[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 101 (Thursday, June 26, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4119-S4124]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           TERRORIST THREATS

  Mr. GRAHAM. Madam President, Senator McCain and I have decided to 
come down before the Fourth of July break to talk about two issues that 
are very important to our national security.
  The first issue I would like to discuss is the threat we face as a 
nation from terrorist safe havens in Syria and now Iraq.
  The President has indicated in recent days that it is unacceptable to 
allow terrorist organizations such as ISIS to have safe havens from 
which to launch attacks against our country.
  Mr. President, we agree. What are you doing about it? I understand 
Iraq is complicated. I understand you would need a new government in 
Iraq that Sunnis could buy into to probably turn Iraq around. That is a 
problem, but that is a separate problem from safe havens that can be 
used to launch attacks against the United States. Please do not turn 
over to the Iraqi politicians the timeline as to whether we will act to 
protect ourselves.
  This is the FBI Director: ``My concern is that people can go to 
Syria, develop new relationships, learn new techniques and become far 
more dangerous, and then flow back.''
  Americans are now in Syria. Some 7,500 foreign fighters from 50 
countries have gone to Syria. They are now in Iraq. The Islamic State 
in Iraq and Syria was kicked out by Al Qaeda. These are the most 
extreme people on the planet. They have now gone into Iraq and taken 
large territories and up to $500 million in resources. They had a $30 
million-a-year budget. They have more money than they ever dreamed of. 
Their desire to hit the homeland is growing. Last week the leader of 
this group said: We will be coming to America next.
  Mr. President, do not use the political problems in Baghdad as an 
excuse not to act when it comes to denying safe havens to terrorists 
who have espoused attacking our country. Where is your plan to dislodge 
these people in Syria and Iraq? Where is your plan to deal with the 
safe haven issue? Where is your plan to hit a terrorist organization 
that is desirous of hitting us?
  Mr. President, you cannot have it both ways. You cannot alert us as a 
nation that we are threatened by a safe haven in Iraq and Syria and do 
nothing about it. I understand the political complexities that exist in 
Iraq, but I also understand the need to deal with the safe haven issue. 
What do you envision as a solution to the safe haven problem in Syria 
and Iraq? When are we going to act? Is there no military component 
available to the United States to hit a terrorist organization that is 
operating out in the open in Syria and Iraq, that represents a direct 
threat to our homeland?
  Mr. President, now is the time for you to come up with a plan to deal 
with the safe havens. That issue is separate and apart from dealing 
with the political complications and the meltdown in Iraq. You have 
said and the Director of National Security Mr. Clapper has said that 
Syria is an apocalyptic state; it is in a very bad way; that the 
jihadists in Syria represent a direct threat to our homeland.
  The same jihadists in Syria have moved now into Iraq. Three years ago 
when Senator McCain was urging airstrikes and that a safe zone be 
established, there were fewer than 1,000 foreign fighters in Syria. 
Today we think there are up to 26,000 ISIS types in Syria. Now they are 
moving to Iraq at lightning speed, taking town after town, amassing 
resources in terms of military hardware and money that will make them 
not just a terrorist organization but a terrorist army.

  Mr. President, there is a terrorist army on the march in Iraq and 
Syria. They have indicated they want to hit our Nation. They want to 
strike us in the region, throughout the world, and here at home. You 
seem to have no plan. We want to help you. We understand this is 
complicated, but you, as Commander in Chief above all others, have a 
duty to come up with a solution to this problem. You have defined the 
problem well, but you have done nothing to solve the problem. We stand 
ready to help you solve that problem.
  Now, as we try to figure out where to go in Iraq and what is the 
right strategy, the one thing that is important to me is not to rewrite 
history. I do not want to dwell on the past, but I am not going to sit 
on the sidelines and let this administration--which, as Senator Obama, 
Senator Clinton, and Senator Kerry, was all over the Bush 
administration for the mistakes they made. That is the way the 
political process works.
  When the Iraq war was going poorly on President Bush's watch, Senator 
McCain called for the Republican-appointed Secretary of Defense to 
resign. I would argue that Senator McCain above all others has been 
consistent when it comes to Iraq. It does not matter who is making the 
mistake; if he believes one is being made, he will speak up.
  The line that there were just a few dead-enders in Iraq was not true. 
The reason we knew it was not true is that Senator McCain and I went to 
Iraq numerous times. The first time we went, we were in an SUV with a 
three-car convoy. We went down to Baghdad, had dinner, and went 
shopping. Every time thereafter, the security was tighter, our ability 
to leave the base was restricted, and the people on the ground who were 
fighting the war were telling us: This thing is not going well. Every 
time we would hear from the Bush administration that the media was 
misrepresenting the truth and that this was just a few dead-enders, we 
knew better. We spoke up.
  Abu Ghraib was a direct result of being overwhelmed by circumstances 
on the ground. We thought that once the Iraqi Army disbanded and Saddam 
Hussein was displaced, we would be able to handle Iraq with a few 
thousand troops. The Bush administration was wrong in that calculation. 
Senator McCain spoke up, and the surge did work.
  To President Bush's undying credit: You corrected the mistakes that 
happened on your watch. You kept an open mind. You changed strategy 
because the strategy you originally pursued had failed.
  President Obama, your strategy has failed. The idea of abandoning 
Iraq, disengaging politically and militarily, has come home to haunt us 
as a nation.
  Senator McCain and I said back in 2011: If we do not leave a residual 
force behind as an insurance policy for our own national security 
interests, we will regret it.
  Madam President, 10,000 to 15,000 soldiers, well placed, would have 
given the capacity to the Iraqi Army to allow them to be more 
effective, and what we see on the ground today would have never 
happened. I am convinced that ISIS would never be in Iraq the way they 
are today if there had been an American military component--10,000 to 
15,000--providing capacity and expertise to an Iraqi army that is 
literally falling apart.
  I am convinced today that if we had continued to push the Iraqi 
political system to reconcile, we would not be where we are today. Dave 
Petraeus and Ryan Crocker--one general and one diplomat--spent hours 
every day of the week practically pushing the Sunnis, the Shias, and 
the Kurds to solve their problems with the political process. It was 
working.
  In 2010 we made a fateful mistake. We allowed Syria to go bad. Syria 
became the supply center for Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was on its back. 
In 2010 the surge had worked. Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was the 
predecessor to ISIS, was completely devastated. They are back in the 
game for three reasons: Syria became a failed state. We had a chance to 
stop that and did not. They were being resupplied from Syria with 
equipment and fighters. We decided to disengage from Iraq politically. 
We had a hands-off approach to the political problems in Baghdad. We 
withdrew our troops all from 2010 to 2011. Those three things became a 
perfect storm to lead us to where we are today.
  We do want to look forward because looking backward does not solve 
the problem. But here is what we will not accept. We will not accept a 
rewriting of history. When this administration says the reason we have 
no troops in Iraq today is because of the Iraqis, that is an absolutely 
false statement.
  In May of 2011 Senator McCain and I, at the request of Secretary 
Clinton,

[[Page S4120]]

went to Iraq to talk about a follow-on agreement, a strategic 
partnership agreement that had in its making a military component that 
would give legal protections to our troops who were left behind.
  I remember this as if it were yesterday. We were in a meeting with 
Prime Minister Malaki. We were talking about leaving troops behind and 
whether the Iraqis would give us the legal protections we needed 
because I told Prime Minister Malaki: No American politician is going 
to allow soldiers to be left behind in a foreign country without legal 
protection.
  If a person was charged with a crime in Iraq, given the inventory in 
their legal system, I did not feel comfortable allowing that soldier to 
go into the Iraqi legal system. We would deal with disciplinary 
problems.
  He turned to me and said: How many soldiers are you talking about?
  I turned to Ambassador Jeffrey, the U.S. Ambassador, General Austin, 
the commander, and said: What is the answer?
  They replied to me: We are still working on that.
  The Prime Minister of Iraq laughed. This was in May of 2011. We could 
not tell the Prime Minister of Iraq how many troops we were talking 
about.
  We went to the Kurdish portion of Iraq and talked to President 
Barzani. He would have accepted any amount of troops we wanted to leave 
behind. He was openly embracing the follow-on force.
  We met with Mr. Allawi, one of the leaders of the Iraqiya Sunni bloc, 
who was very open minded to a follow-on force.
  The day after we left Iraq, Prime Minister Malaki issued a statement 
saying that if the other parties would agree, he would agree to a 
follow-on force.
  On November 15, 2011, we had a hearing with General Dempsey and 
Secretary Panetta in the Armed Services Committee. We asked the 
following question: Was it the Iraqis who rejected a follow-on force, 
originally envisioned to be 18,000 or 19,000?
  The bottom-line number from the Pentagon was 10,000.
  I asked the question. Was it the Iraqis who said: No, we do not want 
18,000. That is too many.
  The numbers kept going down to finally 3,000.
  Senator McCain asked the question.
  The answer was: The reduction in numbers that we will be willing to 
offer to the Iraqis did not come from a rejection by Iraq but by a 
reduction of the numbers by the White House.
  In other words, the cascading effect of the numbers from 18,000 to 
3,000 was not because Iraq said no; it was because the White House kept 
changing the numbers to the point that the force envisioned would be 
ineffective and fail.
  Those are the facts.
  Senator McCain will address the statements by the President before, 
during, and after, but I am here to tell you, without any doubt in my 
mind, the reason we don't have troops in Iraq after 2011 is because the 
Obama administration wanted to get to zero. They wanted to honor our 
campaign promise to get us out of Iraq.
  They did so, and now they are trying to blame the Iraqis. They are 
trying to rewrite history. I can understand why they don't want to own 
what happened in Iraq. I can't understand why we would let them get 
away with it, and I am not going to let them get away with it.
  Going forward, we have a mess on our hands, and I want to help the 
President where I can.
  But, Mr. President, you were very good at questioning the policies of 
the Bush administration, and you held nothing back. I am here to tell 
you I know what you are saying about Iraq is not true.
  On October 21, during a conference call with staff, Denis McDonough 
and Tony Blinken--former National Security Adviser to Biden and now 
National Security Council--briefing staff members about the problems 
with legal immunity was asked a question by Senator McCain's staff 
person: If you could get a legal agreement that we felt was solid, 
would you leave any troops behind, and they said no.
  So we are going to write them a letter. There are several of our 
staff who were on that phone call and we are going to ask Mr. McDonough 
and Mr. Blinken: Did you say that, and they can say whatever they want 
to, but I have people I know and I trust who were on that phone call 
and they know what was said.
  With that, I will turn it over to Senator McCain.
  Mr. McCAIN. I would ask my colleague one question before we go on; 
that is, in addition to this overwhelming information in which the 
Senator and I were deeply involved that proves conclusively that the 
President of the United States did not want to leave a single troop 
member behind in Iraq and succeeded in doing so, did the Senator from 
South Carolina ever hear the President of the United States, either 
before the decision was made, during or after--did the Senator ever 
hear any record of him saying he wanted to leave a residual force 
behind?
  Mr. GRAHAM. Quite the opposite. If we go back and look at the tape 
around this debate, the President basically said: We left Iraq and we 
are not going to be bogged down by Iraq.
  There was no regret that I am so sorry we couldn't convince the 
Iraqis to leave a residual force behind because that would have been 
the best outcome for Iraq and the United States, and I regret that we 
could not get there and they will regret their decision.
  None of that happened. It was all about the last combat soldier is 
out. We are done with Iraq. We have given them all the help we can give 
them. We are going to move on, and we are not going to be bogged down.
  Now the place is going to hell. It is a direct threat to the United 
States, and they are trying to rewrite history--and I think it was 
October.
  Mr. McCAIN. The President of the United States, in the last couple of 
days--please correct me--it was the first time he said it was Iraqis 
who did not want to leave a force behind.
  Mr. GRAHAM. The Iraqis did not want to leave a force behind.
  Mr. McCAIN. Yes; he was saying they did not.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record the following quotes, including October 2012.
  I quote the President of the United States:

       What I would not have done is left 10,000 troops in Iraq 
     [as Candidate Romney proposed], that would tie us down. That 
     certainly would not help us in the Middle East.

  Jay Carney said on October 1, 2012:

       When President Obama took office, the Iraq War had been 
     going on for years and he had campaigned with a promise to 
     end that war, and he has done that.

  One of my favorites is December 2011:

       In the coming days the last American soldiers will cross 
     the border out of Iraq. . . . with honor and with their heads 
     held high. After nearly nine years, our war in Iraq ends this 
     month.

  Anyway, the list goes on. In fact, the President campaigned for 
reelection in 2012 on the premise that he had gotten us out of Iraq.
  The Senator from South Carolina and I predicted this would happen if 
we didn't leave a residual force behind. I say to my colleagues again, 
if we repeat this same total pullout of Afghanistan, we are going to 
see this same movie in Afghanistan.
  So I plead with the President of the United States, please revisit 
your decision that every American troop be pulled out.
  The Afghans do not have the capability, whether air assets, intel or 
other capabilities, to defend themselves against an enemy that has a 
sanctuary in Pakistan.
  I plead with the President of the United States, do not make the same 
mistake in Afghanistan.
  I point out again, at the end of the surge we had won the conflict in 
Iraq. The conflict was won, and instead obviously we blew it.
  I would like to talk for a few minutes with my colleague from South 
Carolina because we need to understand what is happening in Iraq. In 
the last 3 to 4 weeks, this whole part of Iraq has been taken over by 
the forces of ISIS.

  The second largest city in all of Iraq, Mosul, has been taken over, 
which triggered 500,000 refugees--500,000 refugees left Mosul.
  Tal Afar--a major city, Kirkuk, where the Kurdish forces came in and 
took over Kirkuk and made it now part of the Kurdish part of Iraq.
  What is most concerning, I say to my colleagues--and I know the 
Senator

[[Page S4121]]

from South Carolina and I have been focusing on this--is the Jordanian-
Iraq border. The border crossings from Iraq into Jordan have been taken 
over by ISIS.
  As we know, Jordan is a small country. It is overburdened now with 
hundreds of thousands of refugees. It has significant problems on the 
Syrian side of its border. This can be a terribly destabilizing factor 
to our--probably outside of Israel--strongest and best ally in the 
entire Middle East.
  Ramadi, Fallujah, every Iraq veteran will remember Ramadi and 
Fallujah. Every Iraq veteran will remember the second battle of 
Fallujah where we lost 96 brave soldiers and marines and over 600 
wounded. Now the black flags of Al Qaeda fly over Ramadi and Fallujah. 
The border to Syria no longer exists, my friends.
  If we look at Syria, all the way to Aleppo, all the way around, a 
part of the Middle East that is larger than the State of Indiana is now 
overtaken by the richest and most powerful terrorist organization in 
history; that is, ISIS.
  We cannot address Iraq, if we do, without addressing Syria, as well 
as the movement of men and equipment back and forth. By the way, the 
Sunni don't like these people. They are the most radical form of Islam. 
They don't like them, but they prefer them to the government--the 
Shiite-run government by Maliki--which has been systematically 
discriminating against them.
  So what do we need to do? As the Senator from South Carolina said, 
what we want is Maliki to be in a transition government that 
transitions him out of power, but we cannot wait until that happens.
  By the way, they have also taken a place just north of Baghdad where 
the largest oil refinery is, Baiji, that provides energy to the 7 
million people in Baghdad, and they have also come to a place called 
Haditha, where a dam is that holds a water supply. If they get hold of 
both of those places, they basically have a stranglehold on Baghdad 
itself.
  This is serious.
  So what has the President of the United States and the administration 
decided to do? Send 90, 200 or 250 people over to Iraq and with the 
stated purpose of ``assessing the situation.''
  Those of my friends and colleagues who have been to Iraq know it is a 
flat desert area, including very hot now. These people, these ISIS 
forces, are moving in convoys of 100, 200, 300 vehicles.
  They can be taken out by air power. Right now the President of the 
United States has refused to do that, but they can be taken out by air 
power.
  Air power does not determine conflicts, but air power has a profound 
psychological effect on your adversary. We have drones, and we have the 
air capability to take out a lot of these forces.
  Remember, they are probably at a maximum of about 10,000, and as the 
Senator from South Carolina said, they started out with about 1,000, 
but don't forget they are moving back and forth between Syria and Iraq 
in this now huge area. They are moving on Baghdad.
  I don't know exactly what is going on. I don't believe they can take 
Baghdad with a frontal assault. I do believe it is possible that they 
could cause assassinations, bombings, breakdowns in electricity, and 
breakdown in law and order. In other words, this place where we 
sacrificed roughly 4,450 American lives is now in the hands of the 
largest terrorist organization in history.
  I say to the President of the United States: We can't wait. If the 
next 2 weeks that the administration says they are going to use to 
assess this situation is wasted in assessment, I don't know what is 
going to happen in Iraq. I don't know what is going to happen to 
Jordan. I don't know what is going to happen as far as the continued 
increasing influence of the Iranians.
  Published reports today indicate there are Iranian forces, Iranian 
assistance all through Iran.
  An article from the New York Times, ``Iran Secretly Sending Drones 
and Supplies into Iraq, U.S. Officials Say,'' states:

       Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran's paramilitary Quds 
     Force, has visited Iraq at least twice to help Iraqi military 
     advisers plot strategy. And Iran has deployed about a dozen 
     other Quds Force officers to advise Iraqi commanders, and 
     help mobilize more than 2,000 Shiite militiamen from southern 
     Iraq, American officials said.
       Iranian transport planes have also been making two daily 
     flights of military equipment and supplies to Baghdad--70 
     tons per flight--for Iraqi security forces.

  While the United States is assessing, Iranians are exercising more 
and more influence.
  I have also been told--and I cannot verify it--that the Russians are 
now offering to provide assistance to Maliki.
  There has to be a transition government. There has to be a transition 
of Maliki out of government, but to wait until that happens, it may be 
too late.
  I would ask my colleague from South Carolina, are you concerned about 
the Iranian influence and what do you believe is the situation that 
could evolve on the Jordanian border?
  Mr. GRAHAM. If you listen to the people who are launching these 
attacks, they say they are going to Jordan. What are they trying to 
accomplish? Bizarre as it may sound to the average American, they have 
a very specific plan and it sort of goes like this: They want to purify 
their religion. They are Sunnis. They have a version of Islam, Sunni 
Islam that is beyond horrific, that is a woman's worst nightmare.
  If you want to find a world of women, go to Syria, Iraq, and 
eventually Afghanistan, I am afraid. You would not believe what these 
people are capable of doing, what they will do to a person who smokes. 
They will chop your finger off. I mean, they will kill children in 
front of their parents.
  These people represent the worst in humanity. My fear is, the 
President's fear, that the stronger they get over there the more 
exposed we are over here.
  So, Mr. President, if you believe it is not in our national security 
interests to allow these folks to have a safe haven in Syria and now in 
Iraq, what are you doing about it? You have political problems in Iraq, 
I have got that, but why does that prevent us from attacking these 
people in Syria where their leadership resides and where their supply 
depots are? There has to come a time when this country is going to 
commit to defending itself.
  My goal is to keep the war over there so it doesn't come back here.
  Senator McCain, 3 years ago now almost, urged us to act in a way that 
would have allowed the moderate forces of the opposition to be 
empowered and to avoid where we are today. We chose not to act, at our 
own peril.
  So I make this crystal clear, this area Senator McCain has described 
in Iraq represents a terrorist safe haven in the hands of people who 
want to attack us here at home.
  I am not making that up. The Director of National Intelligence, the 
FBI Director, and Jeh Johnson, the head of Homeland Security, have all 
said Syria represents a threat to the homeland.
  Well, if a Syrian enclave and safe haven represents a threat to the 
homeland, an Iraqi enclave bigger and richer surely represents a threat 
to the homeland, and the President admitted as much. So I don't want to 
hear any more discussions about we have to wait until Iraq gets its 
house in order until we protect American national security interests.
  As to Jordan, now is the time in a bipartisan fashion for the 
Congress to speak with one voice and tell the world and everyone in the 
region that we will defend Jordan. The King of Jordan is the last 
moderate voice in the Middle East surrounding Israel. The King of 
Jordan has been the most faithful ally to America. The King of Jordan 
has been effectively engaged with Israel. The King of Jordan represents 
the best hope in the Middle East.
  If we allow a terrorist army--not an organization, now, an army of 
committed jihadists--to invade that country and put the King at risk, 
that will be one of the great tragedies in modern history. I think it 
is now time to let the terrorist army know: You are not going into 
Jordan, and say it in such a fashion as to not give Iraq away. But if 
we don't reinforce Jordan quickly, it would be a mistake.
  I have high confidence in the Jordanian military, but let me say 
this: It is in our interests for the King to survive; it is in our 
interests for Jordan to flourish; it is in our interests for ISIS to be 
stopped in their tracks in Iraq; it is in our interests for them to be 
wiped off the face of the Earth to the extent possible; it is in our 
interests to go on the offensive before it is too late.

[[Page S4122]]

  One thing I can say I have learned from 9/11 is thinking and 
believing if we ignore them they will ignore us is a very bad mistake. 
On September 10, 2001, the day before 9/11, we didn't have one soldier 
in Afghanistan, we didn't even have an ambassador, and we sent no money 
in terms of assistance to the Taliban. We were completely disengaged 
from Afghanistan. How well did that work?
  Anytime you disengage from people that bloodthirsty and you believe 
it will not come back to haunt you, you are making a mistake. Anytime a 
group will kill women in a soccer stadium for sport and we think we are 
safe if we ignore them, we are making the mistake for the ages.
  These people, the ISIS, represent a depraved form of humanity in the 
category of the Nazis. And what are we doing about it?
  I am tired of ceding city after city, country after country to 
radical Islam. Now is the time to fight back--fight back as if it meant 
fighting for your home and your family, because it does--fight back 
over there so we don't have to fight them here. And they are coming 
here. If you don't believe me, ask them.
  The best way to keep them from coming here is to align ourselves with 
people over there who do not want their agenda for their family and are 
willing to fight along our side. Right now, who feels comfortable 
fighting with America? Right now, our enemies are emboldened, our 
friends are afraid.
  Now is the time to turn this around, Mr. President. You are waiting 
and waiting and thinking and thinking, and they are on the march. I 
know this is complicated, but the one thing that is not complicated is 
that the terrorist organization you said could not have safe haven has 
the largest safe haven in the history of the world. They are richer 
than they have ever been, they are more powerful than they have ever 
been, and you are doing nothing about it. You need to do something 
about it before it is too late, and we stand ready to help you.
  Mr. McCAIN. I wish to emphasize with my colleague from South 
Carolina, continuously we hear from the President of the United States 
that those of us who are in strong disagreement with his strategy--
well, there is none. The fact is there is no strategy.
  We keep being accused of wanting to send ``thousands of troops'' on 
the ground in Syria or in Iraq. That is patently false. I know of no 
one who shares our concern who wants to send ground combat troops into 
Iraq. So I wish the President of the United States would stop saying 
that.
  Second of all, what we do want is we want some people who can be 
forward air controllers, some of our special forces people, to direct 
these air strikes against what is movement of these hundreds of 
vehicles in convoy across open desert. It can be done.
  The next thing I wish to emphasize is how dangerous it is becoming, 
particularly at the most holy Shiite shrines of Samarra and Karbala. 
Those two are the holiest shrines of the Shia. If ISIS comes into those 
holy sites and destroys them, we are going to see this thing explode 
even more.
  There are many other things I would like to say, but I don't want to 
continue too much longer on this, but to point out again, this is not 
just an Iraq problem. This is the border which runs along between Syria 
and Iraq. We cannot address just the Iraqi side.
  Lately, interestingly, Bashar Assad has been using his air power to 
attack ISIS. If the United States does not become involved, then people 
such as Bashar al-Assad, people such as the Iranians will fill that 
vacuum. It is time for us to act.
  What do I mean by that?
  First of all, why don't we send Ryan Crocker and David Petraeus back 
to Baghdad. They are the smartest people I have ever known, and 
everybody agrees with that: Send them back to Baghdad and sit down with 
Maliki. Also, send some military planning teams that can assess the 
situation and address the needs of the Iraqi military, those that can 
still function effectively. Go ahead and orchestrate the air strikes, 
and understand that the problem in Syria is going to have to be 
addressed as well. So there are concrete steps that every military 
leader I know advocates as a way of turning this around.

  There is no good option. Because of the situation we are in, there is 
no good option. But the worst option is what the administration is 
doing today, which is nothing, except sending a few advisers over to 
give some assessment of the situation.
  No one wants to get back into any conflict. No American wants to do 
that. I am the last one who wants to do that. But we have to understand 
what our Director of National Intelligence has told us, what our 
Secretary of Homeland Security has told us, what our common sense and 
eyes will tell us: If you have a terrorist organization that has 
hundreds of millions of dollars, that has control of an area the size 
of the State of Indiana where they are consolidating power and they 
have promised they will attack us--the United States can't afford 
another 9/11. We can't afford to see these jihadists pouring out of 
Syria and Iraq into Europe and into the United States of America, 
because these extremists have flowed in from all of these countries.
  The President of the United States can make the American people aware 
of this threat, and that we have to take action, without sending ground 
combat troops into the conflict. And I am confident--because the memory 
of 9/11 has not faded in the memory of the people of this country. We 
remember that tragedy graphically. All of us remember where we were 
that day. But this is a clear and present danger, and it is long time 
overdue for the United States to react as the strongest and most 
powerful Nation in the world.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the 
Record the article from the Atlantic by Peter Beinart entitled 
``Obama's Disastrous Iraq Policy: An Autopsy.''
  I further ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an op-
ed by Dennis Ross, one of the most respected individuals on the entire 
Middle East, entitled ``Op-ed: To contain ISIS, think Iraq--but also 
think Syria.''
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                   [From the Atlantic, June 25, 2014]

               Obama's Disastrous Iraq Policy: An Autopsy

                           (By Peter Beinart)

       Yes, the Iraq War was a disaster of historic proportions. 
     Yes, seeing its architects return to prime time to smugly 
     slam President Obama while taking no responsibility for their 
     own, far greater, failures is infuriating.
       But sooner or later, honest liberals will have to admit 
     that Obama's Iraq policy has been a disaster. Since the 
     president took office, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki 
     has grown ever more tyrannical and ever more sectarian, 
     driving his country's Sunnis toward revolt. Since Obama took 
     office, Iraq watchers--including those within his own 
     administration--have warned that unless the United States 
     pushed hard for inclusive government, the country would slide 
     back into civil war. Yet the White House has been so eager to 
     put Iraq in America's rearview mirror that, publicly at 
     least, it has given Maliki an almost-free pass. Until now, 
     when it may be too late.
       Obama inherited an Iraq where better security had created 
     an opportunity for better government. The Bush 
     administration's troop ``surge'' did not solve the country's 
     underlying divisions. But by retaking Sunni areas from 
     insurgents, it gave Iraq's politicians the chance to forge a 
     government inclusive enough to keep the country together.
       The problem was that Maliki wasn't interested in such a 
     government. Rather than integrate the Sunni Awakening 
     fighters who had helped subdue al-Qaeda into Iraq's army, 
     Maliki arrested them. In the run-up to his 2010 reelection 
     bid, Maliki's Electoral Commission disqualified more than 
     500, mostly Sunni, candidates on charges that they had ties 
     to Saddam Hussein's Baath Party.
       For the Obama administration, however, tangling with Maliki 
     meant investing time and energy in Iraq, a country it 
     desperately wanted to pivot away from. A few months before 
     the 2010 elections, according to Dexter Filkins in The New 
     Yorker, ``American diplomats in Iraq sent a rare dissenting 
     cable to Washington, complaining that the U.S., with its 
     combination of support and indifference, was encouraging 
     Maliki's authoritarian tendencies.''
       When Iraqis went to the polls in March 2010, they gave a 
     narrow plurality to the Iraqiya List, an alliance of parties 
     that enjoyed significant Sunni support but was led by Ayad 
     Allawi, a secular Shiite. Under pressure from Maliki, 
     however, an Iraqi judge allowed the prime minister's Dawa 
     Party--which had finished a close second--to form a 
     government instead. According to Emma Sky, chief political 
     adviser to General Raymond Odierno, who commanded U.S. forces 
     in Iraq, American officials knew this violated Iraq's 
     constitution. But they never publicly challenged Maliki's 
     power grab, which was backed by Iran, perhaps because they 
     believed his claim that Iraq's Shiites

[[Page S4123]]

     would never accept a Sunni-aligned government. ``The 
     message'' that America's acquiescence ``sent to Iraq's people 
     and politicians alike,'' wrote the Brookings Institution's 
     Kenneth Pollack, ``was that the United States under the new 
     Obama administration was no longer going to enforce the rules 
     of the democratic road . . . [This] undermined the reform of 
     Iraqi politics and resurrected the specter of the failed 
     state and the civil war.'' According to Filkins, one American 
     diplomat in Iraq resigned in disgust.
       By that fall, to its credit, the U.S. had helped craft an 
     agreement in which Maliki remained prime minister but Iraqiya 
     controlled key ministries. Yet as Ned Parker, the Reuters 
     bureau chief in Baghdad, later detailed, ``Washington quickly 
     disengaged from actually ensuring that the provisions of the 
     deal were implemented.'' In his book, The Dispensable Nation, 
     Vali Nasr, who worked at the State Department at the time, 
     notes that the ``fragile power-sharing arrangement . . . 
     required close American management. But the Obama 
     administration had no time or energy for that. Instead it 
     anxiously eyed the exits, with its one thought to get out. It 
     stopped protecting the political process just when talk of 
     American withdrawal turned the heat back up under the long-
     simmering power struggle that pitted the Shias, Sunnis, and 
     Kurds against one another.''
       Under an agreement signed by George W. Bush, the U.S. was 
     to withdraw forces from Iraq by the end of 2011. American 
     military officials, fearful that Iraq might unravel without 
     U.S. supervision, wanted to keep 20,000 to 25,000 troops in 
     the country after that. Obama now claims that maintaining any 
     residual force was impossible because Iraq's parliament would 
     not give U.S. soldiers immunity from prosecution. Given how 
     unpopular America's military presence was among ordinary 
     Iraqis, that may well be true. But we can't fully know 
     because Obama--eager to tout a full withdrawal from Iraq in 
     his reelection campaign--didn't push hard to keep troops in 
     the country. As a former senior White House official told 
     Peter Baker of The New York Times, ``We really didn't want to 
     be there and [Maliki] really didn't want us there . . . [Y]ou 
     had a president who was going to be running for re-election, 
     and getting out of Iraq was going to be a big statement.''
       In recent days, Republicans have slammed Obama for 
     withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. But the real problem with 
     America's military withdrawal was that it exacerbated a 
     diplomatic withdrawal that had been underway since Obama took 
     office.
       The decline of U.S. leverage in Iraq simply reinforced the 
     attitude Obama had held since 2009: Let Maliki do whatever he 
     wants so long as he keeps Iraq off the front page.
       On December 12, 2011, just days before the final U.S. 
     troops departed Iraq, Maliki visited the White House. 
     According to Nasr, he told Obama that Vice President Tariq 
     al-Hashimi, an Iraqiya leader and the highest-ranking Sunni 
     in his government, supported terrorism. Maliki, argues Nasr, 
     was testing Obama, probing to see how the U.S. would react if 
     he began cleansing his government of Sunnis. Obama replied 
     that it was a domestic Iraqi affair. After the meeting, Nasr 
     claims, Maliki told aides, ``See! The Americans don't care.''
       In public remarks after the meeting, Obama praised Maliki 
     for leading ``Iraq's most inclusive government yet.'' Iraq's 
     Deputy Prime Minister, Saleh al-Mutlaq, another Sunni, told 
     CNN he was ``shocked'' by the president's comments. ``There 
     will be a day,'' he predicted, ``whereby the Americans will 
     realize that they were deceived by al-Maliki . . . and they 
     will regret that.''
       A week later, the Iraqi government issued a warrant for 
     Hashimi's arrest. Thirteen of his bodyguards were arrested 
     and tortured. Hashimi fled the country and, while in exile, 
     was sentenced to death.
       ``Over the next 18 months,'' writes Pollack, ``many Sunni 
     leaders were arrested or driven from politics, including some 
     of the most non-sectarian, non-violent, practical and 
     technocratic.'' Enraged by Maliki's behavior, and emboldened 
     by the prospect of a Sunni takeover in neighboring Syria, 
     Iraqi Sunnis began reconnecting with their old jihadist 
     allies. Yet, in public at least, the Obama administration 
     still acted as if all was well.
       In March 2013, Maliki sent troops to arrest Rafi Issawi, 
     Iraq's former finance minister and a well-regarded Sunni 
     moderate who had criticized the prime minister's growing 
     authoritarianism. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed later that 
     month, Iraq expert Henri Barkey called the move ``another 
     nail in the coffin for a unified Iraq.'' Iraq, he warned, 
     ``is on its way to dissolution, and the United States is 
     doing nothing to stop it'' because ``Washington seems 
     petrified about crossing Maliki.''
       That fall, Maliki prepared to visit the White House again. 
     Three days before he arrived, Emma Sky, the former adviser to 
     General Odierno, co-authored a New York Times op-ed entitled 
     ``Maliki's Democratic Farce,'' in which she argued that, 
     ``Too often, Mr. Maliki has misinterpreted American backing 
     for his government as a carte blanche for uncompromising 
     behavior.'' The day before Maliki arrived, six senators--
     including Democrats Carl Levin and Robert Menendez--sent the 
     White House a letter warning that, ``by too often pursuing a 
     sectarian and authoritarian agenda, Prime Minister Maliki and 
     his allies are disenfranchising Sunni Iraqis . . . This 
     failure of governance is driving many Sunni Iraqis into the 
     arms of Al-Qaeda.''
       Still, in his public remarks, Obama didn't even hint that 
     Maliki was doing anything wrong. After meeting his Iraqi 
     counterpart on November 1, Obama told the press that, ``we 
     appreciate Prime Minister Maliki's commitment to . . . 
     ensuring a strong, prosperous, inclusive, and democratic 
     Iraq,'' and declared ``that we were encouraged by the work 
     that Prime Minister Maliki has done in the past to ensure 
     that all people inside of Iraq--Sunni, Shia, and Kurd--feel 
     that they have a voice in their government.'' A former senior 
     administration official told me that, privately, the 
     administration pushed Maliki hard to be more inclusive. If 
     so, it did not work. In late December, less than two months 
     after Maliki's White House visit, Iraqi troops arrested yet 
     another prominent Sunni critic, Ahmed al-Alwani, chairman of 
     the Iraqi parliament's economics committee, killing five of 
     Alwani's guards in the process.
       By this January, jihadist rebels from the Islamic State of 
     Iraq and Syria (ISIS, or ISIL) had taken control of much of 
     largely Sunni Anbar province. Vice President Biden--the 
     administration's point man on Iraq--was now talking to Maliki 
     frequently. But according to White House summaries of Biden's 
     calls, he still spent more time praising the Iraqi leader 
     than pressuring him. On January 8, the vice president 
     ``encouraged the Prime Minister to continue the Iraqi 
     government's outreach to local, tribal, and national 
     leaders.'' On January 18, ``The two leaders agreed on the 
     importance of the Iraqi government's continued outreach to 
     local and tribal leaders in Anbar province.'' On January 26, 
     ``The Vice President commended the Government of Iraq's 
     commitment to integrate tribal forces fighting AQI/ISIL into 
     Iraqi security forces.'' (The emphases are mine.) For his 
     part, Obama has not spoken to Maliki since their meeting last 
     November.
       Finally, last Thursday, in what was widely interpreted as 
     an invitation for Iraqis to push Maliki aside, Obama 
     declared, ``that whether he is prime minister or any other 
     leader aspires to lead the country, that it has to be an 
     agenda in which Sunni, Shia and Kurd all feel that they have 
     the opportunity to advance their interest through the 
     political process.'' Obama also noted that, ``The government 
     in Baghdad has not sufficiently reached out to some of the 
     [Sunni] tribes and been able to bring them into a process 
     that, you know, gives them a sense of being part of--of a 
     unity government or a single nation-state.''
       That's certainly true. The problem is that it took Obama 
     five years to publicly say so--or do anything about it--
     despite pleas from numerous Iraq experts, some close to his 
     own administration. This inaction was abetted by American 
     journalists. Many of us proved strikingly indifferent to a 
     country about which we once claimed to care deeply.
       In recent days, many liberals have rushed to Obama's 
     defense simply because they are so galled to hear people like 
     Dick Cheney and Bill Kristol lecturing anyone on Iraq. That's 
     a mistake. While far less egregious than George W. Bush's 
     errors, Obama's have been egregious enough. By ignoring Iraq, 
     and refusing to defend democratic principles there, he has 
     helped spawn the disaster we see today. It's time people who 
     aren't Republican operatives began saying so.
                                  ____


              [From the Los Angeles Times, June 23, 2014]

           To Contain ISIS, Think Iraq--But Also Think Syria

                            (By Dennis Ross)

       The conflict in Iraq will not be settled any time soon. 
     Although the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and 
     its Sunni allies may not be about to march on Baghdad, they 
     are continuing to expand their control over much of northern 
     and western Iraq. The military and diplomatic steps that 
     President Obama has ordered reflect the U.S. need to prevent 
     ISIS from embedding itself in more of Iraq. Whether they will 
     work, however, is another matter.
       Iraq is a mess today. The president is right to expect the 
     Iraqi government to take the lead in its own defense He is 
     right to insist that Iraq's government must become more 
     inclusive and less sectarian. And he is right to be wary of 
     getting sucked into a sectarian conflict in which we take 
     sides.
       The same calculus has guided the United States in Syria. 
     There, our fears of the costs of action--even limited 
     military support for the opposition--led us to ignore the 
     costs of inaction. We hoped that sanctions, a political 
     process and humanitarian assistance would make it possible to 
     affect the reality in Syria. It did not. Those who argued 
     that the price would go up in human and strategic terms--and 
     that we needed to affect the balance of power within the 
     opposition and between it and the regime of President Bashar 
     Assad--were right.
       Today, the costs in terms of spillover in the region and 
     the consequences of radical Islamists, particularly ISIS, 
     coming to dominate the opposition are clear. Syria is a 
     disaster, there is no border between Syria and Iraq, and the 
     re-emergence of a terrible sectarian conflict in Iraq is 
     inextricably linked to Syria. There will be no effective or 
     enduring answer to the ISIS threat in Iraq without also 
     taking steps in Syria to deny it a sanctuary and a recruiting 
     base.
       If nothing else, this should tell us that our response to 
     the current crisis in Iraq must be guided by a broader 
     strategy toward the region, one that has clear objectives in 
     Iraq and Syria and takes into account that resisting ISIS 
     cannot make it appear that we are

[[Page S4124]]

     suddenly partners with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The 
     fact that the Iranians also have reason to fear ISIS means we 
     have converging but not identical interests.
       The Iranians have used radical Shiite militias--Hezbollah, 
     Kataib Hezbollah and Asaib Ahl al Haq--in Syria and Iraq. The 
     latter two--armed, trained and funded by the Iranians--were 
     responsible for killing hundreds of American soldiers in 
     Iraq. We should be talking to Iraq's neighbors, including 
     Iran, about what we and they can do to help stabilize Iraq 
     and defeat ISIS.
       But Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Jordan will not be 
     responsive if they think fighting ISIS means the U.S. is 
     prepared to leave the Sunnis vulnerable to Iran and its 
     Shiite-backed militias. If Iran wants stability in Iraq and 
     not an ongoing sectarian war on its border, it will need to 
     accept that although the Shiites will hold many of the levers 
     of power, they must also be prepared to share them.
       In Iraq, if the U.S. is to help blunt ISIS, the central 
     government must give Sunnis and Kurds a sense of inclusion 
     and a stake in working with Baghdad and the military. Prime 
     Minister Nouri Maliki's conspiratorial, authoritarian 
     approach has made that impossible. We should make any 
     coordinated military action with the Iraqi government 
     contingent on Maliki actually taking such steps, including 
     appointing a government of national unity, empowering a Sunni 
     defense minister and permitting the Kurds to export their 
     oil. Absent that, we may still choose to target ISIS forces 
     if there is a need, but without regard to what the Iraqi 
     government may seek.
       As for Syria, though we must deny ISIS sanctuary there, the 
     U.S. cannot partner with the Assad regime. The simple fact is 
     that so long as Assad remains in power, he will be a magnet 
     for every jihadi worldwide to join the holy war against him. 
     No country in the region is immune from the fallout of the 
     conflict in Syria, and we all face the danger of those who go 
     to fight in Syria returning to their home countries to foment 
     violence.
       Though President Obama has spoken about ramping up our 
     support for the opposition in Syria, we are late to that 
     effort. It is time for the United States to assume the 
     responsibility of quarterbacking the entire assistance effort 
     to ensure that more meaningful aid--lethal, training, 
     intelligence, money and humanitarian--not only gets to those 
     who are fighting both ISIS and the Assad regime but is fully 
     coordinated and complementary.
       The broader point is that Washington's actions toward ISIS 
     now must be taken with both Iraq and Syria in mind and be 
     guided by a strategy geared toward weakening those forces 
     that threaten the U.S. and its regional friends. The more we 
     take this approach and highlight the costs to Iran of its 
     current posture, the more the Iranians may see that their 
     interests could be served by a political outcome of greater 
     balance in Syria and Iraq. There will be risks to acting, but 
     by now we have seen the costs of inaction, and they are only 
     likely to grow over time.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I appreciate my dear friend Senator Coons' 
patience.
  At this time I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.

                          ____________________