[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Pages 20024-20025]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         CAMP LIBERTY REFUGEES

  Mr. TILLIS. Mr. President, the President of the United States has 
fully refused to acknowledge the depth and prevalence of the savagery 
of Islamic terrorism, and he has refused to offer and implement a 
strategy to permanently defeat it.
  We are all too familiar with the consequences of Islamic terrorism: 
Fort Hood, Boston, Oklahoma, Chattanooga, Ankara, Mali, Beirut, Paris, 
and more recently, San Bernardino.
  While the President was in Paris recently, he lectured the American 
people not on the moral necessity to destroy ISIS but instead on our 
supposed lack of compassion and understanding regarding his latest plan 
to resettle 10,000 Middle Eastern refugees in America.
  I represent the great State of North Carolina. It is a State that has 
provided refuge to those who have fought and died on America's side--
the South Vietnamese, Laotians, Montagnards, and Cambodians. But the 
President's remarks were disingenuous, because what he didn't tell the 
American people is that his own FBI Director has warned of America's 
inability to properly vet the refugees--an inability that only requires 
a 1 in 10,000 chance to produce a catastrophic and tragic result.
  Instead of acknowledging these well-founded concerns, the President 
hectored the critics of his plan--Republicans, Democrats, and everyone 
else in

[[Page 20025]]

between--even after French authorities told him several members of the 
terrorist cell got into France masquerading as Syrian refugees. Syrian 
refugees with fake passports were caught trying to reach America 
through Honduras, and Syrians have been arrested trying to cross into 
Texas.
  Let me tell you why this administration's rebuke is indicative of a 
foreign policy that is completely detached from reality. On October 29, 
23 refugees died in a rocket attack at Camp Liberty in Iraq. Camp 
Liberty is a former U.S. military base outside of Baghdad that is home 
to more than 2,000 Iranian refugees who are members of the main 
opposition group to the ayatollahs in Tehran. The refugees at Camp 
Liberty have been fully vetted by American intelligence services. 
Eighty Iranian-built rockets struck the camp that has been home to the 
People's Mojahedin, an organization that has tried to fight the mullahs 
in Tehran. The ayatollahs want the leaders and the families of these 
inhabitants at Camp Liberty eliminated, and their friends in Baghdad 
are doing their bidding.
  The men, women, and children at Camp Liberty have suffered numerous 
attacks resulting in hundreds of casualties. Nor has Camp Liberty, 
which was supposed to be a temporary home before the refugees were 
settled outside of Iraq, met the most basic humanitarian needs. They 
lack clean water, decent food, medical supplies, and decent living 
facilities; and every single day they go to bed at night worried if it 
is their last day on Earth.
  The Obama administration pledged to protect these refugees who put 
their lives and their children's lives on the line for freedom. Yet it 
has done absolutely nothing to keep America's word. Why take in 
unvetted Syrian refugees and not a handful of refugees from Iran that 
are fully vetted? To curry favor with the same regime that killed 
American soldiers during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New 
Dawn? I hope not.
  President Obama has willfully ignored 40 years of hostility from 
Tehran. If the President does not recognize that we are at war, the 
ayatollahs certainly do. They are the chief sponsors of global terror. 
They have imprisoned American journalists. They have tested long-range 
missiles. They just completed another test in violation of 
international treaties over the last couple of weeks. They have never 
stepped back from their desire to obliterate Israel and to destroy the 
United States.
  This is the Obama doctrine. The President sees American foreign 
policy as the problem. He views Israel as an obstacle to peace, and 
Iran is treated as another oppressed constituency with legitimate 
grievances against the West, so much so that when millions of Iranians 
took to the streets against the mullahs, President Obama did nothing 
and said nothing. The old American alliances are collapsing in 
confusion and fear, and the only answer from the administration seems 
to be to clear Iran's path to a nuclear weapon.
  Section 1227 of this year's National Defense Reauthorization Act 
memorializes Congress's desire to see that our friends at Camp Liberty 
are protected and relocated outside of Iraq in accordance with 
international conventions.
  The children of Camp Liberty are dying and the bad guys are watching. 
They are watching to see if the President of the United States tosses 
aside another American friend, clearing the way for a new Persian 
empire--a tyrannical empire armed with nuclear weapons.
  I will end with the thoughts of Natan Sharansky, a survivor of the 
Soviet Gulag. He said:

       Today an American President has once again sought to 
     achieve stability by removing sanctions against a brutal 
     dictatorship without demanding anything in return. . . . We 
     are at a historic crossroads, the United States can either 
     appease a criminal regime--one that supports global terror, 
     relentlessly threatens to eliminate Israel and executes more 
     political prisoners than any other--or stand firm in 
     demanding change in its behavior.

  I don't think a lot of people know about Camp Liberty, but I want you 
all to know that there are 2,000 people over there who were fighting 
for freedom in Iran. The American people committed to protecting them 
and to getting them to a place where they can be safe. These are 
refugees who are fully vetted. They have gone through all the processes 
that we are wondering and worrying whether the Syrian refugees can. 
Let's show good faith by fulfilling our promise to the people at Camp 
Liberty and making sure that the American people know and the people at 
Camp Liberty know that we care about them and we wish them the very 
best that they can achieve--and that is not in a camp somewhere in 
Iraq.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mrs. ERNST. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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