Chris Smith: “I want to thank my good friend and colleague, Ed Royce, the chairman of our committee, for his leadership on all things…”

“I want to thank my good friend and colleague, Ed Royce, the chairman of our committee, for his leadership on all things related to the Syrian crisis, the Iranian crisis, and the large number of hearings that we have had that have brought a focus on these horrific atrocities being committed by Assad. And I want to thank Eliot Engel for sponsoring the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2016. Mr. Speaker, for more than 5 years, the Assad regime has been committing crimes against humanity and war crimes against civilians, including murder, torture, and rape, and has been doing so on an industrial scale. No one has been spared from its targeting--not even children. These atrocities have fueled the largest refugee crisis since World War II, overwhelming the region and propelling a refugee crisis in Europe. More than 6 million people are also internally displaced inside of Syria, which has become one of the most deadly places in the world to deliver humanitarian assistance. The administration's response has not stopped the carnage, nor have the European efforts. This has emboldened the regime; and for months the Syrian and Russian militaries have systematically been bombing Aleppo, Syria's most populous city before the conflict, and they have been bombing it into rubble. The United States must impose the strongest available sanctions on perpetrators in the Syrian regime who are complicit in these atrocities and foreigners who feed its killing machine.…”