hitting the press, Kerry 
     immediately backtracked, stating, ``I will not allow my 
     commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly 
     for partisan, political purposes.'' He then disclaimed that 
     he ever said Israel was an apartheid state and said, ``If I 
     could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word 
     to describe my firm belief that the only way in the long term 
     to have a Jewish state and two nations and two people is 
     through a two-state solution.''
       Sadly, Kerry is simply not believable at this point. The 
     Obama administration has demonstrated a consistent pattern of 
     anti-Semitic rhetoric--even aside from their practical 
     undermining of any Israeli attempt to stop the Iranian 
     nuclear program with repeated national security leaks. It 
     peppers the top ranks of the Obama White House.

  And then the article goes on to point out some of the leaks that were 
done to hurt Israel.
  But Secretary Kerry should be encouraged. Here is an article, ``Far 
Left J-Street Defends Kerry's Apartheid Accusations Against Israel,'' 
posted by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, April 29:

       J-Street calls itself the organization that 
     ``gives political voice to mainstream American Jews and 
     other supporters of Israel,'' but it is far from a pro-
     Israel group. In 2010, it was revealed that radical far 
     left billionaire George Soros donated $245,000 to the 
     leftist organization in 2008 and another $500,000 in 
     subsequent years.
       Cofounder Daniel Levy was caught on tape telling an 
     audience that the creation of Israel was ``an act that was 
     wrong.''

  Wow.

       Yesterday, this far left anti-Israel group defended John 
     Kerry. Pro-Israel groups

[[Page H3284]]

     blasted J-Street today after the far left Jewish group 
     supported John Kerry's apartheid accusation against Israel. 
     The Zionist Organization of America responded to J-Street's 
     comments: J-Street has again demonstrated that it is an 
     extremist group, hostile to Israel, by supporting Secretary 
     of State John Kerry's ``apartheid'' accusation against 
     Israel.

  This is the administration that condemns, cajoles our friend Israel, 
supports and coddles terrorists, radical Islamists in Afghanistan and 
Palestine, that went rushing into Libya when many of us were saying: 
look, this isn't a good idea. We know al Qaeda is supporting the 
rebels. Let's wait and see how much of these rebels are al Qaeda.
  But he helped them anyway, and now, we find out, here is an article 
from today from The Blaze titled, ``The Massive Amount of Weapons Meant 
for Libyan Rebels That Actually Ended Up in Terrorists' Hands.''
  It is a good article from Sara Carter. The trouble is these weapons 
were actually intended for the terrorists because we knew--we had 
information there were al Qaeda terrorists that were part of the rebels 
against Qadhafi.
  I know I just have a couple more minutes, but let me mention, as some 
of the leadership in the Senate and even some on the Republican side 
here in the House is being encouraged and encouraging others, let's 
have some kind of legal status, amnesty-type bill for certain people.
  Or how about in the NDAA that we are going to take up, why don't we 
put in there, if you are in this country illegally and you are willing 
to go into the service, then we will claim you are legal?
  Recent veterans are struggling to find jobs, and information 
indicates our military members are being released from the military 
right and left because of the dramatic cuts to the military, far more 
than should ever have been allowed by this body, and they are having 
trouble finding jobs.
  The unemployment rate for our veterans ought to be much lower than 
for anybody, and it is much higher than for the American population, 
and this administration now and some of our own leadership wants to 
encourage people illegally here to go take those jobs away from those 
being bounced out of the military and let them compete and bring down 
the level of wages for the middle class in America. It should not be 
allowed.
  With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________