[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. ____________________