[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17376]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




          THANK GOD FOR THIS DEMOCRACY AND THOSE PROTECTING IT

  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to speak out of 
turn for 5 minutes.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from Texas 
is recognized.
  There was no objection.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, we hear people across the aisle talk about, 
gee, a rubber-stamp Congress. Well, I can point to you, that is the 
reason there is no immigration or border bill right now is because this 
is not a rubber-stamp Congress. The President wants some things that we 
simply cannot provide.
  But when we talk about the allegations about Republicans or the 
President shredding the Constitution, let me tell you, he does not 
shred the Constitution. He has sworn to protect it, and I am proud that 
people who want to destroy the way of life that we have in this 
country, people that believe that freedom and democracy and self-
government is a terrible thing, they think that that leads to 
debauchery and degradation, and therefore, you need some holy ayatollah 
that tells you everything you can or cannot do, that sends women back 
to being chattels as they never should have been but still are in some 
areas of the world, that is what they want to do to this country. They 
want to destroy people. They want to kill us, and we have a President 
that understands that.
  Now, across the aisle we have some folks who want to be part of the 
blame America first crowd. They want you to know, gee, we are so bad, 
we are so terrible, look at Abu Ghraib. I asked my good friend Sam 
Johnson that serves here in the Congress what he thought about if he 
had been given a choice between the absolute horror that he went 
through in the North Vietnam prison compared to what happened at Abu 
Ghraib. It was a no-brainer.
  What happened there was abuse. The people have gone to prison. They 
have been punished. What happened to American prisoners in North 
Vietnam, North Korea, what happened to American prisoners among those 
killers, those just blood-sucking, killing democracy, wanting to 
destroy people, terrorists, jihadists, cutting our people's heads off 
with dull instruments on camera, and that is who you want to embrace? 
There are even some people here in Washington that before Saddam went 
down, he flew over there. Never mind that Saddam was a murdering, 
blood-sucking thief who killed thousands and thousands. We go over and 
embrace Saddam and then come back and call our President the one in the 
wrong? My goodness, the blame America first crowd.
  Those who want to blame Bush and Rumsfeld for the terrorist acts have 
missed the whole point. Since 1979 there has been a war going on. We 
just did not know it. We had a President then who allowed an act of war 
under international law, the attack of our embassy in Iran, to go 
unpunished, and for over a year, all we did was beg them to please 
release our hostages. It sent a bad message.
  We were hit again in 1983 with the barracks. We were hit all through 
the 1990s with acts of war, including the first attack on our own 
continent at the World Trade Center in 1993. What did the Democratic 
administration and Democratic Congress do? Well, they wanted to 
prosecute them in civil court here in America instead of treating it as 
an act of war.
  This President understands we are in war. Now we have a Supreme Court 
that has expressed concerns about Guantanamo. I went to Guantanamo, and 
having been a judge and chief justice, I have toured a lot of prisons. 
That was the nicest prison I have ever visited where the prisoners are 
being kept. But you know what we noticed? We were told do not let the 
prisoners hear you because they will think you are with the Red Cross 
or somebody. One of the people with us, and they heard somebody there 
and they started all of sudden going from laughing and being giddy and 
funny between themselves to, oh, please help me, I am being tortured 
and all this baloney. Well, they are playing to the crowds. That was 
obvious.
  I would submit if the Supreme Court is all that concerned, we need to 
put that hurricane fence back around the Supreme Court building that 
was there during construction recently and move those people from Abu 
Ghraib so they can watch them directly and they can look out their 
windows, maybe let them use their restroom facilities so they can 
supervise more closely what this administration is trying to protect us 
from.
  You cannot blame President Bush and Rumsfeld for the current 
terrorist attacks unless you are squarely willing to put the blame for 
9/11 on the Clinton administration because that is when it was planned, 
that was when it was prepared and almost completed, and then it carried 
over and was finished during this administration. This President saw it 
for what it was, an act of war that had to be addressed.
  The price for liberty, as our forefathers said, is eternal vigilance. 
We cannot keep blaming America first, as our friends across the aisle 
want to do. We have to recognize, as this President and this Secretary 
of Defense has, we are in a war against us, and we finally have an 
administration that recognizes that and is out to protect us and 
protect the Constitution. Thank God for this democracy and those 
protecting it.

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