Lindsey Graham

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. If I could give my best answer to that, No. 1--and my colleague from Arizona has been more right than wrong for the last 4 years about what was going to happen in the Mideast if we made the choices the President made--No. 1, my colleague said if we don't leave any troops behind in Iraq, all our gains will come unraveled. At the end of the day, the sectarian rise in violence was a direct result of, I think, American troops leaving Iraq. We had a good thing going after the surge. It did work. After drawing the redline against Assad and doing nothing about it, ISIL was able to fill in that vacuum. But here is the question: Given Iran's behavior today, what would they do with the extra money that would come into their coffers if sanctions were lifted? Let's say we got a nuclear deal tomorrow, and as a result of that deal sanctions would be lifted. Without a nuclear program, the Ayatollahs are wreaking havoc throughout the region. The pro-American government in Yemen has been taken down by Houthi militias funded by Iran. Assad in Syria has killed 220,000 of his own people and he is a puppet of Iran. John Kerry said that Assad was Iran's puppet. We have Lebanon, where Hezbollah is an agent of Iran that saved Assad and creating discontent all over the region. We have Shia militias on the ground in Iraq being led by the leader of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran. So here is the answer to my colleague's question. How could anybody believe the money we would give them for sanction relief would go to hospitals and schools? Don't you think the best evidence of what they would do with money is what they are doing today? The administration has never tied behavior to sanctions relief. So my big fear, Senator McCain, is that not only would the Arabs want a nuclear weapon of their own if we got a bad deal with Iran, but the money we gave the Iranians would go into their missile program to hit us, would go into further destabilizing the Middle East. Does my colleague agree that given Iran's behavior there is not one ounce of moderation in this regime? Does my colleague agree there are no moderates in charge of Iran; that when President Obama speaks to the Iranian people, urging them to argue for this deal, they have no voice; that the last time the Iranian people rose up to petition their government they got gunned down? Does my colleague agree with me that President Obama has no idea what is going on inside Iran and no understanding what this regime is up to with the money they already have?

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I raise an issue before the body. I don't know how accurate the press reports are, but apparently the Chief of Staff of President Obama, Mr. McDonough, today spoke in town to a group called J Street, which is an organization supportive of the United States-Israel relationship, apparently. Here is what he allegedly said. He basically said that an occupation that has lasted more than 50 years must end. So the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States, speaking in Washington today, called the Israeli presence in the West Bank an occupation. The Chief of Staff of the President of the United States is looking at a world completely different than the one I am viewing. I ask Mr. McDonough and President Obama: Don't you realize the last time Israel withdrew in the Mideast--a Palestinian-controlled territory--was the withdrawal from Gaza and that when Israel voluntarily left Gaza, Hamas took over Gaza? They are a terrorist organization and they fired up to 10,000 rockets from Gaza into Israel. Today, Israel has a presence in the West Bank. Today, Israel is surrounded by radical Islamists, unlike at any time I can remember. The language used by the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States is exactly what Hamas uses. So now our administration is taking up the language of a terrorist organization to describe our friends in Israel. Here is a question to the American people: Would you withdraw from the West Bank, given the situation that exists today on the ground between the Israelis and the rest of the region? Would you at this moment in Israel's history completely withdraw from the West Bank, given the experience in Gaza? Does anybody on the left think that is a good idea? Does anybody in Israeli politics agree with the characterization of the Chief of Staff of President Obama? Does Mr. Herzog or anyone else in opposition to Prime Minister Netanyahu agree with this characterization? Is your country occupying the West Bank or are you there to make sure the West Bank doesn't turn into Gaza? I talked with the Prime Minister Saturday and I congratulated him on a decisive victory and I look forward to working with him. He told me very clearly that he believes a two-state solution is not possible as long as the Palestinian Authority embraces Hamas, which controls the Gaza strip and is a terrorist organization by any reasonable definition. With whom do you make peace, Mr. President? What kind of deal can you make when almost half the Palestinian people are in the hands of a terrorist organization who vow to destroy you every day? What kind of deal is that? So do I want a two-state solution? Yes, I would like a two-state solution, where the Palestinians recognize the right of Israel to exist and they have the ability to chart their own destiny. They are not anywhere near there. The Palestinian community is broken into two parts. The Hamas terrorist organization controls the essential part of the Palestinian community. They will not recognize Israel's right to exist. They are using the territory they hold as a launching pad for attacks against Israel routinely. These are the people who launch rockets from schoolyards and apartment buildings trying to blame Israel for being the bad guy when they respond. All I can say is when I thought it couldn't get worse, it has. When I thought we couldn't reach a new low in terms of this White House's view of the Mideast, we found a way to reach a new low. Today, the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States used language to describe Israel that has been reserved for terrorist organizations up until now. So, Mr. McDonough, President Obama, you are completely delusional about the world as it is. You are negotiating with an Iranian regime, and in the President's New Year's greeting he called on the Iranian people to speak out in support of a nuclear deal. Mr. President, don't you understand that in Iran you can't speak out; that if you do speak out and petition your government you can get shot or put in jail? You don't understand that? You are talking to people as if they have a voice. You are talking about the regime as if they are some kind of rational actor. In that same New Year's greeting, the President complimented the regime, headed up by the Ayatollahs, as being cooperative in terms of their nuclear negotiations with the P5+1. What the President didn't mention is that this very regime that is spreading terror, unlike at any time in recent memory, is involved in the toppling of four Arab capitals. They are wreaking havoc on the neighborhood. As we are negotiating on their nuclear deal, they are still the largest state sponsor of terrorism. They called for death to America 2 days ago. So I say to the Obama administration: Wake up and change your policies before you set the whole world on fire. Please watch your language because our best ally in the region, the State of Israel, does not deserve the label of ``occupier,'' given the facts on the ground, and they do not deserve to hear from the Chief of Staff of the President of the United States language that is usually reserved for a terrorist organization. So when I thought it couldn't get any worse, it has. Let me put the Obama administration on notice. You may not like the fact that Prime Minister Netanyahu won, but he did, and here is what you need to understand. If you are recalculating the administration's support for Israel in terms of how you handle resolutions in the United Nations, you need to understand that Congress will recalculate how we relate to the United Nations if you stand on the sidelines and let the U.N. take over the peace process. There will be a bipartisan, violent backlash in this body if the Obama administration does not veto a U.N. resolution defining the peace process in the Security Council, avoiding direct negotiations between the parties. I am here to say that one of the casualties of a haphazard foreign policy could be the relationship between the United Nations and the Congress. I promise there is bipartisan support in this body for two things: to stand firmly with Israel and not to allow the U.N. Security Council to take over the peace process in defining the terms of a deal. Secondly, if there is a deal with the Iranians over their nuclear program, if this administration takes that deal to the U.N. Security Council, bypassing Congress and not coming to us first, there will become a great backlash regarding that move. So I say to the Obama administration: Israel is not the problem. The Israeli people have not killed one American soldier. The Israeli people are in a dispute about their survival with the Palestinian people. The Israeli people gave land to the Palestinians, and in return they got 10,000 rockets, and you want them to do it again. Can't you understand why Israel may not want to withdraw from the West Bank given the history of Gaza? If you can't, you are completely blind to the world as it is, and your hatred and your disgust and your disdain for the Prime Minister has clouded your judgment. So to our friends in Israel I say: There can only be one Commander in Chief, and that is the way it should be. But there are 535 of us in the House and the Senate and we do have your back. We will not sit on the sidelines and watch this rhetoric enacted in a manner that would put you at risk beyond what you already are in terms of risk. This is a low point for me; that an administration, the Chief of Staff of an American President, would use this language, but it fits into an overall pattern that I think is very destructive. So I say to President Obama and Mr. McDonough: Your foreign policy is not working. If you don't get that, then God help us all because what you are doing in the Mideast is not working. You are making everything worse, and now you have added fuel to the fire. I hope there will be some self-correction at the White House; that we will not take this rhetoric any further than we have today; that there will be a reevaluation of whether it is appropriate to call the Israeli people occupiers, given the facts on the ground. Only time will tell. I do understand this, without any hesitation. There are many of us in this body who will not put up with this. We will push back. Israel has not killed one U.S. soldier. Israel hasn't toppled any of their neighbors. Israel doesn't chant ``Death to America.'' You may not like the outcome of the Israeli election, but it was up to the Israeli people to decide, and they have decided. All of us got into this body the same way--people at home voted for us. Under our Constitution, we have an equal voice to that of the President in terms of checks and balances. Even though he is the leader of America's foreign policy and the Commander in Chief, we do have the right to speak on such matters. So here is my voice, and I think I speak for many on both sides of the aisle when I say to the Israeli people: Do what you have to do to defend the Jewish State. To the President of the United States and Mr. McDonough: The language you used today is very unhelpful and, quite frankly, disconnected from reality. I will end with this. Would any Member of this body, if they were in Israeli leadership, withdraw from the West Bank, given what is going on in the region? Would any Member of this body be as restrained in responding to a rocket attack coming from a neighbor as Israel has been restrained? What would we do if some terrorist organization next door to us launched a rocket trying to kill our children? Would we be as restrained as our Israeli friends? I doubt it. I am asking this body to walk a mile in the shoes of the Israeli people and understand why this statement is so offensive and has usually been reserved by the leader of the free world to describe terrorist organizations. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, Sanders amendment No. 323 is pending, and Senators should expect a vote in relation to that amendment at 12 noon tomorrow, with at least one additional rollcall vote in the stack before lunch. I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate resumes consideration of S. Con. Res. 11 tomorrow morning, there be 38 hours of debate time remaining.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, just to sum it up, our foreign policy is in a free-for-all. It is incompetent at its core. No one can feel good about Shia-led groups going into Tikrit with Iranian command and control. If we know anything about Iraq, the hope for Iraq is for the Sunnis, the Shias, and the Kurds to accommodate each other's interests and to work together. So when we see a Shia-led effort against, as the Senator from Arizona said, the Sunni stronghold, with an Iranian commander on the ground who was responsible for killing Americans, and we think that is a good day for us, that is nuts. That is a bad day for America. Let's talk a little bit about the Iranian nuclear negotiations. I did not sign Senator Cotton's letter until the President threatened to veto congressional legislation to make sure that we would have a say about relieving the sanctions we created. When President Obama told the Congress--a bipartisan group was being formed to make sure that Congress would have a say about relieving the sanctions that were created--that ``I will veto your efforts to have a say,'' then all bets were off at that point for me. So I want the Iranians to know, in case they are listening, the Obama administration, the P5+1, the U.N., cannot relieve congressional sanctions without our approval. I don't know what kind of system they have in Iran; I am pretty well sure it is not Democratic. To President Obama: When you indicated that the letter that was written--the open letter to the Ayatollahs about Congress's insistence that we have a say about sanctions we are creating--you said: You have empowered the hard-liners. All I can say is that if the President of the United States believes there is a hard line and moderate split in Iran, I want to look at the deal now more than ever. Please name the moderate elements who are in the Government in Iran. And if these people are moderate, God forbid the hard-liners ever get in charge. The idea that there is a split is ridiculous. The President of Iran, the Foreign Minister of Iran are playing the oldest game in the Mideast. The moderates were gunned down in 2009. I can show my colleagues a moderate who was a young lady who was killed in the streets. Every moderate voice was crushed by force of arms, and our President in 2009 sat on the sidelines because he didn't want to disrupt his chance to reach an agreement with the Ayatollahs. Mr. President: You scare me when you say you believe there is a moderate element in charge of Iran. Look what they are doing as you negotiate regarding their nuclear ambitions. They have taken down a pro-American government in Yemen that allowed us a platform to watch and attack Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula, the terrorist organization responsible for the terrorist attack. The Houthis, an Iranian-backed group within Yemen, was able to take down the government that we were working with in providing us counterterrorism platforms. The Iranians are supporting Assad, who has killed 220,000 of his own people, and the instability from Assad's brutality is putting the King of Jordan and everyone else at risk. Over 1 million Syrians have left Syria to go to Lebanon and Jordan. That is not a moderate regime. Moderate regimes do not support insurgencies that, through the force of arm, take down elected governments. Hezbollah is not a moderate voice in Lebanon. They are supported by the Iranians. They have had a record of attacking Israel and killing us for decades. So Iran's support of Hezbollah, of the Houthis, and of Assad--that is not what moderate people do. Now, in Iraq itself, the Shia militia who are roaming around Iraq are committing war crimes as I speak. So you are completely disconnected from the behavior of the people you are negotiating with, and you don't understand the Iranians at all. You are dangerously in denial or delusional about the threats we face and whom we are dealing with. So I am glad we wrote the letter to bring some certainty to the process. If the President of the United States negotiates a deal with Iran and that deal includes lifting the congressional sanctions and he does it without our input, he will change a balance of power that has existed for hundreds of years in this country. We created congressional sanctions by a 100-0 vote over your objection. We are not going to let you tell us we have no voice in lifting the sanctions we created. We are not going to let the United Nations lift sanctions we created. The Iranians need to understand the following: If there is a deal between the P5+1 and they are telling you congressional sanctions will be lifted by signing the deal, that is not accurate. They won't be lifted unless we agree. I would vote to lift sanctions if I thought we had a good deal. I would vote against a bad deal because a bad deal will start a new arms race in the Middle East. I will sum this up. I have never been more worried than I am today with what is happening in the Middle East. You have people in our military celebrate Iranian ground activity in Iraq that will expand sectarian conflict. When the Iranians are marching on Tikrit, that is not a sign that Iraq is coming together. To anybody on the American side who believes that is a good idea, what movie have been you been watching? To the President of the United States: We are going to insist to have a say about sanctions we created before you can negotiate their relief. I am sorry you may not like that. You may find this inconvenient, but we have a say, too. The bill we are talking about only deals with the sanctions we created. So I hope my Democratic colleagues who are so disappointed will understand why we, at least on this side, are pretty offended at the idea that the President can negotiate away sanctions we created without an input. You should be equally worried. The Israelis and the Arabs have told us one thing: Iran is the most destabilizing force in the Middle East. This President and this administration negotiate a nuclear deal without saying a word about the havoc Iran is creating on the ground. If I were President, I would tell the Iranians we are not going to talk to you anymore about your nuclear ambitions until you stop destabilizing the region and invading your neighbors. We are not going to talk to you about your nuclear ambitions until you stop building ICBMs that can threaten us, until you stop sponsoring terrorist organizations. But not only has the President remained silent about Iran's wreaking havoc throughout the region, he is negotiating a deal-- at least from what I have been able to find out about it--that is a North Korea in the making, and he wants us to be silent. To my Democratic colleagues and the President, we are not going to be silenced. We are going have a say. We are going to have a vote. I hope in a bipartisan fashion, we will vote a good deal in and a bad deal down. Under the construct, you have to get 60 votes to disapprove the deal, so Republicans alone cannot kill it. If it is a good deal, we will know it. It will be a deal that gives the Iranians what they say they want, a peaceful nuclear power program. A bad deal is a deal that will allow them to have a nuclear weapon one day. The only thing between a nuclear weapon, us, and Israel is the United Nations. Forget that. That is what we had in North Korea.

Mr. GRAHAM. All I can say is to the soldiers and to the military personnel who participated in the Iraq fight, you did your job. President Bush made mistakes. To his credit, he adjusted. He made a lot of mistakes upfront, but he did adjust because the surge did work. President Obama was dealt a pretty good hand when it came to Iraq. Things were better on the security front. Economic and political progress was well noted. His decision not to leave a residual force behind has come back to haunt us, Iraq, and the entire region. It was his decision. We tried to blame the Iraqis. That is just rewriting the history. When he decided to turn down the entire recommendation of his national security team--the national security team's entire recommendation--about doing a no-fly zone and helping the Free Syrian Army 3 years ago, everything Senator McCain said about that decision has come true. Radical Islamists filled in that vacuum. What you see in the Middle East is as a result of bad policy choices, but what you see today is the beginning of the worst decision, which would be a bad deal with Iran in dealing Congress out. To the American people, here is one thing I promise you. We and the Congress in a bipartisan fashion will make sure that any deal, if there is one, negotiating with the Iranians, will come to this body to be openly debated so you will know what is in it, and every Member of this Senate is going to take a vote as to whether it is good enough to lift congressional sanctions that we created. I promise we are not going to allow the most historic decision any President will make any time soon to go without checks and balances. It will come to this body. We will have a vote. I promise you this: If this administration believes there is a hard-line moderate split between those who govern Iran, it should scare you because it scares me. Given what Senator McCain has described, do you really believe there is a moderate element in Iran? I hope we can reach a diplomatic conclusion to the Iranian nuclear ambitions. They have been lying about their nuclear program for 20 years. I would like to see a good deal, but I will insist on voting on a deal that leads to congressional sanctions. To the Germans, our friends in Germany, the Foreign Minister of Germany said the letter empowered the Iranians. With all due respect to our German allies, that is the most ridiculous statement I think I have ever heard. Requiring a deal between the Iranians and involving congressional sanctions to come back to the Congress should not embolden anybody. I don't know if the deal you are negotiating goes to the Parliament--the Bundestag in Germany--but we do things a certain way. The efforts of the French and the Germans to discipline Putin, how well has that turned out? We have a group of nations trying to deal with the most thuggish regime in the world acting like the Keystone Kops, in my view.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. I think the legislation the Senator from North Dakota described is the most important thing we will do this year. The sanctions against Iran, congressionally created, were 100 to 0. Every Member of the Senate believed the Iranians needed to be sanctioned for the mischief they have created and for their nuclear ambitions to stop their march toward a nuclear weapon. The administration objected, but 100 Members of this body voted for those sanctions. If there is a deal with the Iranians, and I hope there is a good deal, the diplomatic solution to this problem is preferred by everyone. It is a simple concept. Before the sanctions Congress created can be lifted, Congress has to look at the deal and have a say. Under the 1, 2, 3 sections of the Atomic Energy Act there is a provision that allows for Congress to approve commercial nuclear deals between the United States and another country when nuclear technology is shared. We have done that 24 times, but Congress had to approve nuclear deals between the United States and other nations, including Russia, China, Argentina, and that rogue country called Canada. I can't imagine wanting to look at a deal with Canada but not wanting to take a look at a deal with Iran. This bipartisan legislation is very simple. Any deal negotiated with the P5+1 will come to the Senate and the House to be disapproved--not approved. Now I did that to accommodate my Democratic colleagues. There is concern that with 54 Republicans that we hate Obama so much we would just reject the deal because we don't like him. Well, I am not in that camp. I don't like President Obama's foreign policy, but I hope I am smart enough to understand that a good deal is a blessing. I would like to think I have some track record of doing what I think is best for the country. So if it is a good deal, Israel and the Arabs will tell us, and I will gladly vote to approve it. But the construct, I say to Senator Hoeven, is that to disapprove the deal, you have to get 60 votes. That means some Democratic colleagues have to join with Republicans to say this is not good enough, go back and try again. It is not that we want to end negotiations; we don't want to legitimize an industrial-strength nuclear program that is on the verge of a breakout such as North Korea in the making. We are not going to sit on the sidelines where a deal is negotiated where they have thousands of centrifuges and the only thing between them and a nuclear breakout is the United Nations. That did not work well in North Korea. We are not going to do that again. So we are going to look at the deal. I think every Senator should want to look at the deal, and it allows your constituents to have a say. Not one person is having any input regarding the P5+1 talks. But if it comes back to the Congress, you have a person you can call. You can pick up the phone and call your Member of the House and Senate. You can say something about the deal because you are affected. It is not just Israel that is in the crosshairs of these people, it is us, the United States. I worry they would share the technology with a terrorist organization and it would work its way here. Name one weapon they developed that they haven't shared with terrorists. This bipartisan approach is sound. It is consistent with what we have done 24 different times with other nations, and I hope we can have an overwhelming vote here soon. Do your best job. Let us look at it. If it is a good deal, we will vote yes, and if it is a bad deal we will vote no, and try harder to get another deal.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I appreciate being on the floor with the Senator from North Dakota who has been very involved in trying to secure America against a variety of threats. I will get to the heart of the matter. Some people feel the Prime Minister should not be here at this time because in a couple weeks there will be an election in Israel. They have a parliamentary system. They do things differently--they vote for parties, not people--and they are having a real contest over there about who should be in charge and what coalitions will lead Israel. I have a very simple comment: That is for Israelis to decide. They decide who they want to run their country. They can vote for the party or groups of people who they think best represent their view of Israel. That is their business, not mine. My business is to try to find out what is best for America when it comes to defending our Nation. That is why all of us are on the floor today. I don't think I can adequately do my job if I don't hear from the Prime Minister of Israel, if he is willing to talk to me. Some people may be able to do that. God bless you. If someone feels as though now is the time to boycott this speech, if they want to send a message about politics in Israel, be my guest. I am going to be at this speech to try to learn what to do regarding America and Israel concerning the nuclear threat. Why do I think it is important for me to be there? I can't think of a better voice to tell me what would happen in the region if we get a bad deal with the Iranians. Israel is in the crosshairs of the Iranian ayatollahs--has been for decades--threatening to destroy the State of Israel. I want to hear from the people on the ground, Israel in particular, as to what a good deal would look like and what a bad deal would look like. I want to hear from the Prime Minister of Israel the consequences of a bad deal. As to me, I do not trust this administration to negotiate a good deal, but maybe I am wrong; and the best way to find out is for Congress to look at the deal. If it is a good deal, I will vote for it, because the Arabs and Israelis will tell us if this is something we can live with. At the end of the day a good deal is a blessing for the world, and a bad deal is a nightmare. (Mr. COTTON assumed the Chair.) So to the good Senator from North Dakota, I not only welcome the Prime Minister of Israel to speak to Congress, I am looking forward to it, because I hope to learn something that would make me a better Senator regarding our own national security. The only thing I can tell the American people without any hesitation--ISIL is a threat to us, a threat to the region. They are the most barbaric terrorist organization roaming the globe today. They represent a direct threat to our homeland. But the threat they represent is a distant second to Iran having a nuclear weapon. That ought to tell you a lot about how I feel. If I can watch TV, as you do every night, and see what ISIL is doing to Christians and others throughout the region and say that is secondary to Iran, I hope that means something. It means a lot to me. Because if Iranians get a nuclear weapon, then every Arab in the region who can afford one is going to get a nuclear weapon, and we are on our way to Armageddon. North Korea in the making is what I worry about. The same people who are negotiating this deal were negotiating the North Korean deal. Congress was absent. Now it is time for Congress to be involved and say whether this is a good deal. I have legislation with Senator Corker and six Democrats and six Republicans asking that Congress review any deal, and I would be curious to see what the Prime Minister thinks about that. So in summary, this would be the most important decision we make as a body, how to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat. This will be the most important issue I will deal with as a U.S. Senator, and I have been here almost 20 years. The consequence of a bad deal is an absolute nightmare. If you were to relieve the sanctions tomorrow and gave the Iranians the money they were due under sanction relief, do you think they would build schools and hospitals or would they continue to pour money into their military to disrupt the region and continue to build ICBMs? As I speak, without a nuclear weapon Iran is leading an offensive today in Iraq. And I know the Presiding Officer of the Senate was a ranger, an infantryman in Iraq. Could you ever imagine in your wildest dreams that the Iraqi security forces are marrying up with Shia militia and Suleimani, the head of the Revolutionary Guard is on the ground in Iraq leading the efforts, and we are sitting on the sidelines? You talk about a screwed-up foreign policy. Are we going to let eight guys negotiate with Iran--the people who brought you Iraq and Syria and the mess you see in the region? You feel good enough about them doing a deal with the Iranians that you don't even look at the deal yourself? This is beyond screwed up, and the worst is yet to come. A bad deal. But, maybe the best is yet to come, a good deal. I don't know. But I want to hear what Israel believes a good deal would look like. And if you don't want to hear that, then, boy, we are on different planets as to the consequences of what is going on in the world today. With that, I would ask a question to the Senator from New Hampshire, who has been watching the Iranian behavior on the ground throughout the Middle East and the missile program in particular, and ask her what are her concerns about Iran with extra money coming into the coffers in sanction relief?

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. I thank the Senator from Arizona. What I would like the body to recognize is that our Presiding Officer, who just left, Senator Cotton, was an infantry officer in Iraq, and I can't imagine how he must feel. Our current Presiding Officer is a reservist in the Marine Corps who has served in harm's way in battlefield areas, and he was a commander in the Marine Corps. It is great to have people in the Senate who have worn the uniform and they understand what is at stake here. Senator McCain and I have tried to be consistent, if nothing else, about this situation. Here is the first question America has to answer: Is this someone else's war? I have heard very prominent commentators on cable television say: I am tired of fighting other people's wars. Does ISIL represent a threat to our homeland? I think it does. And more importantly, they indicate they mean to hit us here. The head of ISIL, the Islamic State and the Levant is what I want to call it, served time in a military prison in Camp Bucca in Iraq, where I did some reserve duty, and when he was released from the camp and turned over to the Iraqis he told the colonel in charge of his release: I will see you in New York. They are recruiting foreign fighters coming in by the thousands. They hold passports that would allow them to go to Europe and come back to our country, and their goal is not only to purify their religion, to kill or convert every Christian they find, but also to attack us. So to those who say this is not our fight, I think you are making a huge mistake, as we did before 9/11. Regional forces have to be part of the mix. The goal to degrade and destroy ISIL is the right goal. The strategy will fail as currently being considered unless we visit this issue. As Senator McCain said, what you see on this map is not an accident. It is a predictable outcome of three things. The President's decision in 2011 not to leave a residual force behind in Iraq to secure our gains has come back to haunt us. The military command infrastructure of this country advised a minimum of 10,000 troops to be left behind as a residual force. I visited Baghdad, along with Senators McCain and Lieberman, to try to persuade the Iraqi political leadership to enter into an agreement to allow us to have a residual force. Prime Minister Maliki said: I am willing to do it if the other groups in Iraq are willing to do it. They were all willing to do it. He asked me: How many troops are you talking about? I turned to our ambassador and our commander at the time, and they tell him and me: We are still working on that. Press reports simultaneously were suggesting the White House, led by the Vice President, by the way, was driving the residual force to below 3,000--a number incapable of making a difference. So when the President of the United States says he was willing to leave a residual force behind, that is not accurate. In a debate with Governor Romney, Governor Romney suggested he would support a residual force of 10,000, as President Obama was contemplating, and President Obama interrupted him and said: No, I am not contemplating that. He held our departure in Iraq as the fulfillment of a campaign promise. He said: We can leave with our heads held high. We have accomplished our task. Here is what I said on April 3, 2011: If we're not smart enough to work with the Iraqis to have 10,000 to 15,000 American troops in Iraq in 2012, Iraq could go to hell. I'm urging the Obama administration to work with the Maliki administration in Iraq to make sure we have enough troops--10,000 to 15,000--beginning in 2012 to secure the gains we have achieved. This is a defining moment in the future of Iraq, and in my view they are going down the wrong road in Iraq. I am referring there to the Obama administration when I say ``they are going down the wrong road.'' No voice was louder than that of Senator McCain. Senator McCain advocated, above all others, the surge when Iraq was slipping away under the Bush administration. When Senator McCain told President Bush his strategy was not working, President Bush, to his great credit, adjusted his strategy. Senator McCain, 3 years ago, was the leading voice in this country to argue for a no-fly zone in Syria so that Assad, who was on the ropes, could be taken down, and to train a Free Syrian Army at a time when it really would have mattered. The President ignored the advice not only of Senator McCain and myself but his entire national security team. So the President got the answer he wanted in Iraq. He pulled the plug on troops. And what we hoped wouldn't happen did happen. When he said no to a no-fly zone and the training of a Free Syrian Army, the vacuum that had been created in Syria was filled by ISIL. ISIL is a direct result of Al Qaeda in Iraq, which was on its knees in 2010, being able to come back because we withdrew troops and we allowed a safe haven to be formed in Syria. So, President Obama, this map is the result of bad policy choices on your part, and you are doubling down on bad policy choices. The third thing that was a huge mistake is drawing a redline when Assad used chemical weapons against his own people and virtually doing nothing about it. I am glad the chemical weapons have been taken out of Syria--at least we think all of them have been taken out--but 220,000 Syrians have been killed with initial forces by Assad, and Assad is stronger than ever. He is nowhere near going or leaving. Between Assad and ISIL, they represent the dominant military force inside Syria. Syria is truly hell on Earth, and all of this is going to come back to haunt us here at home. So the reason we are here on the floor today is to learn from the past. I have made mistakes. Everybody has made mistakes. But the key is to adjust when you make mistakes. The strategy President Obama is employing to degrade and destroy ISIL will fail, and let me tell you why. If you could liberate Mosul with the Iraqi security forces and the Kurds, we are going to need more than 3,000 U.S. forces to accomplish that task, because they do not have the capability that our military possesses to ensure victory. Once you liberate Mosul, you have to hold and build Mosul. Anbar Province has yet to be liberated. We have to convince the Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar to disassociate with ISIL and join us, and they are not going to do that unless we are part of a team on the ground. They don't trust the Iraqi security forces that are mainly Shia. So unless we get more capacity on the ground to ensure success, we will fail in Iraq. But Syria is the weak link in the chain.

Mr. GRAHAM. In conclusion, in 1998 we were a signatory to Budapest memorandum that asked the Ukrainian people to give up over 2,000 nuclear weapons housed on their soil in return for a guarantee of their sovereignty.

Mr. GRAHAM. Exactly. The Russians were a signatory to that Budapest memorandum. Clearly, the Russians have stepped all over it, and we are not doing anything. So in the future, would you give up your nuclear weapons relying on a promise by the United States? This is important because we want to deter Iran from trying to get a nuclear weapon. I think this emboldens them to get a nuclear weapon. As to radical Islam, it is hard to defeat an enemy if you don't understand what motivates them. The Nazis did not want just the German-speaking regions surrounding Germany. It wasn't about the Sudetenland. It wasn't about the Rheinland. It wasn't about the issues Hitler claimed at the time. He wrote a book telling us what he wanted to do. People should have read the book. It was about creating a master race to govern other races. The Aryan race would be the dominant race on the planet--with some people not worthy of living, such as the Jews, and others would be slaves. When we listen to what ISIL is saying and what motivates them, they want a master religion for the world, not a master race. If you are a Christian, you can pay a tax and convert or die. If you are a Muslim outside of their view of the faith, you just die. If you are an agnostic, you die. If you are a libertarian, you die. If you are an American--Republican or Democrat; they could care less--you die. They are taught by their interpretation of the Koran literally to kill all that stands in their way of the caliphate. We can close Gitmo tomorrow. We could throw the Palestinians under the bus or give the Palestinians everything they want and throw Israel under the bus. It wouldn't matter. We didn't bring this war on ourselves. These people are motivated by religious doctrine not widely accepted in the faith. But that doctrine requires them to kill everything in their path and to turn the world into a religion where they dominate, and there is no alternative to their religion. That may sound crazy to you. It sounds a little crazy to me. Hitler is crazy to me. I can't explain why somebody wants to kill all the Jews. I can't explain why somebody believes that one race should rule the world and everybody else be under their boot. I can't explain what makes these people tick. I can only tell you what they do and why they do it. There is no appeasement with radical Islam, any more than there would be an appeasement with Hitler. We tried that in the 1930s, and 50 million people got killed. So here is our choice: Face the enemy as it is, degrade and destroy in a way that will work; or accept the fact that they are coming here, not to conquer America--that is not going to happen--but to hit us hard and break our will so they can have that part of the world for which they have been longing for over 1,000 years. Here is what I would say to America. Every time we have chosen to sit on the sidelines and watch other people suffer and did nothing about it, it wound up hurting us too. If you think we can live in a world where Christians over there are being raped, tortured, and crucified, and it won't affect Christians here, you are kidding yourself. If you think you can allow a force this evil to go unchecked because it is over there and it won't affect us here, you are making the mistake of a lifetime. My biggest fear is that radical Islam--which is exactly what it is-- will get a weapon of mass destruction one day and do a lot of harm to us here. Every day that goes by over there, that they get stronger, the more exposed we are here. Finally, on 9/11, 3,000 Americans died only because they didn't have the ability to kill more. If they could have killed 3 million of us, they would have. Every day we let this problem grow unchecked they are closer to having the technology to kill millions of people here and elsewhere. So the sooner we deal with this, the safer we will be.

Mr. GRAHAM. Right. The Iraqi security forces have crumbled. The most dominant power on the ground is the Shia militia, backed by Iran and the Kurds in the north. And by the way, the aid we are providing to the Kurds never gets up to Erbil, and we need to fix that. Iran has inordinate influence in Baghdad. So to get the Sunni tribes to pull off of ISIL, they have to believe that Baghdad is going to be a better venue for them in terms of their political grievances, but they also need to see Americans on the ground to make sure this thing will work. They are not going to pull off ISIL unless we are there. They do not trust the Iraqi security forces. As to Syria, Syria is the biggest problem of all. That is where most of ISIL resides. That is where their leadership resides. That is where they have the largest number of fighters. There is no ground game in Syria. There is no Kurdish presence that has the capability to dislodge ISIL. The Free Syrian Army are being killed as fast as we can train them. Here is the flaw. The goal is to train the Free Syrian Army's young men throughout the region and send them into Syria to destroy ISIL. The problem with that is the moment we send them into Syria to defeat ISIL, Assad will attack them because he knows one day they will turn on him. So we have asked the question, under the authorization to use military force that is being sent over from the White House, could we stop an air attack by Assad's forces so they will not kill the people we train to fight ISIL, and they said no. So we are training people to go into Syria to fight ISIL who will be slaughtered by Assad if we do not have the ability under this authorization to protect the people we train. Senator McCain said this over and over again. That is immoral and militarily unsound. There is no strategy indeed to deal with Syria that has any chance of success. And if we don't get Syria right, we can't hold the gains we make in Iraq. So the President, after all these years, with 220,000 people being killed, having the largest terrorist army in the history of terrorism occupying a space the size of Indiana, with 30,000 to 50,000 fighters, depending on who you believe, still hasn't come to grips with a strategy that will protect this nation. He doesn't understand the mistakes he has been making for the last 3 or 4 years. He is not self- correcting. He is perpetuating what I think is a military fraud. The longer it takes to destroy ISIL, the more exposed we are here. And at the end of the day, the Iranians are sizing us up and they see us as a paper tiger. The last thing I would say about Ukraine is that Russia has invaded Ukraine. When they say they have no weapons inside Ukraine, when they say they have no troops, they are liars. Russia has dismembered their neighbor, Ukraine. We in the Western world have sat on the sidelines and watched this happen. They have trampled all over the Budapest memorandum, where we persuaded Ukrainians to give up their nuclear weapons in the late 1990s and we would guarantee their sovereignty. When they need us to provide defensive weapons, we are absolutely absent at their time of dire need. The Iranians are watching our response to Putin. How could they feel we are serious about stopping their nuclear program when we seem not to be serious about anything else? The reason we will not be more aggressive in Syria is because President Obama doesn't want to deal with Assad, who is a puppet of Iran. He doesn't want to jeopardize the negotiations we have ongoing with the Iranians regarding their nuclear ambitions. His desire to get a deal with Iran is preventing us from degrading and destroying ISIL, and we will pay a heavy price for these mistakes. How would my colleague sum up where we are?

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAHAM. I would like to share some thoughts about the debate we are having on the Keystone Pipeline, climate change, and how the two intersect. The concept that climate change is real, I completely understand and accept. To the point of how much man is contributing, I don't know, but it does make sense that manmade emissions are contributing, and the global warming effect, the greenhouse gas effect, seems to me scientifically sound. The problem is how we fix this globally is going to require more than just the United States to be involved. This deal with China where they have to do nothing for 20 years is probably not exactly where I want to be. The bottom line is that the solutions coming from our Democratic friends about how to deal with greenhouse gas emissions turn our economy upside down and do more damage to the economy and to the welfare of the American people than it will in terms of helping the environment. Our liberal friends give us a false choice. You have to reorganize the economy in a draconian fashion to help the environment. Some people on my side believe that the whole climate change experience is scientifically unsound. I am not a scientist, but I have heard enough regarding those who make it their life's work to be convinced that manmade emissions are causing the problem and contribute to the overall warming of the planet. About the Keystone Pipeline, my Democratic friends are making an argument that is just absolutely false. The product that Canada will produce from the oil sands is going to be used by us, the world community through the gulf port or by China. Those who believe denying the building of the pipeline protects the planet from fossil fuels do not understand what Canada is about to do. Canada is going to sell the product to somebody. The question for us is, Would we benefit from building a pipeline that will create American jobs and help us put oil into that pipeline within the United States in a joint venture with Canada or we will say no to the Canadians and they will go build a pipeline and send it to China? The product is going to be burned. It is going to be used. The only question for this Congress is, Do we want the pipeline to go West and export the product to China or do we want to build the pipeline so we will have more product from a friend rather than enemies? Dirty oil is oil that comes from people who hate your guts. The sulfur content of oil sands product is higher than Mideast sweet crude but no different than the oil we find off the coast of California. The actual carbon content is no different than the oil we find off the coast of California. To lock this country and the world into buying more Mideast product seems to me to be a very bad idea at a very dangerous time. So when I hear Members of the Democratic Party take the floor and say: Don't build this pipeline because it will help the environment, you obviously don't realize what Canada is about to do. Canada is going to sell the oil to another customer, build a new pipeline, and the only question for you is, How do you justify that? How do you justify destroying the ability to create thousands of jobs in the country at a time when we need them? How do you justify not building a pipeline that could be used to help us with product from North Dakota and other places within our own country? You can justify it, but you can't say it is based on climate change because the product you are talking about is going into the environment. It is going to be used. It is either going to be used coming to America to our benefit or the pipeline will be built west and it will go to China. To our friends in Canada, I imagine your patience is about to run out with us, and I don't blame you one bit if you get tired of dealing with an American Government that seems completely out of sync with reality. In terms of the lawsuits, it is a procedural issue. In Nebraska the pipeline is one of thousands of pipelines we already have in America. To the President last night, instead of one pipeline, why don't we have a comprehensive infrastructure strategy? I am all for that. But you are threatening to veto building this pipeline. Why? Because your judgment has been taken over by the environmental community which is hell-bent on no fossil fuels anywhere, anyway, anyhow. That is not the world in which we live. I embrace the fact that a lower carbon economy will be beneficial over time. My view is: Find more fossil fuels from friendly people, including our own backyard-- Canada, the United States--to replace fossil fuels we have to buy from foreign entities that do not like us very much. That concept is a reality. We are not going to be able to replace fossil fuels any time soon. We can invent technology to make it cleaner. We can find alternatives. But at the end of the day it comes down to this: If you are using climate change as a reason not to build this pipeline, you are kidding yourself or you are misleading the public because the product is going to be used. They are going to build a pipeline in Canada. The question is, Do they build a pipeline that we get no benefit from or do they build a pipeline in collaboration with us that helps us with our job problems and our energy needs? I don't understand how you can justify voting against the Keystone Pipeline based on a concern about climate change because it has absolutely nothing to do with the issue in this regard. The product is going to be used by somebody, and they are going to build a pipeline somewhere. For you to deny us the ability to build this pipeline that would make us more energy independent from overseas' fossil fuels is shortsighted and does not advance the cause of climate change. To the people who believe in climate change, it is gimmicks such as this and tricks such as this that hurt your cause. You are undercutting a real genuine debate. You made climate change a religion rather than a problem. It is a problem, but you are taking a draconian approach to the problem to the point that you are denying our country the ability to build a pipeline that we would benefit from economically and energy security-wise. The alternative you are leaving this country is that the same product will go somewhere else, and the next pipeline will not benefit America. So it is stunts like this that undercut your overall efforts. I wish you would change your mind about the pipeline and work with Republicans who are willing to work with you to deal with emissions in a realistic way and stop selling what I think is a fraud when it comes to this debate. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. I will be supporting their bill. I will gladly support the bill. I am not pleased with every aspect of it, but let me respond to my good friend from Massachusetts. You are tired, you are frustrated, you are upset about a provision in the bill that you don't like and think the country is going down the wrong road. You have every right to be upset. You have every right to vote no and to argue to bring the bill down. Do you know what a lot of people on our side are tired of? The President changing the law whenever he would like. Taking ObamaCare and changing it unilaterally to fit the political needs of the President and his party, by Executive action, turning the ObamaCare statute upside down. Do you know what people on my side are tired of? A President who feels like he is more of a King than a President. Unilaterally reaching out and conferring legal status on 4 million to 5 million people without coming to the Congress because he is frustrated. I have been working on immigration since 2006. I will put my frustration up against yours, Mr. President, but democracy is democracy. You can be frustrated all you like, but there are rules to play by that keep us all safe. So there are people on my side who want me to bring this bill down because they have had enough. They have had enough of President Obama going it on his own, taking the laws that we pass, ignoring some, rewriting others, and the Executive action is the straw that broke the camel's back. It is one thing to defer prosecution on people in terms of your discretion, it is another thing to reach out to 4 to 5 million people and say: You now have a legal status, without going through the Congress. That should scare every Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, and vegetarian. So people on my side--and we will hear from some of them, saying that this is an outrage and we should shut the government down and defund all the parts of the government that would be used to implement this illegal executive amnesty. I understand where they are coming from, and I understood a year ago when people in my party said ObamaCare is bad for the country, we need to stop it, and I am willing to shut the entire government down or at least that part of the government that depends on funding of ObamaCare, because I am upset with this law. I have been on the side of listening to this on my side and understanding the frustrations but always rejecting that temptation because we do have a country to run. As much as I am upset about the Executive action, I am not going to heed the call of not passing this bill because I am mad because within this bill we have money to fight ISIL, and God knows we need to fight them. In this bill we have money to contain and fight Ebola, and God knows we need to do that. In this bill we have infrastructure improvements that God knows are long overdue. So to my good friend from Massachusetts, there is something in here you don't like? Welcome to democracy. You have absolutely the same right as people over here on my side to blow up the whole place, but I hope most of us will listen to your concerns and not follow your lead. And listen to what the Senator from Massachusetts said when the shoe was on the other foot, when people on my side were willing to take it all down because they were mad. I was one of a handful who said no. I would like to repeal and replace ObamaCare, but I don't believe defunding the government is going to make the President repeal his signature issue, and we don't have enough votes to override a veto. It takes a long time to say that, and the people I was responding to were mad and emotional because they thought they were wronged. I understood they were mad. I understood they were emotional. But I thought I had a duty beyond just worrying about me. If you follow the lead of the Senator from Massachusetts and bring this bill down and do a CR--which is the worst possible way to run the government--I will tell you what will come your way. It is what came our way. People are not going to believe you are mature enough to run the place. Seventy percent of the Democrats in the House voted against this bill, and three out of four Republicans voted to get it over here--a level of maturity and judgment I haven't seen in my party in quite a while. Speaker Boehner and your team: Well done. To the Democrats, I am sure on MSNBC and on the liberal version of talk radio you are a hero and you will have your moment with that crowd. I can promise you this: There are people on our side who are having their moment on other channels. But almost one-third of the Democratic Party resisted that temptation, and I know how they feel. Some of them will get a primary. I had six primary opponents. I am glad I did not follow the lead of people who were trying to get me to shut down the government because I felt I was wronged. That is not the way to run a country. So here is what the Senator said: For this rightwing minority, hostage taking is all they have left--a last gasp for those who can not cope with the realities of our democracy. The time has come for those legislators who cannot cope with the reality of our democracy to get out of the way. Those were good words then, and you should read them now and apply them to yourself. What you are offering, there are plenty of people on our side who would serve it up too. What you are offering is to take one part of a complicated bill and try to convince people throughout the country that some horrible wrong is being done and the rest of us who want to get on with governing are the problem. My advice: Don't follow her lead. She is the problem. There are people on my side who are the problem. We will address the Executive amnesty action in a responsible way next year, attack it on every front, but we will not deny our troops the money they need to fight the war to protect us all. We will not deny those who are working to contain Ebola and doing heroic things the money they need to protect us all. We will not deny the infrastructure improvements that have long been overdue. So to my Democratic colleagues, welcome to my world. It may seem tempting to go the road of least resistance, but you will regret it. It hurt our party, and it will hurt yours. If you do what is best for the country, over time it will work out for you. To my colleagues on this side, remember last year? Did we learn anything? I hope so. I will make a prediction. To the voices on my side that say ``Burn it down, blow it up, start all over again'' because they are mad at President Obama's Executive amnesty and the voices coming from the Democratic side, mainly through the Senator from Massachusetts, saying ``Blow it up because we have done something for Wall Street we shouldn't have done,'' I think most of us will put this in context. Most of us will understand there are things in this bill we don't like, but we do have an overriding duty to our country to govern. I hope that next year we can do our appropriations process in the normal course of business, that we don't find ourselves in these messes. But all I can say about democracy is that it is messy, it is emotional, it requires give and take, it requires some people not to follow the hottest person in the room, and there will always be somebody running hot. And something else about democracy: As bad as it is, I can't think of a better idea. I have seen the other way of doing business in the Mideast and throughout the world. I certainly don't want any part of that. So tonight, tomorrow, or whenever that day comes--and to my Democratic colleagues who have put this bill together with my Republican colleagues on appropriations, I applaud you. I will vote for your effort and for the product you created, knowing it is not perfect. To the people on my side who want us to tear this down because you are mad at President Obama, that is not the way to do business. To the people on the other side who want to have the same result for a different reason, don't follow their lead. Tributes to Departing Senators Mr. President, I will now speak very briefly about my retiring colleagues and then turn it over to the Senator from Florida. I promise I will be brief. Everybody will face retirement, voluntarily or involuntarily. There will be a last vote to cast and a last speech to make. Only God knows when that day comes because we are all just one car wreck away from ending our careers. To the retiring Members, I have had the pleasure of serving with you, and I know you all. You did what you thought was best for our country and your State, and what more could anyone ask? My good friend Mark Pryor, who tried to find common ground at a time when it is hard to find. Mary Landrieu, who is--Mary would drill under the Capitol if she thought it would help American energy independence. We have good friends on the other side, and I will miss you, and I wish you well. But I would like very briefly to speak about four. Saxby Chambliss Saxby Chambliss and Julianne and the Chambliss family have become my family. If you are lucky in politics, you will make a few friends. I have been very lucky, and I have made lifelong friends with the Chambliss family, not just Saxby. Saxby represents the best in being a Senator. He looks the part, and he acts the part. And I would say to the people of Georgia that he worked very hard on your behalf. He protected our country against terrorism. He helped the farmer. He did everything he knew how to do to serve the people of Georgia, and I will miss my friend. Mike Johanns Mike Johanns--he introduced me to Bono. I said: Who is Bono? I don't follow that music that much, but I actually did know Bono. Mike introduced me to Africa. He was the Secretary of Agriculture for the Bush administration, and he had a passion for the developing world, particularly Africa. And through Mike I got to know The One Foundation and the Gates Foundation. Through Mike and Stephanie I have been to Africa many times, and you represent the best in our country. You are absolutely wonderful people. You will be missed. And my way to repay you is to stay involved in the developing world. Tom Coburn To Tom Coburn, when I grow up, I want to be like Tom. I don't see that happening anytime soon, me growing up. Tom Coburn has been at this for 20 years. We came in together. He was one of the first people I met in the freshman class of 1995--the 1994 Contract with America class. He was full of ideas and determination from the first day I met him until the very last day he leaves. I cannot tell you, Tom, how proud I am to call you my friend. You and Carolyn have become dear friends, and you, my friend, have changed this body for the better. You had an awesome staff, and you will be missed, but what you contributed to the Senate will last long after I am gone, and we will all be the better. Carl Levin The last person is Carl Levin. If I had to describe to somebody from a foreign country what a good Senator was like, I would pick Carl. Carl understands the details of the government--very studious. He was the chairman of the Armed Services Committee and ran it very evenhandedly. He had a disposition that I don't know how he held on to in these fractious times, but he was a gentleman. I can promise you, working with Carl Levin, we both resisted the temptation to go down some very dangerous roads on this detainee contentious issue. All I can tell the men and women in uniform and the people of Michigan is that you never had a better friend. To all of you, Godspeed. I wish you nothing but the best. I am fortunate enough to go into my third term. To my colleagues, as we go into the next Congress, let's try to do better. I know we can. And if we do, all boats will rise. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. I join in the objection with Senator Inhofe. I appreciate what Senators Inhofe and Levin have done over the last couple of years, working in a bipartisan fashion, to make sure we deal with a problem in the military that is a problem in society, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and to set a zero-tolerance policy, but at the same time keep the military in a position to defend this country. What can we say about our military? We heard Senator Gillibrand's view. My view is that this is the finest military in the world--great people. But within that construct, you have people doing things that are criminal, wrong. But is it any different in the military than it is anywhere else? My argument is this is a societal problem, and in the military it is a problem that is being addressed in, I think, a very aggressive fashion. Contrary to what the Senator from New York offers the Senate, I like where we are headed. In March, we rejected her approach. Her approach was to fire every commander and replace the commander with a bunch of military lawyers to make decisions not just about sexual assault but about aspects of military life far beyond that. I know the Presiding Officer has been a military commander, and barracks theft is a very big deal in the military. When you are in the military and you find out someone has stolen from another member of the unit, and you are all living together on top of each other, side by side, that is a very big deal, and the commander responsible for that unit needs to make sure something happens fairly. The last matter I will ever agree to is the following: Sir, or ma'am--this is the first sergeant going to the commander--last night we think there may have been a rape in the barracks, and the commander says, well, that is no longer my problem, send that over to the lawyers. What a terrible thing to do to a military unit. The commander needs more accountability, not less. The commander is the person whom we choose to send people to war. It is odd, to me, that we will give the commanders of the American military the power of life-and-death decisions, but somehow they are so morally corrupt or incapable of rendering justice in a situation such as this. All I can say is that I respect the passion of the people who are behind this to a point, but you are going too far. Members on the other side of the aisle have been threatened with money being cut off if they vote against this idea. This is no longer about reforming a system, this is a political cause going out of control. In my view, the good thing about the Armed Services Committee is that we have always been able, for the most part, to work out problems that affect our military. And I say to Senator Levin, through the Chair, above all others, I appreciate my colleague's maturity and leadership to make sure we get the right answer. The right answer is to purge the military of the heinous crime of sexual assault, sexual harassment, clean up this mess, but do not destroy the structure that makes it the finest military on the planet, and we are well on our way. Senator Gillibrand's bill last year did not make it through the Senate, but another bill did. Senator Ayotte, Senator McCaskill, Senator Fischer, along with the chairman, and others, came up with a reform package that I think was passed unanimously last March. What do we now know from the recent report? You would have to have such a bias about your view to believe that this report doesn't show progress. By any objective measurement, the reforms we have been working on in a bipartisan fashion are beginning to bear fruit. I will give an example of some of those reforms. Every victim of a sexual assault or of sexual harassment allegations in the military is to be assigned an individual lawyer--a judge advocate--to represent their interests. I don't know about other States, but in South Carolina, we are miles away from that. The goal of the Senators that I have just mentioned, and myself, is to make sure that the military is the most victim- friendly legal system in America, but a person can still get a fair trial. That should be the goal of all of us, to ensure that every victim has a lawyer. I have been a judge advocate for 32 years now. I have thought long and hard of the times that I have known a lawyer in the legal community recommend to the commander: Go forward on a sexual assault case, and the commander says no. There is literally a handful, or less, that I can think of. However, I do know that there are a lot more cases where the lawyer says: Sir, or ma'am, we don't think we have enough here to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt, and the commander will say: Go for it anyway. I want to make sure we air this out. That is the most common use of a commander's discretion vis-a-vis their lawyer. But to those who are worried about making sure the commanders and lawyers understand where we are coming from, we made a wholesale change of how they report and dispose of these cases. If a judge advocate recommends to the military commander in question to go forward and the commander says no, that commander's decision to say no is reviewed by the Secretary of the Service. In my case, it is the Secretary of the Air Force. If an Air Force commander is given legal advice by their JAG, informing us that we have a good case in the area of sexual assault, and the commander says no, it goes all the way up to the Secretary of the Air Force. As anybody who has ever been in the military knows, that is a very big deal. That is the ultimate sign that we expect people to treat these allegations seriously. If the JAG and the commander say no to the prosecution, it goes to the next step in the chain of command. What did this report say--and I will let Senator Levin detail some of the results. The big takeaway is that more people are coming forward, which is a good thing. More people are telling us they feel better able to come forward because the system is more understanding. The lawyer who has been provided to the victim has been received very well. The number of reports, restricted reports--where a victim says, I am going to tell you about what happened to me, but I don't want to go through the process of prosecuting somebody because I don't want to go through that process myself--that are now unrestricted has gone up fairly dramatically, meaning that the victim believes there will be somebody there helping them through the system. Retaliation is a problem all over society. I don't know of any law in South Carolina that makes it a specific crime in the eyes of the victim to retaliate against bringing an allegation forward. Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, it is a crime to retaliate against someone making an assault complaint. The retaliation portion of the report--where 62 percent felt retaliation--mostly came from peer, lower level members of the unit, not the commander. Here is what I would say: Once the commander goes forward and gives his blessing to the allegation, retaliation is going to be less likely because it was the commander who made the decision in that unit and not a far-off lawyer. I will now turn this over to Senators Inhofe and Levin. There are so many more reforms that are paying dividends. So many of them have not even started yet. I have to say we are on the right track. Let's give this a chance. We are taking this seriously. The military is responding in a positive fashion and now is not the time to retreat from these reforms. I do believe what we have done today will help us tomorrow, and our goal is common--to eliminate the scourge of sexual assault and sexual harassment, but keep the military command structure the way it is because it is necessary to hold our commanders more accountable. I will end with this thought. There is no problem in the military that can be solved without commander buy-in. That is the role of the commander. To everybody who wonders about what is going on in the military legal community, this colonel who feels put upon--if I am the head of the subcommittee--will get a chance to come to our committee with Senator Gillibrand and myself, if I am there, to give an accounting of what they think went wrong with the system and how they were treated, and the Air Force will be required to respond. Every judge advocate of every branch of the service opposes the Gillibrand approach. Every commander and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff oppose what Senator Gillibrand is proposing, for very good reason. Give these reforms a chance. To all of those who worked on this, congratulations. We are moving in the right direction, but we have a long way to go. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Thank you very much. I have been a military lawyer for over 30 years. That has been one of the highlights of my life--to serve in the Air Force. During the debate about these techniques, I was very proud of the fact that every military lawyer came out on the side that the techniques in question were not who we are and what we want to be. We are one of the leading voices of the Geneva Convention. We have stood by the Geneva Convention since its inception. I am convinced that the techniques in question violate the Geneva Convention. I am also convinced that they were motivated by fear, fear of another attack. Put yourself in the shoes of the people responsible for defending the country right after 9/11. We had been hit. We had been hit hard. Everybody thought something else was coming. As we rounded these guys up, there was a sense of urgency and a commitment to never let it happen again that generated this program. Who knew what, when? I do not know. All I can tell you is the people involved believed they were trying to defend the country and what they were doing was necessary. Did they get some good information? Probably so. Has it been a net loser for us as a country? Absolutely so. All I can say is the techniques in question were motivated by fear of another attack, and people at the time thought this was the best way to defend the Nation. I accept that on their part. But as a nation, I hope we have learned the following: In this ideological struggle, good versus evil, we need to choose good. There is no shortage of people who will cut your head off. The techniques in question are nowhere near what the enemies of this Nation and radical Islam would do to people under their control. There is no comparison. The comparison is between who we are and what we want to be. In that regard, we made a mistake. No one is going to jail because they should not, because the laws in question--the laws that existed at the time of this program--were, to be generous, vague. I spent about a year of my life with Senator McCain working with the Bush administration and colleagues on the Democratic side to come up with the Detainee Treatment Act which clearly puts people on notice of what you can and cannot do. Going forward we fixed this problem. How do I know it is a problem? I travel. I go to the Mideast a lot. I go all over the world. It was a problem for us. Whether we like it or not, we are seen as the good guys. I like it. Sometimes good people make mistakes. We have corrected the problem. We have interrogation techniques now that I think can protect the Nation and are within our values. The one thing I want to stress to my colleagues is that this is a war of an ideological nature. There will be no capital to conquer. We are not going to take Tokyo. We are not going to take Berlin. There is no air force to shoot down; there is no navy to sink. You are fighting a radical extreme ideology that is motivated by hate. In their world, if you do not agree with their religion, you are no longer a human being. The only way we can possibly defeat this ideology is to offer something better. The good news for us is that we stand for something better. We stand for due process. We stand for humane treatment. We stand for the ability to have a say when you are accused of something. Our enemies stand for none of that. That is their greatest weakness. Our greatest strength is to offer a better way. When you go to Anbar Province and you go to other places in the Mideast that have experienced life under ISIS--ISIL--and Al Qaeda, the reaction has almost been universal: We do not like this. When America comes over the hill, and they see that flag, they know help is on the way. To the CIA officers who serve in the shadows, who intermingle with the most notorious in the world, who are always away from home never knowing if you are going back: Thank you. There is a debate about whether this report is accurate line by line. I do not know. Is this the definitive answer to the program's problems? I do not know, but I do know the program hurt our country. Those days are behind us. The good guys air their dirty laundry. I wished we had waited because the world is in such a volatile shape right now. I do fear this report will be used by our enemies. But I guess there is no good time to do things like this. So to those who helped prepare the report, I understand where you are coming from. To those on my side who believe that we have gone too far, I understand that too. But this has always been easy for me. I have been too associated with the subject matter for too long. Every time our Nation cuts a corner, and every time we act out of fear and abandon who we are, we always regret it. That has happened forever. This is a step toward righting a wrong. To our enemies: Take no comfort from the fact that we have changed our program. We are committed to your demise. We are committed to your incarceration and killing you on the battlefield, if necessary. To our friends, because we choose a different path, do not mistake that for weakness. What we are doing today is not a sign of weakness. It is a sign of the ultimate strength--that you can self correct, that you can reevaluate and you can do some soul searching, and you can come out with a better product. The tools available to our intelligence community today over time will yield better results, more reliable results. The example we are setting will, over time, change the world. To defeat radical Islam you have to show separation. Today is a commitment to show separation. The techniques they employ to impose their will have been used for thousands of years. They are always, over time, rejected. The values we stand for--tolerance, humane treatment of everyone; whether you agree with them or not--have also stood the test of time. Over time, we will win, and they will lose. Today is about making that time period shorter. The sooner America can reattach itself to who she is, the worse off the enemy will be. I yield the floor.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to yield back all time.

Mr. GRAHAM. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague very much for speaking in a way so we can all have time on the issue. No. 1, about the chilling messages, this is a chilling message from the Supreme Leader of Iran about 3 days ago: Nine questions about the elimination of Israel. In this tweet--and I will read some of it later--the Ayatollah, the Supreme Leader in Iran, talks about how to annihilate the State of Israel during the negotiations. Also, recently an IAEA inspector was talking about elements of the Iranian nuclear program that have been hidden that would make it larger than we all suspect. What are we trying to do? I would like to bring the Iranian nuclear program to an end through peaceful means, and by an end, I mean the following: I would welcome a deal that would allow the Iranians to produce peaceful nuclear power but without the capability of turning that program into a weapons program. I fear that we are on the road to a North Korean outcome, where the international community gave a rogue regime a small nuclear program to be monitored by the United Nations--and the rest is history regarding North Korea. I have asked several times to the administration: Tell me the safeguards that exist in these negotiations with Iran that did not exist in North Korea, and I have yet to get an answer. It is pretty openly known that the administration and the P5+1 have conceded a right to enrich uranium as part of any deal with Iran. To that I say: Of all the nations on Earth, given their behavior, name one country that you would put in the category ahead of Iran when it comes to denying them the ability to have a centrifuge that one day could be used to make a weapon. The idea of giving an enrichment capability to the Iranians, given 30 years of lying, deceit, American blood on their hands, and recent tweets about annihilating Israel to me is insane. So all we are asking is that any deal negotiated between the P5+1 come to this body for a discussion and a vote. Senator Corker is the primary author of this legislation. Here is what I can tell the world: Nobody wants any more war. But we do not want to allow the Iranians, given their behavior, the capability one day to develop a nuclear weapon, and that is exactly what they have been trying to do. They have lied about their program. They have been deceptive about their program. They have blood on their hands when it comes to killing Americans in Iraq. They are one of the largest state sponsors of terrorism in the world. The idea that we would give them an enrichment capability just astounds me. We are telling our allies--South Korea, and the UAE: If you want a nuclear program, fine--don't enrich the uranium. There are 15 nations in the world that have nuclear programs without an enrichment capability. To concede one to the Iranians is the ultimate act of throwing the Mideast into further chaos, because the Sunni Arabs, the mortal enemy of the Shia Persians, will want a capability of their own of like kind or greater. The worst possible outcome is to give a regime this dangerous the capability or the potential to one day make a bomb. One centrifuge in the hands of people with this mentality is one too many. To the Iranian people, my beef is not with you. My beef is with your leaders who have taken the world down a dark path. This legislation is pretty simple. Bring the deal to the Senate. We will have a right to file a motion of disapproval. We will have a vote, we will have a debate, and if it is a good deal, it will be approved. If it is a bad deal, we will stop it. I cannot imagine the Senate and the House sitting on the sidelines and ignoring something this important. To Senator Corker, who will soon be the Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, this was his original idea. We have tried to perfect it, but what I really believe is what he tried to do months ago to make sure the Congress would have a check and balance over any deal with the Iranians was smart. It would enhance the administration's hand when it comes to negotiating because they would have to tell the Iranians, it is not just us you have to please, you have to go before the representatives of the American people. That would lead to a better outcome. If it truly is a North Korea in the making, we will have a chance to stop it. President Obama wants a deal too badly, in my view; but at the end of the day, let's wait and see what happens. I just want to let the Iranians and the administration know beforehand, we will not sit on the sidelines and watch you go it alone. This is one decision the President will make that the Congress has to be read in on and have a say about. This is not the time to let President Obama go it alone. The stakes are too high for Israel, for the United States, for the world at large. What do I fear the most? I fear that over time we will give the Iranian ayatollahs the capability to develop a nuclear weapon. Name one technology they developed that they haven't shared with terrorists. And it will surely come our way. To our friends in Israel: No Israeli mother can ever go to sleep at night thinking her children are safe and the future of that country is secure if the Iranians have a nuclear capability. When the ayatollahs say openly they wish to destroy the State of Israel, to annihilate the State of Israel, I believe they mean it. When the Jewish people say never again, they speak based on past experience. Of all the scenarios in the world that could throw this world into a chaotic situation beyond what you see today, it would be to allow the ayatollahs a nuclear weapon. The Sunni Arabs will have one of their own. Israel will never know a minute's peace, and I fear that it would come our way. I would like to now yield to Senator Corker who can explain the details of the legislation, why we are asking this to be taken up before the end of negotiations. A week from Monday the deadline comes to an end. I want everybody at the negotiating table to know this deal is so important to the United States and the world that the Congress needs to have a say. Barack Obama should not be able to make any deal with the Iranians that is binding unless the Congress approves, and the Iranians should never be allowed to have a nuclear capability, period, that could be turned into a weapon. With that, I yield to Senator Corker.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. President, I will be asking a unanimous consent request to bring up S. 2650, the Corker-Graham-McCain-Ayotte-Rubio legislation. Senator Murphy, I think, is going to speak here in a second, but if I may do two things: I wish to reserve 20 minutes of time to be divided between myself, Senator Corker, and Senator Rubio to speak about the topic. But I would now like to make a unanimous consent request.

Mr. GRAHAM. I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the two leaders, but no later than November 24, 2014, the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration of S. 2650, that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration, the bill be read a third time, and the Senate proceed to a vote on passage of the bill with no intervening action or debate. Further, if passed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Mr. GRAHAM

Mr. GRAHAM. Do we have time remaining?

Mr. GRAHAM. I will be very quick. I will vote for the continuing resolution because I do not want to shut the government down. I agree with Senator McCain that this is not the right process, but we are where we are. I think the issue people are focusing on about the continuing resolution is the changing of the training of the Free Syrian Army from title 50, a covert program, to title 10, the Department of Defense, where it will be out in the open. The reason I support the appropriation and the change in title 10--I think this is a long-overdue effort on our part to build up Syrian forces that can confront both Assad and ISIL, enemies of the United States. To my colleagues who worry about the people we train and the arms we give falling into the wrong hands, I would say that there is nothing we can do in this area without some risk. But when you tell me there are no Syrians that you believe exist who would fight against Assad and ISIL, I do not believe you quite understand what is going on in Syria. I would say that the vast majority of Syrians have two things in common: They want to overthrow Assad and they want to get ISIL out of their country. ISIL is mostly non-Syrians. They came from the vacuum created by a lack of security. When Hezbollah and Russia doubled down to protect Assad, who was just about knocked out several years ago, the Free Syrian Army was abandoned by us and the rest of the world and ISIL was able to fill in that vacuum. These are foreign fighters. So to my colleagues who talk about how they worry, I worry too. I worry about doing nothing. I worry about finding an excuse not to do anything. It bothered me when Republicans embraced the position of President Obama just a few weeks ago that it was a fantasy to train the Syrians to fight for Syria. I do not think it is a fantasy to train Syrians to fight for Syria because they want to. This whole revolution against Assad was not to overthrow him and replace Assad with ISIL. The people who think the average Syrian wants to be dominated by ISIL instead of Assad, really, I do not think they appreciate what is going on in Syria. That is selling the Syrian people short. Having said that, the limitations of what the Free Syrian Army can do at this point are real, but training as many as possible makes sense to me. My goal is to keep the war over there so it does not come here. From an American point of view, I think it would be a huge mistake not to provide training and resources to those people in the region--in Syria--to do the fighting because we have common enemies. Those who say this is too risky, what is your alternative? If we do nothing, ISIL will continue to grow and the threat to our homeland will continue to increase. It is long past time to blunt the momentum of this vicious terrorist organization. A Free Syrian Army component makes perfect sense to me. Whatever risk is associated with that concept is well worth it at this point. When we talk about Iraq, I hope the Iraqi Government can reconstitute itself. Their military is in shambles. The Kurds are hanging on in the north with our help. But to dislodge ISIL from Iraq and take back Fallujah and Mosul and other cities, as General Dempsey indicated, would be a very difficult military endeavor. From my point of view, the last thing America wants to do is take ISIL on in Iraq and Syria and fail. If you do believe that it is about our homeland and that it is not just about the Mideast, allowing ISIL to defeat any force we throw at it makes them larger and more lethal over time. So the worst possible outcome is to form a coalition in Syria of Arab countries and they are defeated by ISIL because we do not provide them the capabilities they lack. President Obama's insistence of no boots on the ground is the Achilles' heel to his strategy. This is a military strategy, I believe, designed around political promises. This is not the military strategy you would create to destroy or devastate ISIL. President Bush made many mistakes in Iraq, but to his credit he changed the strategy in a fashion that allowed us to succeed. One thing I have learned over the past 13 years, you can have a lot of troops doing the wrong thing and it will not matter. When you leave no troops behind, that is a mistake. And if you have too few troops doing the right thing, it will not matter. The President is right about this. We don't need to reinvade Iraq or Syria. We don't need the 82nd Airborne to go in with 100,000 troops behind it, but we do need to provide capacity to the Iraqis and any future coalition to deal with Syria that is lacking in that part of the world. Like it or not the American military is second to none. The special forces capability we have can really be decisive in this fight. To every American, this is not only about them over there, this is about us here. The better and the sooner that ISIL is defeated, the more decisive ISIL is defeated, and the sooner that day comes about, the safer we are at home. I urge the President to not take options off the table. I am voting for this change in strategy regarding the Free Syrian Army because I think it is long overdue. When the President does the right thing, I want to be his partner. Mr. President, if you will come up with a strategy to destroy and defeat ISIL that makes sense, I will be your best ally and try to help you on this side of the aisle. This is a first step in the right direction, but when you play out this strategy, which you are trying to do, I think it will not work unless you embrace American assistance in a greater level to the Iraqi military and to any coalition you could create in Syria. The last thing I want this body to understand, this is the last best chance we will have to put ISIL back in a box so they can't wreak havoc in the Mideast and grow in strength. The stronger they are over there, the more endangered we are over here. It is in our interests to help our Arab allies and our Iraqi allies destroy ISIL. It is not just about those people over there. Lines of defenses in the war on terror make perfect sense to me. The best way to keep this fight off our shores is to engage the people who will help us carry the fight to the common enemy. ISIL is not only an enemy of Islam, it is an enemy of mankind, and failing to defeat these people will resonate here very quickly. We have a chance. Let's take advantage of it. There is nothing we can do in a war on terror without risk, but now we are fighting an Army, not an organization. If we defeat ISIS, the war is not over. This is a generational struggle. But if you do defeat ISIL, as a turning point in our favor--if they survive our best attempt to defeat them--God help us all. I yield back.