PRESS RELEASE
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher Attacks U.S. Support for Saudis and Campaign To Overthrow Assad, in House Foreign Affairs Committee
Sept. 30, 2015 (EIRNS)—Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) attacked Obama’s Syria policy of toppling Assad and supporting ISIL by refusing to work with Syrian President Assad, in the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee’s hearing on terrorism today.
Rep. Rohrabacher also chairs of one of the subcommittees of House Foreign Affairs, and is thus entitled to make remarks at the beginning of the hearing as well as later. He began:
"...We managed to turn a bad situation which we created by going along with the previous President [G.W. Bush] who invaded Iraq without finishing in Afghanistan. This administration’s policies turned into a catastrophe of its own making. U.S. policies [led to situation] where even our supplies sent to defeat ISIS, a radical Islamic group that believes in killing Americans and our allies [went to ISIS]. This Administration found every excuse to undermine the government and the forces most friendly to our cause, and the cause of peace, in Syria. In Syria, we refused to cooperate with the President five years ago, claiming there was an alternative.
"What’s happened? In that five-year period, it’s turned into an ever worse situation, and the money that was sent over to arm a ‘third force’ we now find has been used to train and equip a force hostile to those people who are trying to bring peace to the Middle East."
Rohrabacher spoke later, when each Committee member asked five minutes of questions to witnesses:
"We end up using our own money in the name of fighting radical Islamic terror; much of it has ended up in the hands of radical Islamic terrorists—this ‘third force’ which this President insisted we support in Syria rather than going with Assad, which Russia proposed. I understand that it is actually working with ISIL now, and some commanders on the payroll up to 2013 are now engaged actively with these terrorists. Is that correct?"
Mr.Jocelyn:
"A New Syrian Force (NSF) Commander... may or may not, have defected to al Nusra, which is Al Qaeda, and certainly he provided to al Nusra Front, which is Al Qaeda, equipment."
Rohrabacher:
"There is ample evidence this has been going on... The idea we should just create a new force with people we don’t know, has been a catastrophe for the stability of the Mideast. Why is it that you have ‘the bad guy’ [Assad]; we sided with Russia against Hitler, but are we helping ‘the bad guy’ who doesn’t want to kill Americans, and who wants to kill people who want to murder Americans? Maybe we should have worked with Putin. Were we to side with Assad, we would find ourselves without a lot of our allies in the Sunni world, whom we have long relations with—Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain—we don’t want to alienate our Sunni allies. So all the countries who paid for the pilots of 9/11, we’re worried about what they think. At least with ISIL, they are up front that they want to murder us. We put up with Pakistan, with Saudi Arabia, and we are giving ourselves some delusion what the real world is all about. Some of the same governments have formed ISIL, and I don’t know what we’ve done to punish the Saudis on 9/11—they paid the pilots, but radical Islam is our enemy, and they’ve been financing it."
Jocelyn:
"There is no evidence they financed ISIL... "
Rohrabacher:
"...they financed other extremist groups that later became ISIL."
