On the recordMay 17, 2012
I thank the gentleman. I rise in opposition to the amendment. I think the gentleman raises a very legitimate point that the exercise of strikes against terrorist targets does need a proper oversight. There are a number of ways in which I think we can have greater transparency in those decisions, frankly, whether they're signature strikes or against individuals. The bottom line is al Qaeda declared war against us in 1996. They are actively prosecuting that war against us from a number of different locations, many of which we don't have as much information as we would like, but clearly in federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, they are organizing training camps and they are actively pursuing us. Our Joint Special Operations Command is trying to keep track of those networks and keep them from attacking us. The ability to hit those training camps is an important part of protecting us from terrorist attacks. As General McChrystal said: It takes a network to beat a network. We need our network to have the ability to stop Al Qaeda's network. They declared war against us. They haven't changed their mind. It is still something that we need to be able to adequately protect this country against. This amendment unduly restricts our military's ability to protect this country.
