[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.

                          ____________________