[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 128 (Tuesday, September 9, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H7350-H7356]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ISLAMIC JIHAD
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2013, the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, I am so profoundly grateful to be able to
stand in the well of the United States House of Representatives. There
is no greater bastion for free speech than here in this House. What a
wonderful gift this is, not only just for people here in the United
States, but also for people around the world.
There is one thing that we have learned from Tiananmen Square, and I
had the privilege in August of being able to travel to China and visit
and stand in the midst of Tiananmen Square, where people from around
China had come to take a stand for speech. If we remember from that
infamous photo that was taken, one very brave student held up a copy of
a little pamphlet in front of a tank when a tank was going to run this
student over. The document that the student held up was a copy of the
United States Declaration of Independence, as he spoke about freedom
and what freedom meant to him.
You see, Mr. Speaker, we have always been in this country--this is a
standard-bearer for liberty, a standard-bearer for freedom and a
standard-bearer for the expression of free speech rights. That is why
we take this opportunity so seriously to be able to keep safe this
ability, to be able to speak out on the issues of the day.
If there is anything that has captured America's attention with
horror, I believe, especially over these summer months as the United
States Congress had taken a recess--the Members of the House of
Representatives and of the United States Senate had gone back into
their districts, and they had met with people on the ground who allowed
them to come and serve here in this Congress--it is, when they went
home, they also saw on their televisions at night a fairly horrific
sight, something that we thank God with everything within our beings
that we don't see frequently here in the United States. It was
terrorism--and terrorism on a level that we were unfamiliar with and
hadn't seen before.
We heard of a group named ISIS, and we saw they had continued to make
wild gains both in Iraq and in Syria, so much so that they were robbing
banks to fill their own pockets. Then they began to steal oilfields and
take those oilfields over. Then they took over oil refineries. Then
they began to take over electric grids. Then, with just seemingly very
few men, they took over entire cities. In fact, we were shocked when
the city of Mosul, which is the ancient city of Nineveh--the prophet
Jonah was sent to the city of Nineveh, where he preached to the city,
and the Holy Bible records that the entire city repented and turned to
God. That ancient city is the modern day city of Mosul in northern
Iraq. That was the city that the leader of the Islamic State--the
jihadists that we have seen every night on our national news programs--
chose to come against. That particular city had a population of well
over a million people, and some estimate there were 1.7 million people.
Mr. Speaker, at this time, I would be more than delighted to yield to
the wonderful gentlewoman from the great State of North Carolina, Ms.
Virginia Foxx.
Recognizing Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma
Ms. FOXX. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota for
yielding. I know she has an important message to bring tonight, and I
appreciate her sharing a little of her time with me.
Mr. Speaker, at a recent event, I had the privilege of learning more
about a remarkable organization in Winston-Salem, North Carolina--the
Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma at Wake Forest Baptist Medical
Center. The institute was established due to the leadership and
generous financial support of Richard and Judy Childress, who saw that,
while trauma was taking the lives of thousands of children every year,
pediatric trauma was not a focus of medical research.
In 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control, pediatric
trauma took the lives of 9,523 children, making it the largest cause of
childhood death by a significant margin. As a comparison, cancer, heart
disease, and birth defects combined take the lives of about 3,300
children every year. Tragically, 3,300 is a very similar number of
children who were killed in 2010 due to traumatic injury from child
abuse. An additional 6,190 children died that year from unintentional
traumatic injuries. A full 52 percent of those injuries were caused by
vehicle accidents, followed by drowning, poisoning, fire, guns, and
falls. In addition to the nearly 10,000 fatalities, another 175,000
children were hospitalized due to injuries.
Dr. C. Everett Koop, who served as U.S. Surgeon General under
President Reagan, once said: ``If a disease were killing our children
in the proportions that injuries are, people would be outraged and
demand that this killer be stopped.''
Despite trauma being the overwhelming cause of childhood death, the
Federal Government spends only about 1 cent on pediatric trauma
research for every dollar spent to study pediatric cancer.
The Childress Institute has been working to pick up where Federal
dollars have dropped off. The institute uses its resources for
research, education, and awareness about pediatric trauma and to
improve the treatment for critically injured children in the U.S.
Mr. Speaker, Richard Childress is a lifelong resident of the Winston-
Salem area, and is a NASCAR pioneer. Richard and his wife, Judy, are
civic and philanthropic leaders in the community. Through their
determination to fight the number one cause of pediatric death,
children worldwide are benefiting from the generosity that those of us
in North Carolina have long witnessed.
{time} 1845
The remarkable people of the Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma
work tirelessly to discover and share the best ways to prevent injuries
and treat severely injured children, with the ultimate goal of ensuring
that all ``injured kids get the best care when they need it the most.''
Today, I thank Richard and Judy Childress for their foresight and
generosity, and I thank the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in
Winston-Salem for its expertise and dedication to this mission.
Finally, I want to recognize the dedicated men and women of the
Childress
[[Page H7351]]
Institute for Pediatric Trauma for working every day to keep our
children safe and to help them recover when they get hurt.
Again, Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentlewoman from Minnesota
for so graciously yielding to me this evening.
Mrs. BACHMANN. Mr. Speaker, I also want to give words of praise for
the gentlewoman from North Carolina, Ms. Virginia Foxx. She is a
stalwart on almost every topic and every subject that there is in this
Chamber.
She is one of the few women that you will regularly see here almost
on a daily basis, taking the debate to the American people, so that
they can understand that our society can be in conformity with what the
creators of this society wanted, a place that was, first of all,
peaceful, a place that would be welcoming, and a nation that would
allow everyone who comes here to realize their dreams in a way that
would even stretch their own imaginations. She has been a stalwart, and
that is Ms. Virginia Foxx, and I am grateful that she was able to come
and speak here this evening.
I would like to be able to continue, Mr. Speaker, with this important
topic because, again, these are extraordinary times and extraordinary
days that we live in. As we all know from the news reports, the
President of the United States, tomorrow night, will be addressing the
Nation on the topic of Islamic jihad, particularly the Islamic State,
as they call themselves today.
Some people may know them as ISIS or ISIL. They call themselves the
Islamic State. The President will be talking about this threat, and I
think that the country is anxious to hear what the President of the
United States will say.
I serve on the Intelligence Committee. It is a privilege to serve on
the Intelligence Committee. It is a fairly small committee. We deal
with the classified secrets of our Nation. We also deal primarily with
terrorism and how to keep the Nation safe, and as a member of that
committee, we have watched this group called the Islamic State form.
We have watched it for well over 2 years because what we are seeing,
Mr. Speaker, is nothing new. It is a continuation of the concept known
as Islamic jihad.
While maybe this is a new name and this is a new format, the Islamic
State, it is merely a continuation of a phenomenon that began in 700
A.D. under the prophet Muhammad who took the sword and violently
attempted to convert people to his religion to various villages,
whether it was Mecca or Medina, he used the sword to violently force
individuals to convert to Islam.
That attempted conversion has continued from 700 A.D. forward, and so
what we are seeing today is the Islamic jihad, the continuation, and it
is also at its root a religious war.
While sitting on the Intelligence Committee, watching the rise of the
Islamic jihad, we learned and studied about who this leader of the
Islamic jihad is. His name is Baghdadi. He is about 43 years old. He is
very well-educated. He has a doctorate degree.
He has been involved in al Qaeda as a senior member for decades. So,
again, this is not a new individual. This is not a brandnew thought or
a brandnew concept. This is an individual who has dedicated his life to
jihad. His name, again, is Baghdadi.
As we watched Baghdadi and his rise, something stunned me, and I hope
that everyone in the United States understands this one concept: we, in
the United States, had intercepted Baghdadi, the current head of the
Islamic State. We had Baghdadi in United States custody. We had him in
custody in Iraq, the country where he was born, and he was in a United
States detention center.
The reason why he was in detention is because he was a terrorist
committing terrorist acts, and he was committed to pursuing terrorist
goals. We had him in detention, and President Obama chose in 2009 to
release Baghdadi from detention in Iraq. He was set free.
Now, was Baghdadi rehabilitated? Had we confirmed that he had
renounced Islamic jihad, that he had renounced acts of terror, that he
was no longer going to pick up the sword and force people at the threat
of their life or beheadings to convert to Islam?
That wasn't it at all. As a matter of fact, at the moment when the
United States released Baghdadi from the United States prison, Camp
Bucca in Iraq, at that moment, Baghdadi said to his jailer, ``I will
see you in New York.''
That should have been a tipoff right there and then that we should
have nabbed him and held him and retained him in detention. This was
not a good candidate for release.
Today, Baghdadi is the head of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria
and the self-appointed caliph of the new caliphate. He reconstituted al
Qaeda in Iraq. As a matter of fact, the very first franchise or
affiliate of al Qaeda was located in Iraq. Baghdadi himself was the
number three in the organization.
We in the United States took out and killed the number one and the
number two in al Qaeda of Iraq. Baghdadi was number three. He was ready
to move up, obviously, to be the number one of al Qaeda in Iraq, but he
didn't have the opportunity.
He didn't have the opportunity when he was in detention in 2009. He
had to look for his opportunity and reconstitute himself and his
organization and build an organization, which he did. He began in 2009,
and he began with what he called ``break the walls''--that was his
name, a ``break the walls'' strategy.
It was a campaign whereby he opened prison doors all across northern
Iraq, and he released terrorists from prisons, so these are prisoners
that we captured--the United States--or that the Iraqi forces working
with the United States had captured.
So terrorists who are behind bars in jail in Iraq in pursuit of the
Islamic jihad were behind bars, and the one man that President Obama
released from jail in Iraq went to the other prisons and opened the
prison doors and began forming his army, and his army was formed with
convicted Islamic jihadist terrorists.
He broke open so many jails, and he again then recruited other
terrorists from the region that today Baghdadi has an army--a brutal,
savage, animalistic army of 12,000 individuals who are so brutal.
We heard the reports that they literally buried alive innocent women
and children in northern Iraq. They chased families up a mountain,
Mount Sinjar, the Yazidis. The Yazidis were a peace-loving people, but
they were considered devil worshippers by Baghdadi and his band of the
Islamic State. They couldn't have that, so they chased these people.
One and two and then 10 and then 100 and then thousands of Yazidis
were killed by these barbarians and the Islamic State. They died of
thirst. They died of hunger. They died of beheadings.
Men were separated from women. Women were raped. Women were carried
away and kidnapped. They were forced into sexual slavery to serve the
animals who had beheaded their husbands and their sons. Literally,
hundreds of men were taken away and beheaded by the Islamic State, led
by Baghdadi, the man who had been released from prison by President
Obama.
I wonder if President Obama will have something to say about his
decision to release Baghdadi when he addresses the Nation tomorrow
night. Clearly, this was a mistake that never should have happened.
Well, once Baghdadi had his terrorists released from prison, they
began a wave of car bombings across Iraq. As Baghdadi reconstituted his
Army in 2010 and 2011, he began his strategy. His outward strategy was
a series of nationwide car bombings in 2011 and 2013 all across Iraq.
He destabilized Iraq and destabilized the Government of Iraq and
destabilized the Army of Iraq to the point where they were more and
more fearful of the Islamic State and what they were intending to do.
So bold did Baghdadi become that his aim was not simply on Iraq and
on Syria or just on Gaza or just on Israel or on Jordan or on Turkey or
on Lebanon. He gave a speech in January of this year, 2014.
In this speech, Baghdadi spoke to America. This is what he had to say
to America--the leader of ISIS--``Soon we'll be in direct
confrontation, so watch out for us, for we are with you, watching.''
I repeat, ``Soon we'll be in direct confrontation, so watch out for
us, for we are with you, watching.''
[[Page H7352]]
They posted a picture of the al Qaeda flag--the black flag--flying
over the White House. They have intentions, all right. Their intentions
are not just in the Middle East. Their intentions are terrorist
activity also in Western Europe and also in the United States of
America.
Why? They tell us what their goal is. Their goal is to force the
peoples of Western Europe and to force the peoples of the United States
of America to convert to Islam at the tip of a sword, whatever it
takes.
You see, we are in the shadow of the 13th anniversary of the horrific
tragedy of 9/11, when we saw what 19 committed Islamic jihadists can
achieve with an airline ticket in one hand and a box cutter in another.
They drove the planes on that morning of September 11 directly into
tower number one and tower number two in New York City. They felled the
towers, and 3,000 innocents died.
They also took off in a jet here in this city, from the airport in
this city. That airplane went directly into the Pentagon, and more
hundreds of innocents died, and that wasn't alone. Another jet took
off.
No one knows if that jet was intended to come into this building, if
they were targeting this very well, 13 years ago. Were they targeting
this well, this rotunda, the Capitol? Were they targeting the White
House?
We will never know. We will never know because the brave Americans on
Flight 93 infamously said, ``Let's roll.'' They were the first
resistance that day, the first American resistance to push back and
say, ``Not in my Nation, you don't.''
We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to those Americans who said,
who realized through phone calls with their loved ones, when they
tragically picked up the phone and found out the horrifying news of
what had happened in New York City to the World Trade towers, of what
had happened to the Pentagon, and they knew very likely that the plane
that they were on could be carrying them also on a nefarious mission,
and to the point of losing their own lives, they stood up and said,
``This is our last chance, but we're not going to sit here, we're going
to fight back,'' and they did. They fought back. They lost their lives
that day.
{time} 1900
They lost their lives that day, but they saved that jet from being
used as a missile on another target.
You see, Americans and America didn't wait. We didn't wait to be
defeated by this evil philosophy and this evil enemy. Brave Americans
stood up that day and said, ``No more.'' And the question we have is:
Do we hear their voices? Do we still hear their voices? Is there
bravery yet among us today to heed their call? Because, you see, the
Islamic jihadists haven't changed. They haven't deviated in their
intent. They haven't deviated in their ultimate goal, which is to
spread their caliphate across the entire world, not just in Iraq, not
just in Syria, but across the entire world, including the United States
of America.
We saw what they did in Benghazi 2 years ago, almost to the day,
again on September 11, when Islamic jihadists targeted the American
consulate. They not only burned it down, but they also took the life--
for the first time in 30 years, we lost an American Ambassador, Chris
Stevens. What is so shameful is that 2 years later Libya is in absolute
chaos today. Just in the last month, we saw Islamic jihadists take over
the airfield in Tripoli.
I was in Tripoli earlier this year. I had visited the American
Embassy earlier this year. I went outside and observed a moment of
silence in front of the memorial recognizing our Ambassador, Chris
Stevens. It is right outside, between the Embassy and the swimming pool
at the Embassy. And shamefully, about a week, 2 weeks ago, we saw
Islamic jihadists had so pressurized our Embassy that the people in our
Embassy wisely abandoned the Embassy and took off for Tunisia and
escaped out of Libya with their lives, thank God.
The Islamic jihadists, the terrorists, came into the United States
Embassy and took over and had a party in our Embassy and made a video
that they posted on YouTube that had them standing on the second-floor
balcony at the Embassy, jumping joyfully into the swimming pool,
splashing in the swimming pool, mere yards from the memorial to our
killed Ambassador, Chris Stevens.
You see, we are not winning the war against Islamic jihad. Our
President infamously told us in the runup to his reelection in 2012
that al Qaeda was defeated. Core al Qaeda was nearly gone; it was
defeated. Al Qaeda was on the run, our President assured us. I only
wish our President would have been right.
Sitting on the Intelligence Committee, I knew without a shadow of a
doubt what our President was saying in 2012 was absolutely wrong. It
wasn't true. I knew al Qaeda wasn't defeated. I knew that al Qaeda
across the world was continuing to gain traction. We knew that. And yet
we were told that, with the death of bin Laden, all had been solved.
Thank you very much. Tragically, nothing could be further from the
truth.
Tragically, James Foley, the United States photojournalist who was
beheaded by ISIS, knew that that wasn't true, as well as Steven
Sotloff, the other United States journalist who also was beheaded by
the Islamic State.
You see, actions have consequences; ideas have consequences. And when
the decision was made by President Obama of releasing Baghdadi from the
United States detention center for whatever reason, that has had
profound consequences. Ask the thousands of Iraqis who are now dead.
Ask the thousands of Yazidis who are dead and displaced. Ask the
hundreds and maybe thousands of women who have been raped and violated,
and young girls, those in Syria who have had to deal with the same. The
tragic consequences are being felt even here in the United States.
Then we watched, with startling speed, the bank robberies that
occurred when Baghdadi had to find a source of income and revenue to
run the Islamic State. He did that by robbing banks. There are various
reports. Some reports say that he stole over $400 million, some say
over $100 million, others say various amounts. The fact is now we had
an Islamic jihadist who could support himself through bank robberies.
But he didn't stop there. He knew that that wouldn't be enough to
accomplish the dreams that he had to establish a global Islamic State.
And so, besides robbing banks, besides reconstituting an army, he
decided that he would also take over oilfields in the Kurdistan area of
northern Iraq. He took over the oilfield. Some reports say that he
sells on the black market oil that comes in at potentially $1 million a
day; other open-source documents say other amounts. But the fact is we
have the Islamic State supporting itself by selling oil on the black
market, and that oil goes to fund terrorism.
He also didn't stop there. Baghdadi also was strategic and he took
over an oil refinery, the oil refinery which supplies the energy to the
Islamic State to run their vehicles, their airplanes, whatever it is
that they need energy for.
They also took over an electric grid so that they could have
electricity. They didn't take over every village; they didn't need to.
They could cause them to fall through intimidation, just as they did in
Mosul, and that is what was stunning.
Imagine you have got an army estimated to be somewhere in the
neighborhood of 10,000 to 12,000, and you can take over a city of 1.7
million, just one. You see, that is what terrorism does. It so
intimidates people that live in the community that they decide, We
can't win; we aren't even going to try.
That is why the United States can't stay silent. That is why we must
stand and act and recognize. We are at war. We are at war because the
Islamic State has declared war against the United States, Western
Europe. They declared war on anyone who isn't them. But they have been
very clear about declaring war against the United States.
The Islamic State also made another strategic capture. They captured
air bases, Iraqi air bases. And when they did that, they captured
United States equipment. So the Islamic jihad is fighting with the
latest United States equipment.
They reportedly have United States helicopters, United States planes.
They reportedly have United States weaponry and United States
ammunition.
[[Page H7353]]
They also have uniforms that they captured from the Iraqi forces. They
captured Humvees, armaments, the oilfields. They also captured natural
gasfields in central Syria.
Well, this spring as I was watching this occur, I am from the State
of Minnesota, and unfortunately Minnesota has a very long connection to
terrorism. I went to the FBI earlier this summer, and I asked the FBI
for a private classified meeting. I asked the FBI if there were any
Minnesotans that had joined the Islamic State and had traveled to the
Middle East to fight on their behalf. They told me at that time the
information was classified. It no longer is. The FBI told me that there
were two Minnesotans who had traveled and joined the Islamic State.
So I had asked the obvious question, which was: If they are not
killed in that battle, and if they choose to come back to the United
States--we know who they are; we know what they have done--will they be
allowed to come back into the United States? And I was told, Yes, they
will. They are American citizens. They have passports. We can't stop
them from coming into the United States.
I was floored. Here we are trying to track down and murder terrorists
in Afghanistan. We have American citizens who have left the United
States and who have joined with the Islamic State--and, by the way, the
creed of the Islamic State says, when you join the Islamic State, you
have renounced every other form of government and you are now
submitting to the government of the Islamic State. How is it that that
individual then would be able to come in?
The FBI said, Well, we put those individuals on a watch list and we
give them further screening at the airport. I asked, What you do mean,
further screening? They said, Well, we ask them questions.
And then they are allowed to get on a plane and then they are allowed
to come into the United States and travel freely?
Yes, they are.
That floored me. I thought that couldn't possibly be. And then we saw
the events transpire this summer. And tragically, we saw the very first
American who was killed fighting for the Islamists, the Islamic State,
was a Minnesotan. His name was Doug McCain, from Minnesota, from the
Twin Cities suburban area. He was an African American youth from
Chicago. He had come with his family to Minnesota, where had he been
converted to Islam and radicalized in the Twin Cities and became a
fighter for the Islamic State. He was the first American.
Very shortly thereafter, a second American was reported to have been
killed fighting for the Islamic State--in the same battle. That was
also a Minnesotan, another young man, who was a Somali American.
Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the world outside of
Somalia. And that Somali man traveled over as well.
And so had these two individuals, had they been in the war with the
Islamic State and, rather than getting killed decided to come back,
they would not have been impeded by the United States Government from
coming back.
Now, think of this. Here you have individuals who have given their
allegiance to the Islamic State--oh, and by the way, one of their
friends from high school was killed in 2009. He also was fighting in
the Middle East in Islamic jihad. His name was Troy Kastigar. And Troy
Kastigar was featured in a video, a recruitment video, inviting more
Americans to come and join Islamic jihad.
Troy Kastigar said that he was glad--I am paraphrasing--he was glad
to be a traitor to America. And yet, under our current law, Troy
Kastigar can be a killer and fight against the interests of the United
States and travel to the Middle East, be a terrorist, and then freely
come back to the United States with battlefield experience, maybe a
plan for terrorism in the United States, and he can roam freely in this
country?
There is something seriously wrong here, Mr. Speaker, something very
seriously wrong. Have we completely lost our minds that we wouldn't
even prevent a terrorist, a known, avowed terrorist from returning to
the United States where he could carry out terrorist activity here in
the United States?
You see, we think that things have been fairly peaceful, but at a
minimum, there have been 53 different terrorist plots that our
government has stopped. We have foiled 53 plots, at minimum, since
2001, since the terrorist activity.
We didn't foil all of them. We didn't foil the Islamic jihadists in
Arkansas who killed a United States soldier. And this individual also
had been converted to Islam and killed the soldier who was at a
recruiting station, I believe an Army recruiting station. We didn't
stop the two refugees who were in Boston, the Tsarnaev brothers, at the
Boston Marathon bombing.
Despite the fact that our FBI was given a cable from the Russian
FSB--that is their intelligence service. They gave a cable to our FBI
that it appeared that the Tsarnaev brothers had--there was a question
of terrorist involvement and terrorist activity. The Tsarnaev brothers
weren't stopped, and people, tragically, were hurt during the Boston
Marathon bombing.
So we have seen those attempts, as we also saw another attempt of the
infamous Christmas Day underwear bomber, who had left London, headed to
Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the express intention of blowing himself
up as a suicide bomber with a concoction that someone had put together
for him, and he attempted to blow up the plane. At that time, it was
Northwest Airlines, the precursor to today's Delta Air Lines. He tried
to blow himself up over the city of Detroit, but thank God he was
unsuccessful. Again, it was yet one more plot here in the United
States.
And there were more. There were attempts on one of our former
President's life, George W. Bush, at his home. There have been other
plots as well. Thank God we have foiled so many of them. But what that
should speak to us, Mr. Speaker, is that the problem isn't just in the
Middle East.
{time} 1915
The problem is here in the United States, and that is why we have to
act now. We have to act forward thinking so we don't allow them to
reach their goals. Well, I went to the FBI, and I asked them this
question. Again, I was shocked at the answer.
Earlier this week, Mr. Speaker, I introduced a bill in the United
States Congress. It is gaining a fair amount of traction with both
Democrats and Republicans. It essentially says this: If you are an
American citizen, and if you have gone to join ISIS, a foreign
terrorist organization, and you want to return to the United States,
your passport will be taken from you, and you will begin the process of
denaturalization. In other words, we will do everything within our
power to prevent you from coming back into this United States. You can
try to come in--and, unfortunately, too many try to come in through our
southern border--but we are going to try and make sure that you are not
successful. My bill is called the Terrorist Denaturalization and
Passport Revocation Act to amend section 349(a) of the United States
Code.
Well, not only that, from Minnesota, the FBI estimates we have at
least 20 Somali Americans from Minnesota that have left our State and
have traveled to the Middle East to join the Islamic jihad. Just last
week, a 19-year-old Somali American woman left St. Paul to join the
Islamic jihad. What I am told is that all three of the women that have
gone to join from the United States are from the State of Minnesota.
They are continuing to recruit.
Our southern border remains, for all practical purposes, wide open so
foreign nationals can cross into the United States. Again, it is not
the fault of the Border Patrol. I actually naively thought on my visit
about 6 weeks ago to our southern border that the Border Patrol
actually stops foreign nationals from coming in. I thought they did. I
was shocked to find out that the Border Patrol doesn't stop anyone.
Nearly 100 percent of foreign nationals who want to come into the
United States through our southern border come in. They come in. The
Border Patrol is a people processing pipeline. So they come in. They
may not all get to stay, but they certainly all do come in. Again, that
is not the fault of the Border Patrol. That is the fault of politicians
who haven't made the decision to actually secure America's southern
[[Page H7354]]
border and to set up the police, to set up the law enforcement to make
that happen, and also to instantaneously deport foreign nationals back
across the border. I was told, as a matter of fact, if I didn't mention
it before, that foreign nationals from over 140 countries have already
made their way into the United States just so far this year.
We have a lot on our plate right now, Mr. Speaker, a lot that we have
to pay attention to. The United States could have stopped them in the
cradle, and they weren't. They could have been stopped before they were
reconstituted. The President could have retained Baghdadi in the United
States detention system. We wouldn't have had the beheadings that we
saw of James Foley or of Steve Sotloff, and hundreds of thousands of
innocent people wouldn't be dead today had the President made that
decision, but he didn't.
It is also important for us to realize Iraq pled with the United
States to do drone strikes against the Islamic State dating back to
August of 2013. Wouldn't it have been important to listen to Iraq? They
were the ones dealing with the Islamic State in 2013. They begged us to
do drone strikes and take out the leadership in Iraq. What was the
answer of President Obama? No. He took a pass. He didn't listen to the
calls of Iraq, and we didn't take out the leadership when we had the
chance.
The Iraq foreign minister came to the United States, and he begged
for the United States to help against the Islamic State. He also went
home empty-handed. There were multiple knocks on the President's door
to do something about the Islamic State even back in 2013 by our
partners who we were trying to help be successful in Iraq.
Unfortunately, our President did not answer that call.
On May 11, the President of Iraq, al-Maliki, asked CENTCOM to strike
the Islamic State with drones. That was on May 11, this spring. I was
on the Intelligence Committee. I was seeing the up tempo, and all of us
were seeing the up tempo of the Islamic State and the rise of the
Islamic jihad. Again, the president of Iraq asked our CENTCOM to do
drone strikes and take out the Islamic State. Al Maliki said, ``I will
approve the airstrikes. I will get behind you.'' He was told ``no.''
The problem, you see, wasn't al-Maliki in the spring. The problem is
that the President and his team decided not to help when we had ample
opportunities. A meeting was held very early on on how to defeat al
Qaeda both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It was written about by a
weekly news magazine author who had the ability to be in that meeting.
And in that early meeting of the Obama administration, a meeting both
with Pakistan and Afghanistan on how to defeat al Qaeda, they didn't
discuss in that meeting--and it was very telling--they didn't discuss a
strategy to actually defeat al Qaeda. What they did is take along our
agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, and the conversation rather than
being about actually defeating al Qaeda was about planting seeds in
Pakistan and planting seeds for the agriculture community and growing
the agriculture community in both countries. Now, I am not saying that
that is not a worthwhile meeting, but if your point in having the
meeting is to defeat al Qaeda, that is the subject that you should be
covering, and you should come up with a plan. That was, again, at this
point, over 4 years ago, and we are here tomorrow night about to hear
from the President. Does he finally have a plan? Once the crisis got to
the point of American citizens being beheaded on TV before our eyes in
the most cruel, barbaric way possible, now we are only starting to
reengage.
The Islamic State crisis, unfortunately, is one that will be very
difficult because we have seen United States forces prematurely moved
out of that region. So were we forewarned? We absolutely were
forewarned. And it isn't just the administration. We also knew during
George W. Bush's tenure as President of the United States that the
foreign policy establishment, the military establishment, also knew.
There is a clip that has gone on YouTube recently of President George
W. Bush in 2007, and I will read exactly verbatim what the President
said July 12, 2007. George W. Bush warned the Nation then:
It would mean surrendering the future of Iraq to al Qaeda
if the United States completely removed ourselves from Iraq.
It would mean that we would be risking mass killings on a
horrific scale.
It would mean that we would allow the terrorists to
establish a safe haven in Iraq to replace the one they lost
in Afghanistan.
It would mean increasing the probability that American
troops would have to return at some later date to confront an
enemy that is even more dangerous.
It is beyond belief the statement that was made by George W. Bush
back in July 12 of 2007. It is as though the President has most
accurately described exactly what President Obama will address tomorrow
night by his ill-made decision in 2011 not to leave American residual
forces to maintain the peace.
I want to give credit tonight, Mr. Speaker, to the American heroes,
the American soldiers who won the peace and defeated the enemy in
Iraq--yes, they did--and in Afghanistan. In order to maintain the
peace, we needed to maintain a strong American presence, just like
today we have in South Korea. I was in South Korea in August. We
maintain an American presence. Why? Because there is an aggressor in
North Korea. We have our force on location so that we can let the
aggressor know, if you try something, we are here, and you won't
succeed. And that has worked very well in South Korea. That has worked
very well in Western Europe.
Unfortunately, President Obama didn't learn the lessons of history,
and he made the ill-timed decision to pull American residual forces out
of Iraq. That decision has led to the consequences that we have today,
and it is why, again, I would plead with the President of the United
States to not pull American forces out of Afghanistan, either. Because
I heard over and over and over when I was in Kabul, Afghanistan, over
the Memorial Day weekend, May 30, that if the United States leaves
Afghanistan, everyone on the ground knows the Taliban will be back. It
will be bloody, and it won't be pretty, and it will be back to square
one after $1 trillion worth of treasure. But, more importantly, after
the sacrifice of thousands of brave American lives. That is not how we
should honor their memory nor their sacrifice. And the same with the
brave American men and women in our Armed Forces, and contractors, et
cetera, who lost their life also to win the peace in Iraq. Again,
President George Bush had it right in July of 2007. We needed those
residual forces.
Yes, this is a continuation of Islamic jihad. Yes, this is, at its
basis, a religious war--not America saying it. That is the terrorists
themselves telling us that they are at war with us because they intend
to force conversions to their religion of Islam.
Well, what is very unusual about the Islamic State is this: they have
a land, and they have a territory. We have a philosophy, we have been
fighting, now we have a land and a territory, a new caliphate. It is at
least half of Syria and at least half of Iraq. It has a head, Baghdadi,
who has declared himself the caliph of this new caliphate. He has a
committed army of 12,000 terrorist soldiers, many of whom he released
from terrorist prisons. They have a form of government, Islamic sharia
law, and they follow that to the tee.
They have money from banks that they have robbed, from oilfields, and
from the revenue that they take from gasfields. They also have a self-
sustaining infrastructure with their energy production. They are
seeking to obtain weapons of mass destruction. They obtained 90 pounds
of low-enriched uranium. There is now a fear that materials that could
be used to form a nuclear bomb are items on the wish list and the
shopping list of the Islamic State. We need to do everything that we
can to prevent them from achieving their goal of putting together the
elements for a nuclear weapon.
We also need to be aware that Pakistan is also in a vulnerable
position. There are reports that Pakistan may have upwards of 200
nuclear weapons. Pakistan is a Sunni state. The Islamic State led by
Baghdadi is also a Sunni Islamic jihadist enterprise. If they choose to
make a deal with Pakistan for nuclear material or a nuclear weapon,
that would change the dynamic overnight. And that is why it is
imperative that another Islamic state, Iran, a Shia Islamic state,
never, ever, ever obtain a nuclear weapon. Because if
[[Page H7355]]
Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, they have stated unequivocally they will
use that nuclear weapon to wipe Israel off the map. They will also use
that weapon, they have stated, against the United States to defeat the
United States of America.
You see, nuclear weapons matter, Mr. Speaker, and they must never,
ever go into the hands in any way of committed Islamic jihadist
terrorists. Iran is a terror State. It is a United States-designated
terror state. There are only four in the world. Iran is one of them.
Now we have the Islamic State. The Islamic State headed by Baghdadi
also seeks destruction, and they mean it. We have seen it, and we have
to take it seriously. That is why we must engage them and not allow
them to succeed because the Islamic State now has weapons from the
United States equal to weapons that we have in our Army. They have
weapons from the Russian Government, and they also have Iranian
weapons, as well--sophisticated weapons and individuals with the
knowledge and ability to be able to use those weapons.
They also control borders that weren't in the control of jihadists
before. Just recently, they gained control of a border at the Golan
Heights on Israel's border. This is approximately 200 yards from Israel
in a demilitarization area. Nonetheless, they took United Nations
workers hostage just as the Islamic State took 49 Turks hostage out of
the Turkish Embassy in northern Iraq.
{time} 1930
They have taken checkpoints on the Jordan border with Iraq. The
Islamic State has taken over. They have virtually erased the border
with Syria. They have taken over checkpoints in Lebanon, also in Turkey
and also in the Kurdistan region, so they control territory in a way
that they never have before.
They have some of the most sophisticated recruitment materials in the
world today through Facebook, through Twitter. They know exactly what
the message is and who they need to target to join them in the Islamic
jihad.
Unfortunately, in my home State of Minnesota, we know all too well
how successful the Islamic State has been in drawing in literally
thousands from Western Europe to join them in jihad, but also Americans
as well. They are the cool kid on the block, if you will. That is where
young people want to go, and that is who they are attracted to.
As I said earlier, the leader of the Islamic State is a man named
Baghdadi, a man who was released from American detention by President
Obama in 2009, who went on to reconstitute this horrific Islamic jihad
called the Islamic State. He is in his early forties. He is in the
prime of life. He believes this is his moment. He has declared himself
the head, the caliph, of the new state, the caliphate.
He was involved in al Qaeda leadership for decades. He was literally
number three in al Qaeda of Iraq, the first franchise. He was an
associate of Bin Laden. He has a doctorate degree. He was born in
Samarra, Iraq. He understands Iraq. He understands that it is his
destiny, from his opinion, to fulfill the reestablishment of the
caliphate, and he has no interest in waiting. He is on the march.
He made a statement in January of this year that I read previously,
but it is one that bears repeating, and he said this to the United
States. He said, ``Soon we will be in direct confrontation with you,
United States, so watch out for us, for we are with you, watching.''
That is why we need to understand that we very likely have Islamic
jihad terrorists here in the United States today. We know that there
are those who went to join ISIS who have returned to the United States.
They are terrorists.
We need to call them for who they are. They aren't engaged in
workplace violence, as our former head of Homeland Security erroneously
said. They are terrorists. They are murderers. They live to kill
innocent human beings.
They do it because they believe that they are pleasing their God when
they do. According to their belief, not mine, not what I am saying,
what they say, they believe that if they are a martyr, if they die in
the way of jihad, that is their only one sure way to go to heaven. That
is what they say in their belief.
We need to understand who the enemy is. We need to understand the
enemy's motivation, not what we wish the enemy thinks, not what we hope
the enemy thinks. We need to understand what the enemy--the
terrorists--actually say about themselves and say about their beliefs
and say about what their goals are because, you see, Sun Tzu wrote in
his book ``The Art of War,'' there are two rules to win in a conflict.
One is you need to know yourself, you need to know who you are, you
need to know what your attributes are, what your strengths, what your
weaknesses are as an army, as a nation, as an individual, but you also
need to know who your enemy is.
That is why it was so concerning when the FBI decided--not only the
FBI, but other agencies of our government, the CIA included, but in
particular, I am familiar with the FBI--when the FBI agreed that they
would purge the training manuals of FBI agents, and they purged the
manuals of materials on Islam, and the materials that they purged were
quotes from the Koran--why did they do that? Why in the world would our
FBI not want its agents to understand the motivation of terrorists?
This isn't about being mean to Muslims, this isn't about being mean
to anybody's religion or being insensitive to anyone's religion--
because in the United States you have freedom of religion, you can
believe what you want to believe, but you can't take, as your basis and
your justification, religious belief to go and kill other people or
hurt other people--that, you can't do.
It is important again that our FBI, our law enforcement mechanism,
understands the motivation of who the enemies are and why they are
doing what they are doing. That is why it is so dangerous for the FBI
not to train our agents in what the motivation is of Islamic jihad.
Well, you see, we witnessed the Islamic jihad, we witnessed them also
taking hostages. I mentioned 49 Turkish hostages have been taken. They
have taken hostages of the British, the French, Germans, United States
hostages, including the two journalists that we had mentioned that they
tragically took.
This is age-old. This has been a part of what has happened in Islamic
jihad through the millennia with ransoms and piracy and taking hostages
for money.
The demand was made of the United States that we would pay $132
million for the release of James Foley. It is curious that that demand
was made almost immediately after President Obama illegally and
unfortunately negotiated with terrorists to release the alleged
deserter Bergdahl in exchange for five Taliban.
The five top leaders of the Taliban, the five top strategists, the
five top leaders of the Taliban, the enemy that we are fighting in
Afghanistan, the President of the United States negotiated with
terrorists so that we would release from detention in Guantanamo Bay
the five top strategists of the terrorists that we are fighting in
Afghanistan. He released those five top terrorists in exchange for the
alleged deserter Bergdahl.
Now, that was a first. The United States hadn't done that before. We
have had a policy of we don't negotiate for hostages, and that has
served us very well because the world understood--the thugs and the
animals and the savages and barbarians of the world understood you are
not going to get anywhere with the United States, they are not going to
pay for hostages, they are not going to give up prisoners in exchange.
It is not going to happen.
It is a way of life with other countries, not with the United States
of America, not until May of 2014 when President Obama, in my opinion,
tragically made the decision that he would negotiate with terrorists in
order to regain the alleged deserter Bowe Bergdahl.
Almost immediately, we saw the demand by the terrorists for money for
James Foley. We did not comply, and he was beheaded. Then the demand
came for the United States to release Lady al Qaeda in exchange for
Steve Sotloff, and we didn't comply. That is why we are looking forward
to what
[[Page H7356]]
the President of the United States has to say tomorrow. We have to
defeat this enemy, the Islamic State.
I yield back the balance of my time.
____________________