[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 78 (Thursday, May 22, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3256-S3259]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                 SYRIA

  Mr. McCAIN. The Middle East today is engulfed in an escalating 
regional conflict. The space for moderate politics in country after 
country is collapsing, and a process of radicalization is increasingly 
destabilizing the entire region. At the center of this growing conflict 
stands Syria, where for over 3 years now the Syrian people have faced 
an onslaught of unspeakable violence from President Bashar al-Assad and 
his forces.
  As of today more than 160,000 Syrians have been killed, over half of 
the population is in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, and 9.3 
million people have been driven from their homes in what the United 
Nations has described ``as the greatest humanitarian tragedy of our 
times.'' To give some sense for the scale of the growing refugee 
crisis, there are now 1 million registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon. 
That makes up one-fourth of the total population of the country. This 
does not include the thousands who are living there unofficially and 
unregistered. This is as if the entire population of Canada were 
uprooted and became refugees in the United States of America--twice 
over.
  Without understanding the scale, it is hard to comprehend the stress 
on resources and the escalating tensions that these refugees have 
caused in neighboring countries. Can you imagine what we would do as 
Americans if we were dealing with the entire population of Canada 
living as refugees in our country? Inside Syria, they are confronted 
with the inhumane cruelty of Mr. Assad and his forces every day.
  We have seen evidence of this systematic abuse, torture, starvation, 
and killing of approximately 100,000 detainees, in what clearly amounts 
to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The United Nations has 
detailed the further arrest, detention, torture, and sexual abuse of 
thousands of children by government forces. Human Rights Watch has 
documented how Syrian authorities have deliberately used explosives and 
bulldozers to demolish entire neighborhoods for no military reason 
whatsoever, just as a form of collective punishment of Syrian 
civilians.
  The United Nations has also documented the toll of the Syrian 
government's air strike campaign, and, in particular, the regime's use 
of crude cluster munitions that have become known as barrel bombs. 
Their sole purpose is to maim, kill, and terrorize as many civilians as 
possible when indiscriminately dropped on schools, bakeries, and 
mosques.
  Worse yet, evidence is piling up that Assad's forces have been 
equipping these barrel bombs with chlorine gas. Just last week French 
Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that France has evidence of at 
least 14 chlorine-based chemical attacks carried out by Syrian 
Government forces since 2013, adding, ``The regime is still capable of 
producing chemical weapons and is determined to use them.''
  Around the same time, a senior Israeli defense official stated that 
``from the day that he signed the deal, Assad has used chemical weapons 
over thirty times, and in every case citizens were killed.''
  The State Department has further verified these reports, stating 
there

[[Page S3257]]

were ``indications'' of the use of chlorine--though it was quick to 
point out that this is not one of the chemicals Syria was obliged to 
surrender.
  So it appears that we are faced with a situation in which the Assad 
regime has agreed to give up certain chemical weapons after using them 
to murder nearly 1,400 civilians last year, but it is also using other 
chemicals--less lethal but nonetheless effective--to continue gassing 
civilians to death, and the world does nothing about it. Why? Because 
technically this is permitted under the chemical weapons agreement. 
That is shameful and outrageous.
  What is more, months after the deadline for removing all of its 
chemical weapons stockpiles, the Syrian Government has yet to fulfill 
its obligations under the treaty and is using its remaining stockpiles 
to bargain over the terms of the original agreement in the hopes of 
retaining its storage and production facilities.
  As we are once again faced with images of men, women, and children 
writhing on the ground and gasping for breath, Assad appears to be 
disregarding some of his chemical weapons commitments and continuing to 
commit mass atrocities. Again, redlines are tested and crossed, and the 
United States of America and the world do nothing.
  These are just some of the many reasons our Director of National 
Intelligence referred to the Syria crisis as ``an apocalyptic 
disaster.'' But this apocalyptic disaster in Syria is no longer just a 
humanitarian tragedy for one country; it is a regional conflict and an 
emerging national security threat to us all. No one should believe that 
we will be immune to what is happening in Syria. None of us are.
  For those of you who look at these far-away events and say what 
Neville Chamberlain once told himself about a different problem from 
Hell in an earlier time--that this is ``a quarrel in a far away country 
between people of whom we know nothing''--don't think that events in 
Syria won't have repercussions much closer to home. The terrorist 
sanctuary that Al Qaeda and its associated forces now enjoy in Syria 
and Iraq increasingly pose a direct threat to U.S. national security 
and that of our closest allies and partners. Indeed, the Secretary of 
Homeland Security, Mr. Jeh Johnson, has said, ``Syria is now a matter 
of homeland security.'' The Director of National Intelligence, James 
Clapper, has also repeatedly warned that Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists 
in Syria now aspire to attack the homeland.
  If the September 11 attacks should have taught us anything, it is 
that global terrorists who occupy ungoverned spaces and seek to plot 
and plan attacks against us can pose a direct threat to our national 
security. That was Afghanistan on September 10, 2001, and that is what 
top officials in this administration are now warning us Syria is 
becoming today.
  The latest U.S. intelligence estimates say that more than 100 
Americans have traveled to fight in Syria alongside extremists, joining 
some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations in the world today.
  Earlier this month, FBI Director James Comey stated:

       All of us with a memory of the '80s and '90s saw the line 
     drawn from Afghanistan to September 11. We see Syria as that, 
     but an order of magnitude worse in a couple of respects: Far 
     more people are going there, and far easier to travel to and 
     back from.

  Already, senior intelligence officials believe that between 6 and 12 
Americans who have gone to Syria to fight have now returned to America, 
possibly with the intention to carry out attacks here. ``We know where 
some are,'' stated one senior U.S. intelligence official. Some? But 
what about the others? Does that reassure you?
  The sheer scale of foreign fighters with Western passports traveling 
to fight in Syria has our senior-most intelligence officers worrying 
about how easy it would be for these people to slip through the cracks. 
In March the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Matthew 
Olsen, testified that the NSA simply does not have the ability to track 
the thousands of jihadists now flocking to Syria. He testified:

       This raises our concern that radicalized individuals with 
     extremist contacts and battlefield experience could return to 
     their home countries to commit violence on their own 
     initiative or participate in al Qaeda-directed plots aimed at 
     Western targets outside of Syria.

  First indoctrinated, then trained and equipped, the foreign fighters 
now joining groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, known 
as ISIS--a group who proved too radical even for Al Qaeda's senior 
leadership--presents a challenge that rises above a mere 
counterterrorism problem. ISIS no longer exists in small, concentrated 
cells, conducting operations limited in nature and scope. It has become 
a real nascent state actor, similar in organization and power to the 
Taliban of the late 1990s and possessing a real army of foreign 
recruits capable of carrying out attacks across the world. The 
territory it possesses is no longer a safe haven within a state. It has 
become a de facto state that serves as a safe haven and an even more 
vibrant incubator for international terrorism than did pre-9/11 
Afghanistan. It is a saddening irony that as our efforts to eradicate 
the Al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan are proving successful, we see 
an even more dangerous terrorist sanctuary emerging on the border of 
Europe between Damascus and Baghdad.
  My friends, here is the tragic reality of the war in Syria. After 
more than 3 years of horror, suffering, devastation, and growing 
threats to international security, the conflict in Syria continues to 
get worse and worse both for Syria and for the world. But the United 
States and the international community have no effective policy to help 
bring this conflict to a responsible end. The Geneva peace talks have 
failed entirely, as predicted. Ambassador Brahimi, the U.N. Special 
Representative, has himself given up on the process and resigned last 
week. This should surprise no one. The United States and the 
international community have been reluctant to provide the opposition 
with much needed material support. Meanwhile, Assad has the active 
support of Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia and is using nearly every weapon 
in his arsenal to kill his way to victory, and he is winning. So why 
would he want to negotiate himself out of power now?
  Can we finally stop hiding behind the fantasy of Geneva and admit 
what has been painfully obvious from the start: that there is no hope 
for a negotiated solution until the momentum on the battlefield changes 
against the Assad regime. And that will only happen through greater 
international intervention of some sort.
  After painful and costly experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, a war-
weary American public does not appear eager for an active, 
internationalist foreign policy, and President Obama has sought to give 
the American people what they want. While it is understandable and 
unsurprising that the American public has been reluctant to get more 
engaged with events in Syria and the wider Middle East, the tide of war 
does not recede simply because we wish it so.
  The outcome of the administration's disengagement has been a 
consistent failure to support more responsible forces in Syria when 
that support would have mattered--the descent of Syria into chaos and 
growing international instability, the use of Syria as a training 
ground for Al Qaeda affiliates and other terrorist organizations, the 
ceding of regional leadership to our international adversaries, and the 
tolerance of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In short, all of 
the awful things that critics said would happen if we got more involved 
in Syria have happened because we have not gotten more involved.
  We continue to hear from the administration that there are no good 
options in Syria--as if there ever were good options in the real 
world--and that the only alternative to our current disengagement is a 
full-scale ground invasion and war without end. The President 
frequently has said as much, recently stating:

       It is very difficult to imagine a scenario in which our 
     involvement in Syria would have led to a better outcome, 
     short of us being willing to undertake an effort in size and 
     scope similar to what we did in Iraq.

  But this claim has been directly contradicted by other administration 
officials who recognize that our inaction in Syria is not because we 
lack options or capability but, rather, the will.
  In an April 30 speech at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, our own 
Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, said:


[[Page S3258]]


       To those who would argue that a head of state or government 
     has to choose only between doing nothing and sending in the 
     military--I maintain that is a constructed and false choice, 
     an accompaniment only to disengagement and passivity.

  French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has also highlighted this 
false choice, recently expressing his regrets that Western nations did 
not carry out threatened airstrikes against the regime following the 
August 2013 chemical attack and that more had not been done to stop the 
abominable behavior of the Assad regime. He stated:

       We regret it [not carrying out threatened airstrikes] 
     because we think it would have changed everything.

  That is a French Foreign Minister who regrets that we didn't carry 
out the airstrikes because ``we think it would have changed 
everything.'' In his comments he made it clear that a limited surgical 
strike would have made all the difference in Syria and would have 
stopped the chemical attacks that continue today, saved the lives of 
thousands of people, and prevented the devastating consequences that 
have reverberated around the world since that red line was crossed.

  It is true our options to help end the conflict in Syria were never 
good, and they are much worse and fewer now. But as Mr. Fabius pointed 
out, as bad as our options in Syria may be, we still have options. No 
one should believe that doing something meaningful to help in Syria 
requires total war or invasion. Literally no one is calling for that, 
and it is intellectually dishonest to suggest so. This is not a 
question of options or costs or capabilities but a question of will.
  The continued violence in Syria is expected to kill tens of thousands 
more and produce millions of refugees by the year's end. This is a 
humanitarian tragedy, to be sure, but one with immediate strategic 
consequences. The longer the devastation goes on, the more difficult it 
will be to put Syria back together again. Failing to do so will leave a 
dangerous conflagration in the heart of the Middle East--a failed state 
at war with itself where extremism and instability will fester and 
terrorists of all brands will find ample space, resources, and recruits 
to menace the region and eventually attack the United States.
  If ever there was a case that should remind us that our interests are 
indivisible from our values, it is Syria. We cannot afford to go numb 
to this human tragedy. I have seen my fair share of suffering and death 
in the world, but the images and stories coming out of Syria haunt me 
most. In the time I have been speaking, at least two Syrians have been 
killed, 45 Syrians have become refugees, and 15 Syrian families have 
been forced from their homes. In another 15 minutes from now, two more 
will be killed, 45 more will become refugees, and 15 more families will 
be forced from their homes. Is that acceptable to us?
  Neither the United States, Europe, nor the Syrian people can afford 
the cost of defeatism. The price of abandonment includes not only a 
failed state in Syria but an entire region teetering on the brink of 
disaster, and it means emboldening our adversaries and conceding a safe 
haven and a state to the world's most dangerous terrorist groups. While 
these are the real, tangible consequences we face, it also means 
conceding the moral sources of our great power and giving up on every 
principle our Nation was built on.
  All of us, Americans and Europeans, must recognize that our power 
confers a responsibility on us. If the most powerful nations in the 
world have the capabilities and the options to help bring to an end one 
of the most horrific mass atrocities in modern times, what does it say 
about us that we have not done so? History will render a bitter and 
scathing judgment on America and the world for our failure in Syria, 
and I pray we will finally recognize that and take the necessary 
actions to help the Syrian people write a better end to this sad 
chapter of world affairs.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record two articles, one entitled ``FBI Director: Number of Americans 
traveling to fight in Syria increasing,'' and the other entitled 
``Exclusive: Al Qaeda's American Fighters Are Coming Home--and U.S. 
Intelligence Can't Find Them.''
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Washington Post, May 2, 2014]

     FBI Director: Number of Americans Traveling to Fight in Syria 
                               Increasing

                   (By Sari Horwitz and Adam Goldman)

       FBI Director James B. Comey said Friday that the problem of 
     Americans traveling to Syria to fight in the civil war there 
     has worsened in recent months and remains a major concern to 
     U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials.
       In a wide-ranging interview with reporters at FBI 
     headquarters, Comey said the FBI is worried that the 
     Americans who have joined extremist groups allied with al-
     Qaeda in Syria will return to the United States to carry out 
     terrorist attacks.
       ``All of us with a memory of the '80s and '90s saw the line 
     drawn from Afghanistan in the '80s and '90s to Sept. 11,'' 
     Comey said. ``We see Syria as that, but an order of magnitude 
     worse in a couple of respects. Far more people going there. 
     Far easier to travel to and back from. So, there's going to 
     be a diaspora out of Syria at some point and we are 
     determined not to let lines be drawn from Syria today to a 
     future 9/11.''
       Comey declined to give a precise figure for Americans 
     believed to be involved in the Syrian struggle but said the 
     numbers are ``getting worse.''
       ``I said dozens last time,'' said Comey, referring to an 
     interview with reporters four months ago. ``It's still 
     dozens, just a couple more dozen.''
       A senior U.S. counterterrorism official estimated this year 
     that 60 to 70 Americans have traveled to fight in Syria. 
     Comey said that Americans in Syria are actively recruiting 
     other Americans to join the fight.
       Comey said the threat associated with foreign fighters in 
     Syria is of concern not only to the United States but also is 
     ``a huge focus'' of European intelligence officials.
       ``It's the first thing we talk about when I go visit a 
     counterpart,'' said Comey, who has visited 13 FBI legal 
     attache offices abroad since he became director in September.
       Comey said thousands of fighters are traveling to Syria 
     from European countries, and they are a focus for the FBI 
     because many of them could easily get into the United States.
       ``They're visa-waiver countries,'' Comey said. ``If someone 
     flows out of Syria, they can flow in here very easily.''
       Comey said the al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen remains the 
     greatest threat to the United States. He said the terrorist 
     group is bent on attacking America and that he was very 
     concerned about the group's bombmaking expertise.
                                  ____


                  [From the Daily Beast, May 20, 2014]

   Exclusive: Al Qaeda's American Fighters Are Coming Home--And U.S. 
                      Intelligence Can't Find Them

                             (By Eli Lake)

       The number of American extremists who have flocked to Syria 
     is higher than previously understood, American intelligence 
     sources say. And some of the fighters are coming home.
       Western intelligence services have been warning that 
     European and American jihadists have been flocking to Syria 
     to fight. But they've been reluctant to say how many 
     Americans have joined the extremist forces there--until now. 
     The latest U.S. intelligence estimates say that more than 100 
     Americans have joined the jihad in Syria to fight alongside 
     Sunni terrorists there.
       Senior American intelligence officials tell The Daily Beast 
     that they believe between six and 12 Americans who have gone 
     to Syria to fight Assad have now returned to America. ``We 
     know where some are,'' one senior U.S. intelligence official 
     told The Daily Beast. ``The concern is the scale of the 
     problem we are dealing with.''
       The scale of that problem by all accounts has gotten worse. 
     Last fall, the official U.S. estimate on Americans 
     specifically who have joined the jihad in Syria was in the 
     low double digits. In January, the New York Times reported 
     that at least 70 Americans have either traveled or attempted 
     to travel to Syria. Earlier this month FBI Director James 
     Comey told reporters that he believed ``dozens'' of Americans 
     were suspected to be foreign fighters in Syria, but declined 
     to give a more precise number.
       In recent months, the U.S. intelligence community has made 
     the tracking of all Westerners going to fight into Syria a 
     top priority. Speaking in March before the Senate Foreign 
     Relations Committee, Matthew Olsen, the director of the 
     National Counter-Terrorism Center, described in vague terms 
     an effort by the whole government to find Western citizens 
     traveling to Syria and to track their travel.
       ``In light of the large foreign fighter component in Syria 
     crisis, we are working together to gather every piece of 
     information we can about the identity of these individuals,'' 
     he said at the time.
       More recently, the issue of Western foreign fighters came 
     up in top-level meetings between the Syrian opposition 
     delegation and the Obama administration last week to 
     Washington, D.C.
       ``We view all foreign fighters as a threat and they are not 
     welcome. There is a convergence of interests between the 
     moderate Syrian opposition and the international community in 
     fighting these foreign fighters and insuring they do not use 
     Syria as a launching pad for external attacks,'' said Oubai 
     Shabandar, a strategic communications adviser to the Syrian 
     opposition's foreign mission in Washington. ``This was a 
     major topic

[[Page S3259]]

     of conversation this month in meetings with the Syrian 
     opposition delegation and top U.S. officials.''
       The problem, U.S. counter-terrorism and intelligence 
     officials tell The Daily Beast, is that there are just so 
     many jihadists with Western passports traveling to fight in 
     Syria that they worry some of them may slip back into the 
     United States without being detected.
       ``The NSA does not have the ability to track thousands of 
     bad guys--and on the human intelligence side, this is even 
     more difficult,'' another senior U.S. intelligence official 
     told The Daily Beast. ``So we are worried that people are 
     slipping through the cracks.''
       Olsen in his March testimony said there were thousands of 
     foreign fighters in Syria and that hundreds of those fighters 
     held Western passports.
       ``This raises our concern that radicalized individuals with 
     extremist contacts and battlefield experience could return to 
     their home countries to commit violence on their own 
     initiative or participate in al Qaeda-directed plots aimed at 
     Western targets outside of Syria,'' he said. Olsen also said 
     that a group of ``al Qaeda veterans'' from Afghanistan and 
     Pakistan have gone to Syria, making the prospect of 
     recruiting new members for the organization even more likely.
       Aaron Zelin, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute 
     for Near East Policy who closely tracks the flow of foreign 
     fighters into Syria, said, ``In the past when we've seen 
     Americans go abroad to fight in foreign countries and a 
     number of individuals have been trained to go back to attempt 
     attacks on the homeland.'' The best example he said is Faisal 
     al-Shahzad, the Pakistani American who traveled to Taliban 
     training camps in Pakistan and then attempted to set off a 
     bomb in Times Square in 2010. Al-Shahzad failed to properly 
     detonate his bomb and was reported to the New York police by 
     a Muslim-American street vendor.
       ``It's not just Americans who are going to Syria, but there 
     are up to 3,000 European citizens from countries that have 
     visa waivers with the United States who have also joined the 
     jihad in Syria,'' Zelin said. ``This is why so many Western 
     counter-terrorism officials are so worried, it's much easier 
     to get into our country with a Western passport.''
       Those Americans that have gone off to fight in Syria also 
     do not fit the typical terrorist profile. Last May, the 
     Detroit Free Press reported that Nicole Lynn Mansfield, a 
     convert to Islam, was killed in fighting in Syria fighting 
     Assad. In April of 2013, a federal court charged Eric 
     Harroun, a former U.S. Army private, with firing a rocket-
     propelled grenade while fighting alongside al-Nusra, al 
     Qaeda's official affiliate in Syria. If U.S. intelligence 
     estimates are correct, these cases could be unfortunate 
     harbingers of things to come.

  Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I yield the floor.

                          ____________________