Sam Brownback: “I urge its passage. I urge usage of the Syria Accountability Act by the President. Several of these issues have already…”

“I urge its passage. I urge usage of the Syria Accountability Act by the President. Several of these issues have already been covered. I wish to address them with some specificity by saying 43 and counting--43 and counting. That is the number of dictatorships that are left in the world. There were 45 at the start of this year. Two have changed over. Dramatic changes are taking place in some other countries. But there are 43 dictatorships. One of the harshest is Syria. It is a state sponsor of terrorism, one of five countries in the world that we recognize is a state sponsor of terrorism. We are facing terrorists coming from Syria on a daily basis in Iraq. You can hardly visit with any of our leadership working on the issue of Iraq and bringing democracy to that country without hearing them talking about foreign terrorists coming into Iraq. The largest percentage of those is coming through Syria. Another percentage is coming from Iran, which is another country that needs to go through a democratic metamorphosis and become a democracy. Iran is not a democracy today. We need to confront that.”