[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15467]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 ARE WE IN OR OUT IN ELIMINATING ISIS?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, on September 10, 2014, President Obama 
announced that the United States would ``degrade and ultimately 
destroy'' ISIS. ISIS has obviously not gotten the memo. This terrorist 
group keeps moving across the Middle East, killing those who stand in 
its way by raping, pillaging, and murdering those who disagree with 
them. ISIS controls half of Syria and large parts of Iraq. Civilized 
society is losing to these barbarians.
  Despite the U.S. spending billions on a counterterrorism strategy, 
the terrorist group's numbers have not decreased. In fact, ISIS has 
grown in size, with affiliates all over the world, including Indonesia, 
Yemen, Egypt, and even Libya.
  A $3 billion U.S. airstrike campaign has been plagued with little 
measurable successful results. From the very beginning, military 
officials warned that airstrikes alone that relied on virtually no 
human intelligence or on-the-ground intelligence would not be 
successful. Without good intelligence, the number of airstrikes the 
U.S. has carried out have been few, and the results are uncertain.
  Also, ISIS fighters killed by our airstrikes are just replaced by 
other jihadists. Our intelligence estimates that ISIS' numbers are the 
same as they were when our airstrikes began.
  In addition, the administration's $500 million train and equip 
program has proved to be a failure by anyone's measure. In July, 
officials reported they had identified 7,000 planned participants but 
only trained 60 of these mercenaries. Later that month, 54 fighters 
crossed into Syria to fight ISIS forces that numbered in the tens of 
thousands. Of those 54 mercenaries, virtually all were killed, 
captured, or scattered when attacked. We are now down to four or five 
U.S.-trained mercenaries, according to General Lloyd Austin of CENTCOM.
  Despite this failed policy, just last week, we sent a second group of 
70 U.S.-trained mercenaries into Syria. Just 1 day later, reports 
suggested that one of the officers defected and surrendered his arms to 
al Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, and several truckloads of weapons were 
allegedly traded to the terrorist group al-Nusra for safe passage.
  It is time to abandon this failed train and equip program.
  The reality is just as bleak on the online battlefield. ISIS has 
30,000 to 40,000 social media accounts. It uses the Internet to spread 
propaganda, raise money, and find recruits as far away as Washington 
State.
  In 2011, the administration promised a strategy to combat terrorist 
use of social media. Four years later, we still haven't seen that plan. 
No plan, no degrading ISIS, no defeating ISIS.
  The intel given to the administration has also been doctored to cover 
up how badly the war against ISIS is going. Meanwhile, thousands of 
people are fleeing the Middle East--flooding Europe and demanding entry 
into other Western nations because of the ISIS carnage and the chaos in 
Syria as well.
  In the face of our failure to destroy ISIS, we should be focusing on 
what we can do better and how we can improve our strategy without using 
U.S. ground troops.
  ISIS' advances in Syria translate into more direct threats to our 
national security and interests, both abroad and at home. ISIS wants to 
destroy the United States and everything we stand for. ISIS fears no 
one--certainly not the United States--so it continues to murder in the 
name of its radical jihad. It has already killed innocent Americans.
  We need a strategy that protects American people from this radical 
Islamic threat. So what is the plan? Let the Russians defeat ISIS and 
prop up the butcher of Syria, Assad, and let him remain in power? Who 
knows. The current U.S. plan seems to be like the war in Vietnam: don't 
win, don't lose.
  The American people need to know if the U.S. is in or out in the 
fight against ISIS. If it is in the national security interest of the 
United States to degrade and defeat them, we need to define the enemy 
and defeat them.
  And that is just the way it is.

                          ____________________