Jon Kyl: “I wish to speak to two items that are before us as we are considering the Defense authorization bill this morning. The…”

“I wish to speak to two items that are before us as we are considering the Defense authorization bill this morning. The first has to do with an amendment that has been offered by Senator Lieberman and myself and others to declare the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, which would, if we do that, permit us to engage in economic sanction activity against the financing operations of the IRGC. That is important, because according to all of the evidence we have, it is the IRGC that has been primarily responsible for the infusion into Iraq of the very dangerous equipment that has been causing great harm to our troops there, especially the new superpenetrator devices that are blowing up not just humvees but also even Abrams tanks. It is the IRGC that is responsible for the training of Iraqis to be fighting our troops in Iraq and generally bringing the Iranian Government's anti-American activities from Iran into Iraq. It is because of the IRGC's activities as a terrorist organization that our troops are dying in portions of Iraq today and, therefore, totally fitting for us to express our sense to the administration that it should designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, thus, permitting us to invoke these economic sanctions against it.”