[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11109]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        IS ISIS A NATIONAL SECURITY THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES?

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Texas (Mr. Poe) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, today the terrorist army of ISIS is 
stronger than ever. It maims, rapes, pillages, burns, and beheads in 
its zeal to commit religious genocide against anyone who disagrees with 
them.
  ISIS controls and manipulates the minds of thousands of foreign 
fighters, including those who come from the United States. This is done 
arrogantly through American social media companies.
  The U.S.' answer to the ISIS threat? Well, let's see what it is.
  Part of the current U.S. strategy is to train foreign mercenaries to 
fight against ISIS. It has had a yearlong American budget of about $500 
million.
  The program is to equally fund equipment and to train these so-called 
moderates from Syria to fight ISIS. I call them mercenaries.
  However, the Secretary of Defense of the United States--Carter--
admitted that, even after this 1 year of training, the United States 
has only trained 60--six, zero--of these moderate Syrian rebels.
  If I do my math correctly, Mr. Speaker, we are spending about $4 
million apiece on these 60 fighters to go and fight, supposedly, ISIS.
  This is embarrassingly pathetic. The greatest nation that has ever 
existed sees ISIS as such a threat that we are going to send 60 folks 
over to try to take care of them.
  Ironically, there are more Americans who are fighting with ISIS than 
we have rebels who have been trained to fight against ISIS.
  The United States obviously is not taking ISIS seriously. ISIS even 
mocks the United States and its 60 fighters on, once again, American 
social media.
  There is more.
  The President has recently admitted that the United States really 
doesn't even have a complete strategy against ISIS. Now, isn't that 
lovely?
  The question is, Mr. Speaker: Is ISIS a national security threat to 
the United States? That is the question. That is the question that has 
to be answered by the administration and by Congress, and a decision 
needs to be made by the administration.
  It is time for the administration to pick a horse and ride it. If 
ISIS is a threat, then we must have a plan to defeat them, then 
actively implement the plan, and defeat ISIS.
  Mr. Speaker, the Commander in Chief needs to lead. He needs to 
command or ISIS will continue its reign of terror in the Middle East 
and in other parts of the world.
  And that is just the way it is.

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