[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 64 (Thursday, May 1, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H3403-H3406]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SECURITY THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas (Mr.
Gohmert) for 30 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I don't know if my dear friend from
California
[[Page H3404]]
has seen this, but following up on his comments, this is part of the
front page of the Army Times, April 28, and it says here:
Thousands more will be forced out; staff sergeants now on
hit list.
It talks about the career killers, but because of the cuts to our
military, we are forcing out thousands and thousands of patriots who
wanted to make a career of the United States military. I, along with my
friend from California, don't necessarily think it is a good idea to be
saying: look, if you are illegally in the country, all you have to do
is go displace yet another American patriot and take their job in the
military, force them out into the civilian sector, where our United
States military veterans have a much higher unemployment rate than the
general population.
That is not a good idea. It is not fair to our patriots, and it
should not be something that this Congress passes, to once again not
only run out patriots who wanted to make the United States military a
career, but force them out with illegal immigrants using their job,
taking their jobs, forcing them into an unemployment sector, where
their unemployment rates are so very high. They shouldn't be high.
People should be willing to hire veterans. They have phenomenal work
ethics, or they wouldn't have been in the military, unless they got
bumped out early for not working; but otherwise, from my 4 years in the
Army, right after we turned to being a volunteer Army, it was a very
difficult time. Our military was not appreciated.
I went through officer basic at Fort Riley, Kansas, and it was a
standing order not to wear your uniform off post because of hatred for
the military, and if you got caught by yourself in uniform, there might
be a gang that would beat you up. It happened, so it was a standing
order. You couldn't wear your uniform off post because of potential
violence upon our military by American citizens.
It has blessed my heart to see America begin again to appreciate
those who answer the call of their country, serve their country, and do
so honorably and well in the United States military, which should
result in our promises to our military and promises that, to some,
helped induce them into the military of good health care, good
veterans' care.
Now, I was only in 4 years and don't have a disability. I have never
been provided any VA assistance or health care, but for those who need
it, deserve it, were promised it, we can't be having a socialized
medicine system that ends up being like most socialized medicine
systems become; and the way ObamaCare will eventually lead this country
into being, with regard to health care, you get put on lists.
Socialized medicine doesn't go broke because you get put on lists,
and you die waiting for your procedure in sufficient numbers, at least
we have people die who won't get the procedure, or perhaps they need a
hip or a knee, pacemaker, or whatever it is, they don't get them
because they are having to wait in line.
We shouldn't do that to our Nation. We should repeal ObamaCare
outright before it takes us there, but for the sake of this country, we
can't continue betraying our veterans and not ensuring that they have
the best health care that is available.
If VA clinics or hospitals aren't doing the trick, let's give them a
card that lets them walk into any health care facility in the Nation
and get the best care we have got, and let's keep our promise to them
that we will take care of that.
My dear friend, Andrew C. McCarthy, has an article out in National
Review Online today. He posted it at 4 a.m. I know Andy is up that time
in the morning because, sometimes, we exchange emails at that time in
the morning.
He is a brilliant lawyer, constitutional scholar, historian, and a
patriot himself, who was the lead prosecutor in ensuring that the
planner, the one most responsible for the first World Trade Center
bombing in 1993, when President Bill Clinton was in office, he made
sure he was convicted.
If one actually looks at comments by the brother of that al Qaeda
leader, you find references to his brother saying: hey, you know, there
is violence, there is going to be a lot more violence against the U.S.,
but I will be glad to help negotiate this thing if we can get release
of The Blind Sheikh.
Morsi, who became president of Egypt, a Muslim brother, he made
clear, before he was even elected, that he wanted to secure the release
of The Blind Sheikh who plotted, planned, carried out the first bombing
of the World Trade Center, which we can be thankful that it didn't
result in more death and more damage.
We should have learned a lesson from that. We didn't learn it. We
continued, under the Clinton administration, to treat that like it was
some civilian crime, instead of what it actually was, an act of war. As
an act of war, it should have stirred more of a response.
So perhaps there was someone in the White House after the World Trade
Center was bombed in 1993, who wondered out loud within the White
House: well, what difference at this point does it make why they bombed
the World Trade Center or what we might have done to provide more
security? What difference at this point does it make?
Because perhaps, if that kind of thinking were not in the White House
during the 1990s, perhaps we could have looked more closely at the
causes of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and looked more closely
at the forces behind it and determined, wow, this is really a group
that is at war with the United States, radical Islamists have been at
war with the United States since 1979.
We just didn't know it. There was a war going on, but it was one-
sided because the other side, the United States, didn't know there was
a war, so they weren't fighting a war. They just kept retreating.
In 1979, an act of war occurred in an attack against our embassy. The
man, the Ayatollah Khomeini, radical Islamist who became the head of
Iran, that President Jimmy Carter welcomed as a man of peace, that one
of the top advisers right now in our Homeland Security Department spoke
up for as a featured speaker at the Ayatollah Khomeini man of vision
ceremony that was held some years back in this country.
Now, this featured speaker on behalf of the man of vision, the
Ayatollah Khomeini, he is advising the Homeland Security Department;
not only that, the FBI in 2011 gave him their highest civilian award.
Some people do not understand there is still a war going on. Some in
this administration and some in the Senate and some in the House may
refuse to recognize it, but there is still a war going on.
Mr. McCarthy writes:
Here is the main point: The rioting at the American embassy
in Cairo was not about the anti-Muslim video. As argued here
repeatedly, the Obama administration's ``Blame the Video''
story was a fraudulent explanation for the September 11,
2012, rioting in Cairo every bit as much as it was a
fraudulent explanation for the massacre in Benghazi several
hours later.
Once you grasp this well-hidden fact, the Obama
administration's dereliction of duty in connection with
Benghazi become much easier to see, but let's begin with Jay
Carney's performance in Wednesday's exchange with the White
House press corps, a new low in insulting the intelligence of
the American people.
Mr. Carney was grilled about just-released emails which
corroborate what many of us have been arguing all along:
``Blame the Video'' was an Obama administration crafted lie,
through and through. It was intended, in the stretch run of
the 2012 campaign, to obscure the facts that (a) the
President's foreign policy of empowering Islamic supremacists
contributed directly and materially to the Benghazi massacre;
(b) the President's reckless stationing of American
government personnel in Benghazi and his shocking failure to
provide sufficient protection for them were driven by a
political-campaign imperative to portray the Obama Libya
policy as a success--and, again, they invited the jihadist
violence that killed our ambassador and three other
Americans; and (c) far from being ``decimated,'' as the
President repeatedly claimed during the campaign (and
continued to claim even after the September 11 violence in
Egypt and Libya), al Qaeda and its allied jihadists remained
a driving force of anti-American violence in Muslim
countries--indeed, they had been strengthened by the
President's pro-Islamist policies.
The explosive emails that have surfaced thanks to the
perseverance of Judicial Watch make explicit what has long
been obvious: Susan Rice, the President's confidant and
ambassador to the U.N., was strategically chosen to peddle
the administration's ``Blame the Video'' fairy tale to the
American people in appearances on five different national
television broadcasts the Sunday after the massacre. She was
coached about what to say by other members of the President's
inner circle. One of the emails refers
[[Page H3405]]
expressly to a ``prep call'' that Ambassador Rice had with
several administration officials on late Saturday afternoon
right before her Sunday show appearances.
{time} 1430
The tangled web of deception spun by the administration has
previously included an effort to distance the White House
(i.e., the President) from Rice's mendacious TV performances.
Thus, Carney was in the unenviable position Wednesday of
trying to explain the ``prep call'' email, as well as other
messages that illuminate the Obama White House's deep
involvement in coaching Rice. The emails manifest that Rice's
performances were campaign appearances, not the good-faith
effort of a public official to inform the American people
about an act of war against our country. Her instructions
were ``to underscore that these protests are rooted in an
Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy,'' and
``to reinforce the President and administration's strength
and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.''
Carney risibly claimed that the ``prep call'' was ``not
about Benghazi.'' Instead, according to him, it was ``about
the protests around the Muslim world.''
Two points must be made about this.
The first involves the administration's blatant lying. Benghazi was
the only reason Rice was on the Sunday shows. If the massacre had not
happened, there would not have been an extraordinary administration
offering of one top Obama official to five different television
networks to address a calamity that had happened a few days before.
Moreover, as is well known to anyone who has ever been involved in
government presentations to the media, to Congress, to courts, and
other fact-finding bodies, the official who will be doing the
presentation is put through a ``murder board'' process. This is a
freewheeling session in which the questions likely to be asked at the
presentation are posed, and potential answers--especially to tough
questions--are proposed, discussed, and massaged. The suggestion that
Rice, less than 24 hours before being grilled by high-profile media
figures, was being prepped on something totally separate and apart from
the incident that was the sole reason for her appearance is so
farfetched it is amazing that Carney thought he could make it fly.
The second point brings us full circle to Egypt.
Why would Carney claim, with a straight face, that Rice was being
prepped ``about protests around the Muslim world?'' Because other than
Benghazi, the ``protest around the Muslim world'' that Americans know
about is the rioting, not protest, the rioting at the U.S. Embassy in
Cairo a few hours before the Benghazi siege. When Benghazi comes up,
the administration--President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Jay
Carney, et al.--love to talk about the Cairo protests. Why? Because the
media--and, thus, the public--have bought, hook, line, and sinker, the
fraudulent claim that those ``protests'' were over the anti-Muslim
video. Obama & Co. shrewdly calculate that if you buy ``Blame the
Video'' as the explanation for Cairo, it becomes much more plausible
that you will accept the ``Blame the Video'' as the explanation for
Benghazi; or, at the very least, you will give Obama officials the
benefit of the doubt that they could truly have believed the video
triggered Benghazi, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
You see, the Benghazi fraud hinges on the success of the Cairo fraud.
If you are hoodwinked by the latter, they have a much better chance of
getting away with the former.
But the ``Blame the Video'' is every bit as much a deception when it
comes to Cairo.
Thanks to President Obama's policy of supporting the Muslim
Brotherhood and other Islamic supremacists in Egypt, post-Mubarak Cairo
became a very hospitable place for jihadists. That included al Qaeda
leaders, such as Mohammed Zawahiri, brother of al Qaeda emir Ayman
Zawahiri; and leaders of Gama'a al-Islamiyya, the Islamic group, the
terrorist organization that was led by The Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel-
Rahman, the terrorist I convicted in 1995 for running the jihadist cell
that bombed the World Trade Center and plotted to bomb other New York
City landmarks.
In the weeks before September 11, 2012, these jihadists plotted to
attack the U.S. Embassy in Cairo. In fact, The Blind Sheikh's son
threatened a 1979 Iran-style raid on the embassy. Americans would be
taken hostage to ransom for The Blind Sheikh's release from American
prison, where he is serving a life sentence thanks to Andy McCarthy.
Other jihadists threatened to burn the embassy to the ground, a threat
that was reported in the Egyptian press the day before the September 11
``protests.''
The State Department knew there was going to be trouble at the
embassy on September 11, the 11th anniversary of al Qaeda's mass murder
of nearly 3,000 Americans. It was well known that things could get very
ugly. When they did, it would become very obvious to Americans that
President Obama had not decimated al Qaeda as he was claiming on the
campaign trail. Even worse, it would be painfully evident that his pro-
Muslim Brotherhood policies had actually enhanced al Qaeda's capacity
to attack the United States in Egypt.
The State Department also knew about the obscure anti-Muslim video.
Few Egyptians, if any, had seen or heard about it, but it had been
denounced by the Grand Mufti in Cairo on September 9. Still, the stir
it caused was minor, at best. As Tom Joscelyn has elaborated, the Cairo
rioting was driven by the jihadists who were agitating for The Blind
Sheikh's release and who had been threatening for weeks to raid and
torch our embassy. And indeed, they did storm it, replace the American
flag with the jihadist black flag, and set fires around the embassy
complex.
It is important here, Mr. Speaker, to note that the al Qaeda leader's
brother, Zawahiri's brother, he was out there even after the attack on
Benghazi's consulate, basically saying: Hey, there could be more
rioting, more trouble, unless you work with me, and let's get The Blind
Sheikh released and then we can avoid future violence. Amidst all that
is what Andrew McCarthy is pointing out, claiming it was all about a
video.
In his article, McCarthy says:
Nevertheless, before the rioting began but when they knew
there was going to be trouble, State Department officials at
the embassy began tweeting out condemnations of the video
while ignoring the real sources of the threat: the resurgence
of jihadists in Muslim Brotherhood-governed Egypt, the
continuing demand for The Blind Sheikh's release (which
underscored the jihadists' influence), and the very real
danger that jihadists would attack the embassy (which
demonstrated that al Qaeda was anything but ``decimated'').
The transparent purpose of the State Department's shrieking over the
video was to create the illusion that any security problems at the
embassy--violent rioting minimized as mere ``protests''--were actually
attributable to the anti-Muslim video, not to President Obama's
policies and patent failure to quell al Qaeda.
Because there was a kernel of truth to the video story, and because
the American media had abdicated their responsibility to promote the
predominant causes of anti-Americanism in Egypt, journalists and the
public have uncritically accepted the notion--a false notion--that the
video caused the Cairo rioting. That acceptance is key to the
administration's ``Blame the Video'' farce in connection with the
lethal attack in Benghazi.
At about 10 p.m. Washington time on the night of September 11--after
they knew our Ambassador to Libya had been murdered and while the siege
of Benghazi still raged--Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama
spoke on the telephone. Shortly afterwards, the State Department issued
a statement from Secretary Hillary Clinton blaming the video for the
atrocity in Benghazi. That was the beginning of the fraud's Benghazi
phase--the phase Susan Rice was prepped to peddle on nationwide
television. But it wasn't the beginning of the fraud.
Secretary Clinton's minions at the State Department had started
spinning the video fraud hours earlier in Egypt. The sooner Americans
grasp that, the sooner they will comprehend the breathtaking depth of
the President's Benghazi coverup.
Today, our Oversight Committee was having a hearing to see a retired
general on the verge of tears finally coming forward, who was with
AFRICOM. He knew what was going on, he knew the truth, and he could not
remain silent; and so he came forward and said: Yes, there was really
much more we could have done.
Mr. Speaker, I hope and pray that all of those who were part of the
[[Page H3406]]
AFRICOM intelligence community will find courage from the general
coming forward--some I know that have left our intelligence service and
gone on to good civilian jobs. He has broken the ice. They can come
forward now. I hope, Mr. Speaker, they get the message. He has come
forward, the ice is broken, you won't be the first should be the
message.
All of the hostility--I mean, when I have an intelligence officer,
former intelligence officer, tell me--when I ask, ``Where have you
been?''--``I have been scared.'' I said, ``You have never been scared
of anything.''
``I have been scared since 9/12.''
All of those who have been forced to remain silent, I hope they will
come forward.
A mom with a son in our country's service had told me after 9/12
about where her son was and what he was doing. So I called him, and it
took a long time to get hold of him. He wasn't forthcoming. His mom
told me yesterday, or this week, that he'll be out of the U.S. service
before long and he wants to talk and come clean. I hope more will start
coming clean on the strength of this retired general's courage.
But in the remaining minutes, it should not be lost that today is the
National Day of Prayer. For some that still are not convinced at what
is at war here, we simply need to look at a statement from Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind who is at Guantanamo. I am grateful to
President Obama that he has kept him there. He is a threat to the
world, and particularly the United States. He was the mastermind behind
9/11.
In the pleading he prepared himself on page 4--this has been
declassified so anybody can find it on the Internet--he says:
We do not possess your military might, not your nuclear
weapons. Nevertheless, we fight you with the almighty God.
So, if our act of jihad and our fighting with you caused fear
and terror, then many thanks to God, because it is him that
has thrown fear into your hearts, which resulted in your
infidelity, paganism, and your statement that God had a son
and your trinity beliefs.
In other parts of the pleading he makes clear that Jews should be
destroyed.
Here he makes clear, also, anyone who has a trinity belief believes
that God had a son. Then he quotes from the Koran saying:
Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the
unbelievers, for that they joined companies with Allah, for
which he has sent no authority; their place will be the fire;
and evil is the home of the wrongdoers.
So he bases his belief that anyone who believes in a holy trinity
should go to the fire and burn forever on that part of the Koran.
Others have different interpretations, but radical Islamists believe
that.
That is why I think it is immensely helpful to go back to after the
Declaration of Independence but before the Constitution.
In 1783, the Treaty of Paris was entered in Paris, France, between
American diplomats and British diplomats. Britain was the strongest
country in the world, and our American diplomats knew they had to come
up with something that was so important that the strongest nation in
the world would not quickly come back after the new United States.
{time} 1445
When I first saw this document, I was shocked at the first words, and
then it made sense. The beginning of the treaty that forced Great
Britain to acknowledge United States' independence starts with these
words: ``in the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity.''
They believed in the Holy Trinity. They knew that Great Britain
believed in the Holy Trinity. They wanted something under which the
Brits would swear that would be so important that they would not dare
break that oath. That is why it started, ``in the name of the most holy
and undivided Trinity.'' That is where we got our start. That is why
radical Islam is at war with us.
I hope and pray on this National Day of Prayer that we will humble
ourselves, admit our wrongdoing, turn back to the God who has protected
us--and He will bless our land.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________