[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 162 (2016), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 8540-8543]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             GUANTANAMO BAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2015, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized 
for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
  Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, there is an issue we have been talking 
about on the Republican side for quite a bit, and I think some of my 
Democratic friends realize how serious an issue this is because they 
care about our military members.
  The President of the United States promised, ill-advisedly, before he 
was ever elected, that he was going to close the Guantanamo Bay 
facility that housed the worst of the worst terrorists wanting to kill 
Americans and destroy our way of life. Well, he found out right after 
he took office that you just can't do that because it is going to put 
American lives at risk. There is a reason they are being held there. 
And it violates no rules of law when it comes to war, because war is a 
little different.
  Since civilized society came along in the history of mankind, things 
improved for prisoners of war. Before there was a civilized society, 
when one group warred against another, they would either kill them or 
make them slaves. What occurred was pretty gruesome.
  In civilized history, when one group says, ``We are at war with this 
other group,'' then the other group either responds by defending 
themselves or they are overtaken by the evildoers--in this case, 
radical Islamists.
  Since the history of more civilized warfare--if we can call it such, 
because war is truly hell--noble nations played by rules that said, if 
you capture someone who is part of the group at war with you, then you 
hold them as prisoners in a humane fashion until such time as the group 
of which they are a part agrees that they are no longer at war. If the 
war drags on 15, 20, 30, 50 years, it is not the fault of the country 
that captures people at war with them, because that country did not 
start the war.
  In this case, the radical Islamists have had this small part of Islam 
since its beginning and felt like the way to be truly religiously 
Islamic is to kill anybody that stands in your way of having an 
international caliphate and forcing everyone in the world to bow before 
Allah and Islam, in the name of Islam.

                              {time}  1345

  It is not our fault if they will not say we are no longer at war with 
you, because once that happens, then you release those prisoners who 
were part of the group that was at war with you. And if some of them 
can be proven to be guilty of actual war crimes against humanity, then 
you take them to trial, and you try to convict them. And if you do, as 
we saw after World War II, if they are convicted and sentenced to 
death, that occurs. If they are sentenced to prison, that is on top of 
the years that we waited while their group continued to be at war with 
us. That is under the civilized rules of warfare.
  Guantanamo Bay, I can say, having been there more than once, and also 
having toured many State and Federal prisons, has provided the most 
humane treatment I have ever seen a group of prisoners get.
  For example, in a Texas prison, if you throw urine or feces on a 
guard, you will suffer consequences for that decision. I found out on 
one of my trips to Guantanamo Bay prison that when, as often happens, 
an inmate figures out a way to throw urine or feces on one of our 
military member guards, that because we don't want to be perceived as 
having some mean-spirited prison, we take away a couple of their movie-
watching hours during some day to teach them a lesson.
  And there have been instances where, when they didn't like the movies 
being presented, perhaps they hadn't been screened properly enough, 
maybe some woman exposed a bare arm and that offended somebody, well, 
there was uproar, problems. But if somebody committed a really 
egregious crime of assaulting one of our guards, then they might 
actually lose some of their time outside for a day or two.
  It bothered me greatly to find out that the guards were not allowed 
to even say anything when someone threw urine or feces on them who was 
an inmate at Guantanamo Bay; because one such United States military 
member, I think they said he was a minority member of our United States 
military, had feces thrown on him, and he angrily said a name, and he 
received an article 15 non-judicial punishment, and he was punished for 
simply saying something back after he had feces thrown on him.
  Well, that ought to be the least of the problems. And I couldn't 
believe one of our military members who had been assaulted in such a 
despicable manner was the one punished for saying something back to the 
inmate that threw feces on him.
  But the President is determined to follow through with this same kind 
of policy idea that he has had since the beginning, when he had his 
apology tour going throughout the Middle East, apologizing in Egypt, 
apologizing around the world for America, who has been the only country 
that I can find in history that has shed so much precious American 
blood, so much blood of our Americans for other people's freedom. We 
didn't owe anybody an apology, not for that.
  And there is this mentality among some liberals like our President 
that the world will be so much safer and a so much better place to live 
if America were brought down and were not a superpower and you let 
other countries be superpowers, like, for example, Iran.
  Let's give Iran $100 billion, $150 billion access to that, and let's 
let them become a superpower, and we will negotiate a deal that, 
hopefully, will prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon while 
President Obama is in office. And then who cares what happens after 
that; right?
  But the deal that was negotiated pretty well assures that Iran will 
have nuclear weapons. It is just a matter of when. And now we know that 
Iran has repeatedly broken their agreement and we know that this 
administration, as we found out, this administration actually 
manipulated video to try to cover up just how bad the deal was that 
this State Department was negotiating.
  I didn't really need to see the story to know this kind of stuff was 
going on. When I saw that Wendy Sherman was maybe chief negotiator, 
working with the Secretary of State, who was also part of the glorious 
deal that the Clinton administration, along with Madeleine Albright, 
negotiated with North Korea, basically--and this is my translation of 
the deal--but, okay.
  We are going to make sure that you have nuclear power, and we will 
make sure you have got nuclear fuel, you have got everything you need 
to make a nuclear weapon so long as you will sign an agreement saying 
that you are

[[Page 8541]]

not going to use it to create a nuclear weapon.
  You can't help but think of all the snickering that went on in North 
Korea, especially by Kim Jong-il: Wow, all they want is my signature 
and they will give us what we need to make a nuclear weapon? Sure. 
Where do I sign?
  I mean, it really reminded me of the story Jeff Foxworthy told about, 
before he made money as a comedian, he was down on his luck.
  A guy shows up at the door, says, ``I'm here to repossess your car.''
  ``Oh, please don't take my car. If you take my car, I can't make it 
to any of my gigs. I can't make money, and then I have no chance of 
paying for the car. So please, don't take my car.''
  ``I'm sorry, Mr. Foxworthy. I'm here, and I'm supposed to either 
leave with your car or with cash payment or with a check.''
  And Foxworthy basically said, ``A check? You'll take a check? I 
didn't know you'd take a check.''
  ``Yeah, how much do you want me to make it out for?''
  ``I'm glad to write you a check. Sure, you just tell me.'' And then 
he signs and gives the check and he keeps his car.
  That had to be the kind of mentality.
  You mean, you will give us everything we need in North Korea to have 
nuclear weapons, and all we have to do is sign and you're good with 
that? Wow. Okay. Let us sign.
  So they signed. We make sure they have what they need for nuclear 
weapons in the name of giving them nuclear power, and sure enough--very 
expectedly by some of us because it was such a stupid thing to do, the 
Clinton administration, with Wendy Sherman right there in the 
negotiations--we gave them the ability to create nuclear weapons, which 
they have done.
  The same way with Iran. Their leaders must have been laughing behind 
our backs, because we know what they were saying publicly while they 
were still continuing to say ``death to America,'' still calling us the 
``Great Satan,'' still saying they weren't going to abide by any 
agreement, that the United States would never get them to do what we 
wanted them to.
  Oh, so while we are telling the public we are not going to go along 
with any deal we sign, you are still willing to accept our signature on 
a deal? For sure, we will sign, because even Allah allows us to sign 
something that is a lie if, in the end, it furthers his kingdom, in 
their way of thinking.
  So if we had strong enough leadership in the United States Senate, 
what would happen would be there would be a call for a vote on the Iran 
treaty, which it is. It modifies other treaty provisions and, 
therefore, you can't do that unless it is a treaty, so it is a treaty. 
The Constitution says that requires two-thirds of the Senate to vote 
for the treaty in order for it to be ratified.
  The Senate took up this Corker bill, that turned the Constitution 
upside down, and said, no, we are going to say it takes two-thirds to 
vote against a deal; otherwise, it goes forward. Bob Corker is a really 
nice guy, but, my word, the damage that was done to the Middle East and 
to the world by the Senate taking an approach to the Iran treaty as if 
it wasn't really a treaty.
  There is still time. Take the vote in the Senate. I know that 60 
votes are required for cloture; but when Harry Reid felt like getting 
very liberal judges into Federal courts was more important than the 
cloture rule, he had 51 Democrats vote to set aside the cloture rule, 
and they put in the liberal judges they wanted over the Republican 
objection.
  This Iran treaty is going to eventually bring so much death and 
destruction to not only the Middle East, but, as Netanyahu has warned 
us, they are not preparing those intercontinental ballistic missiles 
for Israel. Those are for us. They can already hit Israel. They are for 
us.
  So what do we see in the news now, other than the fact that Iran--
well, this article says: ``Iran Spends $1.7 Billion in U.S. Taxpayer 
Funds to Boost Its Military.'' And it says in this June 9 article from 
Free Beacon, by Adam Kredo:
  ``The State Department is staying silent after Iranian officials 
disclosed that the Islamic Republic spent a recent payment by the 
United States of $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to expand and build-up 
its military, according to comments provided to the Washington Free 
Beacon.
  ``The Obama administration earlier this year paid Iran $1.7 billion 
from a U.S. taxpayer-funded account in order to settle decades-old 
legal disputes with the Islamic Republic.''
  Never mind that our American citizens that were taken hostage have 
never been allowed to collect properly on the damages done by this 
regime in Iran. Yes, it was Ayatollah Khomeini instead of Khamenei, but 
these same hoodlums that are running Iran, same type of thinking, were 
the ones this administration provided $1.7 billion. Instead of taking 
care of the American citizens that this radical Islamist regime in 
Iran, after they attacked our Embassy, took our hostages, held them for 
over a year, and we pay them?
  It is consistent, I understand, with the apology mentality that 
leaders in this country have. Maybe the world will be so much better if 
we are not a superpower, we cut our military to pre-World War II 
levels, which is happening, and then we give Iran, that hates us, says 
very clearly they are going to destroy us and our way of life and our 
freedoms, we give them $1.7 billion to build up their military while we 
are breaking down ours.
  I keep going back to the comment by a gentleman, African, named 
Ebenezer from Togo, when I was over there with the Mercy Ship, provided 
incredible health care to the people of Togo, Lome, there in West 
Africa. And at the end of my week there, he and other Africans--these 
were not African Americans. These were Africans. But they also happened 
to be fellow Christians.
  After a lovely meeting with them, Ebenezer spoke, and he said: Look. 
Basically, he said: We were so excited when you elected your first 
African American--or ``Black President,'' I believe he said--but since 
then, we have seen America get weaker and weaker. And the reason we all 
wanted to meet with you is because, you know, we're Christians. We know 
where we're going when we die. But our only hope in this life for a 
peaceful life is if America is strong, because as America gets weaker, 
we suffer more.
  We have seen that around the world. I have been to Nigeria and wept 
with mothers whose children were kidnapped by radical Islamists. They 
know that, as America has not responded to the radical Islam in Nigeria 
and helped them as we could, they have suffered mightily.

                              {time}  1400

  Yet, this administration, from what has come out of Nigeria, has 
said: Look, we will help you a little more. We will really be able to 
help you with Boko Haram, but you have to start paying for abortions, 
and you have to start having same-sex marriage. We don't care if it 
violates your religious convictions because that is what we want you to 
do.
  They are suffering there. They are suffering in all parts of Africa, 
many parts of Africa, because this administration has not been the 
force for good; it has been a force for weakness.
  Now this story from The Washington Post, Adam Goldman and Missy Ryan, 
June 8: ``At least 12 released Guantanamo detainees implicated in 
attacks on Americans.''
  The article says: ``The Obama administration believes that at least 
12 detainees''--and this is the Obama administration themselves. This 
isn't Louie Gohmert. This is ``the Obama administration believes that 
at least 12 detainees released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 
have launched attacks against U.S. or allied forces in Afghanistan, 
killing about a half-dozen Americans, according to current and former 
U.S. officials.''
  It goes on to explain how these former Guantanamo Bay detainees have 
been killing Americans in Afghanistan. This is no surprise to some of 
us who have been saying--when these people were involved in plotting 
and killing Americans before they were detained, and they have even 
made statements in detention that they

[[Page 8542]]

can't wait to get out so they can kill more Americans, at some point 
even if they say, Okay, I will sign where you want me to, just let me 
go, who is surprised when they go back on their word like North Korea, 
go back on their word like the radical Islamist leaders in Iran as 
distinguished with so many Iranians who want to be rid of the radical 
Islamist leaders? But who can be surprised that they would actually go 
back to killing Americans?
  That is why so many of us have been saying--a majority in this 
House--we are not going to let you close Guantanamo. We have made it 
against the law for him to release people unless certain things were 
done. And he violated that--the President did--when he made the deal 
for what is apparently a United States Army deserter, it certainly 
appears, and he let five of the worst murderers go without following 
the law that was set out for the President. Now it has been 
substantiated. We know people that have been released from Guantanamo 
have been killing Americans.
  So one thing we know also is when a nation's enemies see that that 
nation's strongest ally is pulling away from that enemy, it is 
provocative. They act against that nation. So when that nation is 
Israel, and the appearance to the world is that the United States is 
pulling back from our close alliance and friendship with Israel, is it 
any wonder that Israel's biggest and most hateful enemies would be 
moving against Israel?
  Terrorists have, once again, been inspired to go on killing sprees in 
Israel despite the Israelis doing everything they can to stop the 
carnage. As Prime Minister Netanyahu has said, I believe he even said 
it in this Chamber as he stood here facing Moses, our greatest known 
lawgiver of all time, standing, by the way--and I mentioned this to 
Prime Minister Netanyahu as he came down the aisle in May of 2011: 
Don't forget, while you are standing, speaking to us, our national 
motto will be right above your head.
  He started to look up, and then he didn't even have to look up 
because he obviously knew what was up there. He looked me in the eye 
and said: I had already thought about that.
  So as he stood here, In God We Trust above his head, looking at the 
greatest lawgiver in the history of mankind, Moses--most of us think he 
had 10 good commandments. I think our Supreme Court would probably say 
maybe five or six. But he warned us what was happening in the realm of 
radical Islam, what would be happening to Israel, and what would be 
happening to what they call the Great Satan, America. People in this 
administration did not listen.
  Americans have spoken out loudly during the primary season about this 
idea of refugees who cannot be properly vetted, because we don't know 
really who they are and where they are coming from. As FBI Director 
Comey testified in front of our Judiciary Committee:

       We will vet them, but we have got nothing to vet with. At 
     least in Iraq, we had Iraq's records on who had criminal 
     convictions, who had arrests, and who had things in their 
     record. We got no records from Syria and some of these other 
     places. We don't know who they are. We don't know how 
     criminal they are. We don't know how radical Islamist they 
     are.

  So many have been warning, and the American people have been warning 
through the primary season, and this article substantiates, from June 
10, ``Refugees Angry Over Skimpy Ramadan Meals Set Shelter on Fire, 
Police Say.''
  This is from FOX News. It says: ``A pair of North African refugees 
reportedly set a German shelter on fire Tuesday because they were angry 
the special Ramadan meals there weren't up to snuff.
  ``Investigators told the BBC that the men--who were not fasting at 
the shelter in Dusseldorf--had complained their lunch portions were too 
small.''
  Since they weren't observing the fast, they wanted more food.
  ``The fire burned the facility to the ground, causing $11 million in 
damages.''
  The 26-year-old North African told reporters:

       We had to do it. We had to burn it down so things would 
     change.

  So the question remains as more and more refugees are brought into 
this country against the will of the majority of the American people: 
How many facilities are going to be burned in America? How many more 
Americans are going to be killed on our own soil because the State 
Department and the Homeland Security Department are not properly 
vetting?
  Our friend--and, in my mind, hero--Phil Haney, who worked for the 
Department of Homeland Security, had thousands of entries that Janet 
Napolitano said: We tried to connect the dots.
  They deleted thousands of those dots. Why? Because this 
administration apparently doesn't want the public to know or the next 
administration to find out that many of the people they consult with 
and consort with have ties to terrorists. They deleted so many 
thousands of the dots in our system.
  We are at risk, and the FBI director--I respect him--James Comey, 
said Tuesday: ``The Islamic State group is currently the main threat 
facing the United States, both in its efforts to recruit fighters to 
join its members overseas and to have others carry out violence in 
America.''
  He said: ``The Islamic State group poses a third potential threat: a 
`terrorist diaspora' that he said will eventually flow out of Syria and 
Iraq and end up in Western Europe, where members will have easy access 
to the United States.
  ```There's three prongs to this ISIL threat,' Comey said. `The 
recruitment to travel, the recruitment to violence in place, and then 
what you saw a preview of in Brussels and in Paris--hardened fighters 
coming out, looking to kill people.'
  ``He said officials are `laser-focused on that.'''
  We know some officials like him are focused on that, but we also know 
there are others in the administration who are meeting with people that 
the Justice Department under President Bush made very clear in their 
pleadings were coconspirators in support for terrorism. That included 
the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR.
  Then we hear about our friends at the Council on American-Islamic 
Relations when we see the article that just this week CAIR is joking 
around about medicating Americans against Islamophobia.
  So that article from Virginia Hale, 9 June, Breitbart, talks about 
the jokes by the ``Muslim Brotherhood-linked Council on American-
Islamic Relations advises that anyone who harbors `intolerance' towards 
Muslims, or who believes large numbers of the religion's adherents 
could pose a danger to the U.S., to take anti-Islamophobia medication 
for their `unthinking bigotry.'''
  Is it really bigotry when you are not prejudiced against Muslims, you 
have many Muslim friends, but you know there is a part of Islamists and 
there is a part of Muslims who are radical Islamists who want to kill 
you, destroy your country, destroy Christianity, and destroy Jews--kill 
all of them?
  Is it really bigotry to say that we would really like to stop them 
before they destroy America, kill all Americans, kill all Christians in 
the world, and kill all Jews in the world, that we would really like to 
stop that? Is that really bigotry?
  Because I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that what that is--if you are an 
American--is love of country. We have had Americans--and I hope and 
pray still--well, no. I know we have Americans who still have what 
Jesus, who laid down His life for us, said is the greatest love anyone 
could ever have, that someone would lay down their life for others. He 
knew what that was. He did it. We have had so many Americans do that.
  But because of the lunacy that is occurring now in the 
administration, in the State Department, in homeland security, and in 
our military, Americans are being killed and are going to be killed.
  If that is not enough, this article from TownHall, Matt Vespa, June 
3: ``Syrian Refugees Pushed Sweden's Welfare State to the Brink of 
Collapse.''
  Very interesting. Osama bin Laden had an interesting statement at one

[[Page 8543]]

time about how very cheaply they were able to kill 3,000 Americans on 
9/11, but that the best part even beyond killing 3,000 Americans was 
that they cost us billions and maybe trillions of dollars with a very, 
very small investment to killing Americans on 9/11, and that if they 
will keep having projects like that, they can break us financially.
  It appears that with decisions in this administration, they are on 
their way to doing that.
  If that is not enough, this administration had the VA announce that 
the Department of Veterans Affairs has now proposed covering 
transition-related surgeries for transgender veterans in the near 
future under a proposed rule change. I know that the people making this 
decision don't want more veterans killing themselves. But as Dr. Paul 
McHugh, the former head of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, now retired, 
was still working with them--but one transgender gentleman that had had 
the sex change in his forties had told me Dr. McHugh knows more about 
transgender than anybody.
  Dr. McHugh has not made that claim. He is a very humble gentleman. He 
is a brilliant man. He cites in his article printed in The Wall Street 
Journal about a 2011 study at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden 
produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered 
evidence that should give advocates pause. He is talking about 
advocates for transgender agenda that is even being pushed here in 
Congress.

                              {time}  1415

  And he says: ``The long-term study--up to 30 years--followed 324 
people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that 
beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered 
began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, 
their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable 
nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no 
explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation 
reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide 
rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.''
  So for those in the VA who think a sex change operation is a good 
idea, Mr. Speaker, I hope they will look at the number of veterans that 
are killing themselves--higher rates than any time in previous eras of 
American history--and they will look at how many veterans are dying 
without the treatment they need, the veterans that are in long 
timelines to get the treatment they need to stay alive, and those who 
are dying waiting for the treatment they need.
  Do you really want to have 20 times more veterans killing themselves? 
Is that where you want the VA money being spent, so that we can have 20 
times the suicide rate that we currently have?
  ``Forbid it, Almighty God,'' as Patrick Henry once said.
  And now the administration wants to take away parents' choices of 
decisions for their kids, wants to take our choices away that the First 
Amendment assures us that we have the right to freedom of religion. 
There is no right to freedom from religion, but there is a right of 
freedom of religion; and those rights are being taken away, even as 
they were from the Little Sisters of the Poor.
  Do we want to allow these rights to continue to be taken at the cost 
of American lives, as we have seen resulting from people released at 
Guantanamo Bay, resulting from the ridiculous rules that are given to 
our military members? They are told they can't fire on people unless 
they are fired at and they can be assured no civilian will get hit.
  The rules of engagement are ridiculous under this administration. So 
many rules are costing American lives. It is time to bring it all home 
and to understand the words of Ebenezer in Africa that, when America 
gets weaker, people around the world suffer. They understand that 
around the world. Freedom-loving people understand around the world 
when America gets weaker, they suffer.
  America has been a gift to the world. Mr. Speaker, you know it, I 
know it, and I hope and pray more in the administration will realize it 
before it is too late.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________