[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6128-6129]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  2000

            INTERNATIONAL VILLAINS AND INTERNATIONAL OUTLAWS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE. Mr. Speaker, tonight I rise to speak about international 
villains, international outlaws. We need to know who they are and who 
they are not because these terrorists are not ministers of good, but 
they are ministers of evil.
  The terrorists are not freedom fighters as some say, for they oppose 
all freedoms. Terrorists are not moral because they preach, praise, and 
practice immoral acts. Terrorists are not for children because they 
murder children. They murder their neighbor's children, and they murder 
their own. Terrorists are not for any peace, but are for any chaos. 
Terrorists are not for democracies, but proclaim the value of 
totalitarian dictatorships.
  Terrorists are not for justice so we must bring them to justice. As 
related in Proverbs, when justice is done, it brings joy to the 
righteous and it brings terror to the evil doers. So I say let us bring 
terror to these evil doers.
  I have dealt with local terrorists, street terrorists, all my life, 
first as a prosecutor and a judge in a criminal court in Texas for 22 
years. These people are mean, they are violent, and you can deal with 
them one way. You do not ask them to try to do better. You do not blame 
their culture or their lack of culture for their conduct. You do not 
reason with them. You do not negotiate. You hold them accountable for 
their choices.
  They live for crimes of violence, so you punish them. You make the 
price high, too high for them to pay so they stop it, so they leave us 
alone, for it is a right of all of us to be left alone. If

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they choose not to leave us alone, they must face quick, sudden, and 
decisive action.
  We must continue to deal with international terrorists the same way 
we deal with local street terrorists. We seek them out and we hold them 
accountable for their choices. It is not rational to stop once we have 
them on the run.
  In Iraq, for example, we must finish the job. The phrase ``cut and 
run'' may be in the vocabulary of the French Government, but it is not 
in our vocabulary.
  I have been to Iraq. I was there on election day January 30; and the 
people I talked to, those Iraqis were afraid that we would leave before 
the job was done. The terrorists want to wait us out because of the 
comments that they hear on this very House floor, that we should leave 
the job before it is through. Well, they will not wait us out because 
we will finish the job. So we will stay the course. We will finish the 
job before us. For it is far better to fight terrorists on their soil 
than on American soil, and we will know of no retreat or defeat.
  We must train the Iraqi security forces so that they can protect 
their own borders against the insurgents. We must continue to seek out 
the terrorists in Afghanistan as well, but we must also deal with the 
cocaine and heroin traffic that is there because it funds those 
terrorists.
  We must also allow our local law enforcement to fight that same 
secondary terror, that is, the terror of drugs, that is here in the 
United States that affects many American families, because those drugs 
that the terrorist cartels market in our land, they fund their evil 
ways. We must protect our homeland and support our first responders. 
For as our troops in lands across the seas battle these evil villains, 
our first responders are the ones who battle them here on the homeland, 
and they are always counted faithful.
  On September 11, we all remember what we were doing. I was driving my 
Jeep to the courthouse, and I heard on the radio about the first plane 
that hit the World Trade Center; second plane, World Trade Center; 
third plane, crashes in Pennsylvania because of some heroes; fourth 
plane, hits the Pentagon.
  Later that day, as many Americans like myself were watching 
television, I noticed the phenomena. I noticed thousands and thousands 
of Americans in New York City when those terrorists hit those 
buildings. They were running as hard as they could to get away from 
that terror. But there was another group of people, not very many, but 
they were there. When that terror hit the World Trade Center, they were 
running as hard as they could to get to that terror. Who were they? 
They were emergency medical technicians, they were firefighters, and 
they were cops. Because these people responded, and these are the 
people who we count on first, the people responsible for the deaths of 
the 3,000 on that day will be held accountable.
  So we will not waiver in our battle against these international 
villains. There is no substitute for victory. For we are a people 
committed to remaining and continuing for centuries to be the land of 
the free and the home of the brave.

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