On the recordSeptember 18, 2014
Mr. President, I rise today to ask that Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to come together and unanimously pass legislation to address the threat of American citizens fighting for ISIS and bringing our statutory system into the 21st century to protect the national security interests of our Nation. As the American people are now painfully aware, the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, has emerged as the new face of the radical terrorist threat that has bedeviled the West in recent decades. This virulent jihadist group--so extreme they got kicked out of Al Qaeda, which I will note is not easy to do--is rampaging across Syria and Iraq in a campaign of oppression and genocide, including the relentless targeting and murder of Christians, of Jews, of Muslim minority sects, Yazidis--indeed, any who do not share their radical Sunni theology. While other terrorist organizations have been content with a parasitic relationship with state sponsors of terrorism--notably Syria and Iran--ISIS has a new agenda, which is to establish its own state or caliphate. They now control a territory about the size of Indiana with oilfields they can exploit on the black market to the tune of some $1.5 million a day. Their ranks have grown in the last 3 months alone from roughly 10,000 to now more than 30,000. Unlike some regional jihadists, ISIS also represents a direct and growing threat to our citizens here at home, and increasingly to our homeland itself.…





