Political Quotes

“Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Dent). I would add that there was some dialogue in that breakfast meeting with the Syrian Christians that took place the day before yesterday, in the morning, about how there was a concerted effort to push and eradicate Christians out of all the areas in the Middle East. That seems to be something that they have embarked upon. And I know that there's a long history of it of over a thousand years. But it's been accelerated here, I believe, Mr. Speaker, within the last few years. In fact, the date of this meeting goes back to 1982 when that began. We're hearing similar narratives about Christians that are being persecuted by both sides in this. The population percentage in Syria of around 15 to 20 percent fits with what I'm told. I added up the data that they gave me from different sections of the Syrian Christians and my number came to about 2.6 million Syrian Christians. There are also about 2 million Syrians that are refugees that have left Syria and that are now housed in refugee camps in the surrounding country. There's about 2 million refugees. There are about 2.6 million Christians in or around Syria altogether. I see that as almost the equivalent of the population of the State of Iowa. So we've watched as Assad has persecuted his people--the people that were not his. Anybody but his political allies were persecuted by him over the years.…”