that's the vernacular i picked up on a trip to cuba some time ago. but if the united states take leadership in this hemisphere we'll see some philosophy, some ideology take that leadership and we've seen it take place in venezuela. hugo chavez seemed to be enamored with cuba and we've seen gi fidel castro led the marxist regime in cuba and influenced venezuela. it's hard to think of a venezuela that's been such a marxist thorn in the side, a belligerent hugo chavez who called our president the devil from new york city, from the united nations podium, went on with, i'll say a smelly description, that was offensive to anybody on the planet, let alone americans. but hugo chavez drove this marxist agenda in venezuela and handed it over to maduro, now

we have another marxist regime oppressing its people, killing freep dom demonstraters -- demonstrators and dissidents and people who stand up for freedom and we haven't had a strong voice coming from the president of the united states, not a condemning voice, not a strong leadership that says to them, there's a reason you're running into shortages, and one thing the gentlelady didn't mention a shortage of toilet paper of all things. how can an oil rich country that's rich enough to promise free energy and foul to americans just a couple of years ago by hugo chavez, yet they can't provide toilet paper. those thing are produced by a demand economy that comes from free enterprise. if there is no product on the shelf and say it is milk or

bread, in cuba, rationon of sugar, beans and rice. but if there's nothing on the shelf in america, somebody will look around and say why is that shelf bare. loaf of bread and someone will make a better one for a moderate or better quality or cheaper price for equal quality. and that decides, exen when the consumers pulls it off, that is a vote for one product over another. it happens over and over again in this country. and because of that, we walk store inoss -- grocery america. amazing to see that you can grab anything you wanted. and i think in my trips to

places like russia and cuba and looks like their societies are trained to stand in line. we went to the duma in moscow on a trip and we stood outside even though we were expected and we waited a long time to wait in line even to wear your coat up and get in the hallway and wait in line to get into the waiting room. and maybe they didn't know why they were in line. maybe that is what they were trained to do. maybe all of them knew? i didn't know the language or the culture. they get in another line. it's like a full-time job to line up and wait for those things that comes to americans, some some of them delivered to

us. free people stand in fewer lines than oppressed people do. in ill stee fewer lines countries like the united states america. you don't want to stand in line to receive something. you will stand in line for something that comes free in america. so you'll find there is somebody working the cash registers to get their hand on your credit card. lines in russia, lines in cuba. and i recall seeing a couple of lines in cuba that i didn't expect to see and one of them was a line for ice cream. and as we went down the street, i looked over and here's this long line that went for a couple of blocks and i asked our guide and i asked what is going on

there and they said they are lining up to get an cries cream cope. two blocks to wait for an cries cream cope. we wouldn't do that. we would go to the next competing ice cream store. that is one of the differences taking place. and i reviewed some of the speech that was delivered by representative ros-lehtinen senate court part, senator rubio and as he spoke on the senate floor about doctors and about how the junior senator from iowa , it had to be -- who traveled to cuba and was very happy and proud what he had seen there in the accomplishments of castro and talked about the medical system they have in cuba. that flows from michael moore's movie than anything it has to do

from fact, mr. speaker. but it was stated by the gentleman from florida that yes, they have good doctors, doctors that are cuban and they are the ones that defected to the united states. and i agree with that statement. and he also mentioned doctors and cab drivers. and i have experienced that, i have hailed a cab in havana, a legal trip to havana, which might have been different than the ones we are discussing and what do you meet, a doctor driving a taxi cab and it is a 1954 chevy with a russian diesel engine under the hood and looks like a rolling repair shop up and down the street. there are cars that break down and they just come along there and jack them up and fix them with the parts they can scaffage and when the car is repaired,

they drive it on again. it's part of traveling to stop and repair the vehicle you are in and one of the things that i noticed was that there were russian tractors sitting all over the place and they are broken down and they have been robbed for parts. and there would be a circle maybe of grass growing up around the tires where they have been there for a long time, parted out. and i began to notice there are these oxen around the island in a lot of lot of places and a rope and a stake and a pivot imagine stem and i raising them for the meat, scattered all over the island. and i was able -- i had my

n.r.a. cap on but what happened in cuba was, back in the 1990 when the soviet union was going with a stronger economy than the russians are doing today, they saw them melt down going into the 1990's and when that happened, the ze for cuba stopped and what had been taking place, cuba was raising sugar and the russians would send them and thesugar and cubans proceeds would come into cuba and getting 51 cents of oil for every six cents of oil they -- sugar they sent out. that was the most important equation. when the soast union imploded and shrunk back and the russian

federation was formed and the cubans had to stand on their own. the subsidies stopped. the support for the russian tractors being used and then they were robbed for parts and we ended up as the only economy that i know of that has gone from an strilized mechanical tractor production for agriculture for agriculture. i make that point to my junior senator. cuba digressed. it was digression and used animals when once they had tractors, they digressed from doctors in the clinic and hospitals to doctors behind the steering wheel and they die ress from a country that -- to

a nation now that has been oppressed and under a communist dictatorship since 1959. and the senator from florida also menged that they don't have the freedoms there that even though there was discussion about access to the internet, i can tell you pirnlly, the senator from florida is right, they don't have access to the internet. i was on a trip up to a college up in the mountains in cuba. we rode up there in the back of a russian vehicle and it took an hour, 45 minutes to get up in the hills. and as we were interviewing some of the professors there and some of the students there, i was standing next to a gentleman who was from florida, his parents had escaped from cuba but still held deeds for land that they

had never been compensated for. and he was perhaps the best interpretor that i ever experienced. is out e ed sabbatini there. he read their voices and putting together for me in real-time. he could talk, listen and he said to me in the middle of this and he said, you realize that they are not asking the questions that you are asking, because i would ask a question to one of the interpretters. he would turn to a couple of the instructors at the school and ask a question in spanish and answer in spanish and return it back to me in english and he said, you know that the cat trow minder is not asking the questions of them that you are asking and he is not giving you

the answers that you are returning. he is telling you something different than you would be learning. no, i didn't know that. we broke away from that conversation. but i had asked, do you have internet here at this school, at this university? and their answer came back specifically, yes. we have internet. full access to internet? yes, we do. we are in the modern world. we have full access to the internet. when i learned they weren't answering my questions and i asked students that were sitting on the curb and i was catching up with a little bit after the fact. but i wanted to know what does this internet look like and they didn't know how to answer the question on internet access. we drilled in on the answer and it was, yes, they had access to internet, and if they had a question that they needed a

response to that they wouldn't get from the internet, then they would formally make that request and write that request out in a letter form and put the letter in an envelope and when they went down the mountainside to santa clara or the small city near there, they would deliver the request inletter form. and whoever is the minder of the internet would decide to get them the answer off the internet and apparently access the internet and printout the answer that they thought the instructor would have and put it on a piece of paper and wind its way back up the mountain again. and they asked somebody who had clearance from castro to go on the internet and get an answer back to head up to the mountain to a student.

that is internet access as i saw it and heard it from the lips of students there on that mountain school. some will know what the name of that school is. when i found that out is, i want to see what you have. we went into a classroom. as we walked into the classroom, there were about 12, 14 computers there. there were old 386's. two, three students sitting at every screen and the instructor was teaching a course on how bad capitalism is. wish i had could have taken a picture of that screen. it was in spanish but interpreted to me this way and this is what i can recall. five points on why capitalism is so bad. they were instructing these college-aged students on how bad capitalism is and one of the lessons is capitalists keep all

of the money and profit and just feeds the worker so the worker can barely survive while the capitalist gets rich. there were those marxist points on down the line. as we walked in, they were in the middle of indoctrinating their students zpwens capitalism and for marxism. and it impressed that how does a young person in a controlled environment with controlled education get there is a wonderful wolved world out there in america. it turned into a question and answer period and there were students asking questions, most of them dealing with agriculture and i was answering them through ed, the interpreter and at a

certain point it became too rapid fire and he took it over and took over the conversation. i remember one big-faced kids who said who sets the markets of -- markets for agriculture products? what would be the price for beans, rice, corn, otes and wheats. i answered him that the market sets the prices. how does the market set the prices? there's a buy whore makes the offer, there's a sell whore decides whether or not to take it. if the seller says no, the buyer might decide to raise his price until they get to a place where they agree. that was an amazing concept that it looked like they'd never heard that before. no one sets the prices? how can it be that no one sets the prices? and second thing, how many times -- how often does the price change? it can change hundreds of times a day. it changes every transaction because the buyer and the

seller can reach a different point down to the tenth of a penny. a hard concept for them to understand. another question, who sets the price of land, farmland in the united states. i know about that the market sets the price of farmland. another new concept was, well, no one steps in and assigns a price? no, the buyer and seller have to agree. that sets the price. you can see that soaking into their mind as they were asking the questions and then a question was, why does anyone ever sell land? i had to explain that sometimes you reach that point in life when you don't want to work the land anymore, maybe you want to retire, maybe you want to take your capital out and roll it into another business, maybe you want to put it in savings, maybe you want to sell it to a neighbor who can utilize it better and the price is high enough. maybe you're over-leveraged with a lending institution and have to sell off a piece of land to get liquid then. -- again. maybe the economy went bad and you had to sell it before the

bank foreclosed. or maybe the bank foreclosed and sold it out from underneath you. these were new concepts for these young men in this classroom in cuba that i had been told by the cuban, by castro's minders that yes, they had full access to the internet, they had computers, and they were connected to the modern and real world. well, what i found out was, they had old 386's, they were sharing them, two or three at a station and they were learning on the screens of these computers in the old font style you'd see with that green screen with white lettering, they were learning the perils of capitalism and the merits of marxism system of that's the kind of minds that are influenced by the castro regime and we have had -- we have had an embargo on trading with cuba for a long time. and we've got a lot of years invested in it. we need to keep it in place and we have to have a kind of leadership in this country that

can inspire people to step up and take their island back. we need the kind of leadership in this country that can inspire the people in venezuela to step up and take their country back. we need the kind of leadership in this country that will send the message and go down and stop and visit and inspire in country after country in this hemisphere, even if we're only speaking about this hemisphere, inspire the people of central and south america to embrace the kind of life that we enjoy here. there's a -- the difference between the united states of america and countries in points south, isn't because we're blessed with extraordinary amount of natural resources that sets us apart. they have a lot of natural resources down in central and south america too. and it isn't because our climate is so much preferred to theirs. they have a favorite climate in most of their continent as well and a lot of people go down there because their climate is

favorable to ours. i have a cousin who spent eight years in the peace corps down there he was in the mountain, he had the only refrigerators for miles around, it's buzz he's a diabetic and needed to keep his insulin in a propane-powered refrigerator. i talked to him those years ago, i said, what's the yield potential for corn? we'll raise over 200 bushel an ache for the our neighborhood and down there, a decent crop back then was a lit overall 00 bushel he said it's got the potential to raise 100 bushel. what does it need? fertilizers and seed corn. can't you get fertilizer and seed corn down there? his answer was, after i pressed him very hard in those idealist exyears when we're still young and haven't experienced a lot of the world, and he more than i had, and his answer was, you have to understand the mindset when you're in subsistencing a cufrlture as opposed to agriculture for profit he grew up on a farm he said the difficult thing you have is, don't -- is to try to not get

so hungry you have to eat your seed corn. that's a different mindset. we do capital investment here. we wouldn't think of starting a house and building a house very often at least unless we had the capital lined up to go in and build that thing and frame it up and close it in and get it wired and get the utilities set up and put the roofing and siding on and pave the driveway. we might sod the line and have that penciled into our deal and then we start. down there it's a different attitude. they get a little money together and go buy a few bricks and put that in thele with of the house. a little more money, they do a little more. they might be building on the house for years and years an year, may maybe they don't ever get to live in it, but their children do. because they don't have access to capital like we have, because they're not capitalists. they're marxists. and they live with the oppression of marxism that has to be mind control and thought control and if you fear that your neighbors are going to report you to the regime, if

you even fear that your family members that sit around the supper table with you, that one of them might be carry -- currying favor with the regime and report what you said at the supper table at night, after a while, it disciplines your thought, to not think those things anymore because what you think eventually you might say and what you say might get you in trouble with the regime and might get you imprisoned, incarcerated, and then you can be the subject of the regime and have to suffer through the incarcerations we know of of the dissidents that are there in cuba in venezuela. i'm amazed that one could be ims preed with what cuba has bill. i don't know that anybody is particularly impressed with what venezuela has. they do have oil, they're blessed with natural resource, they've got the wrong form and wrong system of government, mr. speaker. what makes people -- gives people an opportunity that gives them prosperity and lets

them plan not only for their future and put in capital investment, build a home, get it paid for, put some money in the bank, have an investment for a 401k so that you can live comfortably in your retirement, those things come from capitalism from free enterprise, free enterprise economy, they don't come from a marxist state that has a central command that controls it all and i'm very troubled that the inspiration that the united states is isn't being utilized to the extent it needs to be. so as i look at the void in our foreign policy, and i look at a president who has made it his foreign policy to lead from behind, and then i think -- i look around the world and i see, where is the leadership vacuum and what -- power abhors a vacuum, so it rushes into that vacuum. right now there's a bit of a power vacuum in venezuela, but

i don't know that we have any kind of plan or strategy to even voice that strong support for the freedom-loving people that live in places like venezuela and cue be let our light shine. send the message to them, get this operation going so that one day, we can see the western hemisphere not only just be the foundation of western civilization in the modern world, but it can grow and prosper and we can live in -- by d harmony with free enterprise, free trade and open access to everybody's market on an equal basis, not a preferential basis. when we pass the free trade agreement, which encludes many of the central american countries that opened up markets for us. we'd given them access to our markets. it opened up our markets. we need to go down there now and say thank you and meet people and build the kind of

relationships necessary, an american presence, and i mean a united states of american presence in central and south america should be grown and should be expanded and it should be part of our strategy to strengthen our relationships in this hemisphere and if we do a far better job than we have done in the past, then we also have the moral authority to strengthen our relationships outside of this hemisphere and in the eastern as well as the western hemisphere. mr. speaker, i'm very troubled also by that strategy of leading behind in can'try after country, i'm troubled that president obama, as he came into office and he was elected in early november of 2008 and the 17th of november, 2008, then-ambassador to iraq, ryan crocker a stellar public servant, impressive individual, as far as an ambassador is concerned, and someone who, if

you listen to him talk, you know he's got a deep knowledge base on that part of the world, ambassador ryan crocker signed the agreement, the status of forces agreement in iraq and in it, it just simpley cleared out all u.s. influence and all u.s. troop presence in iraq with the exception of a few marines inside the green zone at the new u.s. embassy. i looked at the bases we'd established there the airstrips we'dest tablied there the billions of dollars invested in military and logistical infrastructure, essentially, our pledge was to sack up our with thes and go home. i was troubled when i read that agreement. it was already signed on that november 17, when i read it, i contacted the white house and said, you're pulling everything out? and everything out of iraq with the exception of a few marines in the green zone near the u.s. embassy? giving away air bases?

and the answer was, this is -- we wanted to clear the field so that the incoming president will have free rein and we hope and expect that we -- he will renegotiate a u.s. presence on these bases in iraq. now, i don't know the depth of the agreement that took us to that point on november 17, 2008, i just know what that agreement said and later on, of course or ba ma was already elected president, later on, he was inaugurated, january 20 the following year, 2009, he continued with the strategy of the pullout in iraq and the negotiations that i think should have and had a real opportunity to be successful failed and so that agreement on november 17, 2008, essentially stood and all of our military and munitions, the foundation for securing -- security we'dest tab learned in the entire country of iraq, gone. gone. down to just an embassy security personnel presence was it. all the blood, all the

treasure, handed over to the shia who were led by and maliki. and we were advised by some of our top foreign policy people, we shouldn't worry because iran won't be exerting its influence in iraq, there's a natural tension, they fought a war back in the 1980's, so they're not going to team up in a way, they're not dwoning to line up against american interests, they're not going to be a thorn in our side our troublesome and look what happened in iraq instead. yes, a strong influence on the part of the iranians. the iranians pushing military supplies through iraq, reported in the news a couple of days ago, and also the al qaeda flag flying in places like fallujah andra mahdi, places i have been to, places -- fallujah and rah mue dee, places where they're local leadership said, we're going to rebuild this city and

live in peace and prosperity. we all know, mr. speaker, you can't live in peace and prosperity if you're living underneath that black al qaeda flag. that's the result of leading from behind. that's the result of stepping out of iraq and handing that country over. that's the result of not focusing on the negotiations necessary toest tab learn a status of forces agreement in iraq that could have povided the security and stability and training necessary for the iraqis to protect themselves from the outside influence that now has a powerful influence in those places that were paid for, some of them more than nce, and that encludes fallujah, in american blood, mr. speaker. that's iraq. afghanistan. the president found himself pushed into a situation what where he had to order a surge, even though he jected the surge ordered by president bush in iraq and it was all by objective accounts a successful surge in iraq.

president obama, mr. speaker, ordered the surge of a minimum number of troops in afghanistan and i recall general mcchrystal laying out the numbers, i don't have them exactly committed to memory but something to the extent of 75,000 troops will get the job done, 50,000 it will take a while and maybe we'll get a job done but if you get down to 35,000 troops you're barely able to hope that you can get the job done, the president opted for the lesser of the lesser option and went in with a minimalist attitude and leaked out in a slow way and reinforced troops in afghanistan, as soon as he ordered the surge, the same tile, he announced when the queets would pull out. i don't know how any military strategist would announce when they were going to pull out. that says to the enemy, you

have to hold on past this date, you'll no longer have anybody to fight when they're gone. i think, mr. speaker that leading from behind has created a vacuum, has created a vacuum in iraq that's being filled by al qaeda and the iranians and conflicting iraqis again and leading from behind in afghanistan is creating a vacuum being filled by the taliban and when we look at where this is going, i'm asking, what's our objective there any longer? why -- what are we trying to preserve? i haven't heard this president tell us his goal or his objective, but i do know this, in listening to the chame of he armed services committee how it boiled down from mr. mckeon, and that is this, if you are going to order our troops into battle, mr. president, commander-in-chief, you owe them their you are support for them and their commission.

you can't say you support the troops without supporting their mission. and that needs to be articulated by our commander-in-chief. you can't support the troops unless you support their mission. you have to articulate that mission and let them know that the sacrifice is worth it and why the sacrifice is worth it. if you don't think so, you have to give a different order. now i take us to egypt and this is a foreign policy discussion and we can go a whole year and not have a debate on foreign policy. throughout the middle east. egypt, libya, lebanon and israel are countries that i visited with a small delegation of members right before christmas, so it's fairly fresh. in egypt, it's an interesting

stop. the things that i learned there doesn't match up with our state department view which is i think is a reflection to mirror the president's view. in september, when we met with the interim president and also with the commander of the military, it was only just june -july 3 that the egyptians came to the streets. and i have to back up on the history a little bit more on this, in that, mubarak was a heavy-handed deck tator and he was there for years. and yet he was someone we had done business with. if you look back through the history of the our relationship with egypt, it warmed up with president eisenhower when he said you need to move out of there and the egyptians will

control the sue ezz canal and it was the right call and the british did pull back from their operations going on in the sue ezz and brought about greater degree of stability. 1979 is the year as i recall, that we began to enjoy operations with egyptian troops. and some of them were national guard personnel but a joint operations in the sinai and we have conducted those operations in the sinai up until this year. we have a strong relationship with egypt. since 1979, their equipment has been by and large, but vastly predominantly u.s. and the influence has been minimal. that is how i want to keep it. if we are going to have peace in the middle east, egypt is an

anchor that is necessary for peace in the middle east. so when our president went to cairo and gave his speech in cairo on june 9, 2009, he ceded hood in brother hep the front row. they knew that the muslim brotherhood formed in egypt and pushing to take a takeover of mubarak and they didn't understand that the message was support for the voices of those folks sitting in the front row. and after that speech, our then secretary of state, hillary clinton, made the statement that mubarak needs to be gone yesterday, he needs to be gone yesterday. the egyptian people didn't

understand why it appeared to them that the new administration was supporting the muslim brotherhood opposing mubarak and implying that the leader of the muslim brotherhood should come to power. and as they demonstrated in the streets, mubarak was pushed out and into elected office -- was the leader of the miami brotherhood. and it is incompetence in the government and each move was that they wouldn't some another election and the individual ights they had was going to be diminished. and the 83 million egyptians, of which 5.6 million voted for morsi as president and he did an incompetent job and as the economy went into shambles.

we were better off under mubarak, they said. on june 30 of last summer, the egyptian people emerged into the streets and out of 83 million egyptians, 30 million to 33 million came to the strees to put st to remove morsi and in a government of the people. and june 30, july, 1, 2 and 3, they pleaded for the military to step in and take over and at that point, the general stepped in to take over the government of egypt and they provided that stability and it was bloody in the streets of cairo. ou saw radical islamists raiding christian weddings.

when we are there in september, they burned out as many as 100 christian churches. how are they caught in and flict and being attacked. the muslim brotherhood wanted to create more chay whose because they pleeved they could take power. and less than 9%, christians, they said, we are going to pray for these people who are destroying our churches and we are going to forgive them and pray for peace and that was a component that brought about the demonstration administrations in the streets from june 30 until july 3. and out of that came from that the stability from the tour mill. the interim president and with the general in command of the military who told us in

september of last year, as did the president, we are writing a constitution and this constitution, we are going to offer it out to the people when we get it polished up to go to the polls and ratify the constitution in egypt. that was in september as they made that. i remarked that they had released and written the constitution and it had been published shortly a couple of weeks before we got there and i said to him, you know, he had promised that you were going to deliver the constitution to the people in november and it didn't show up until december. and he looked at me and he said, we were only 72 hours late, 72 hours into december. i think that's pretty good for

government, don't you? i said if you were in my country similar answer. they pluse produced the constitution and put it on the ballot after we left and passed overwhelmingly a vote of the people of egypt and sets up elections in egypt in a couple of months and elections for a new president down the line less than three months after that and we are seeing the pieces being put in place even though the news media reports every outburst of unrest that is there, i stee stability being anchored in egypt, but not being anchored by the leadership of our administration. and not being anchored by the state department but the good judgment of those they have empowered and will continue to empower in the upcoming

elections. when we are told that the russians, we don't have to worry about the russians doing business in egypt because they don't give any military equipment away. if the egyptians don't have any money, it would seem they have loans out from of the saudis and we have the russians who have negotiated an r an equipment eal for the first time since pre-1979. we didn't need the russians in egypt. they filled a vacuum, a vacuum due to lack of leadership, a vacuum due by the implication that our administration is supporting the muslim brotherhood. why do they support the muslim brotherhood. we are trying to get them out of here. and my response was this, the american people do not support

the muslim brotherhood, in fact they oppose it and this administration is on the wrong side of the issue in egypt and i think they will have to turn that giant ship around slowly because the administration will have to save face. i can't expect that the president is going to go out in the rose garden and step behind the podium and say i confess that i was wrong in egypt. there will have to be smoking mirrors and if things go well, we can ratchet our policy to get behind the voice of the people of egypt and strengthen the trade partnerships and strengthen the military relationships so at least they have the equipment. so we see al qaeda growing in

the sinai. we don't like the idea that there was a dualy elected muslim brotherhood president that was so bad that the egyptians poured into the streets. can you imagine if that percentage of the population, say roughly 40% of the population were all on the streets in the same day, can you imagine what that would be like if 120 million americans, 125 million americans came to the streets and stayed there from june 30 until july 3. do you think it would bring about a change with that kind of junk rest? that's the mag any sued. i only have seen this mag any sued a few times. i can only think when they have the response in georgia, when the russians went in and invaded he other client states and

invaded and occupied -- i was there a week or so after that. they had hands across georgia where a million were in the streets. i saw thousands of them, their babies wrapped up in their flags, standing in unity. when people come out of their homes to the tune of 25% to 40% of their population, you know something's wrong and that didn't get the attention of this administration to come behind the voice of the people. still they insist there was a dual-elected morsi and we are going to stick with the guy and our president gave a speech in cairo and september a message and it was a factor in the change of power in egypt when morsi came to power and they did consolidate their power and they

shut down the power. and the egyptians rose up and it's because of a vacuum and because of leading from behind and it's from having sympathy from people who are carry within them. and that's the muslim brotherhood. that's egypt. if i go on and look at the things that happened in the more than 2 1/2 years in the arab spring and each of those things when the arab spring erupt the in country after country across africa and around the mediterranean, it went against the interest of the united states. the belief that was in the mind f jimmy carter when he saw homeini return to iran and there was a religious leader we

ought to be supportive of him. look at what that gave us. and we have been fighting that every since but not without the full knowledge of what's going on. . you hear people that went to libya and you feel like they went and walked around the ruins where ambassador chris stevens and three other americans died, but they don't go there, they can't go there, we don't have the security personnel to go there, neither do the officials from tripoli. the country is divided at this point and the terrorists in control of most of benghazi and they go into tripoli once in a while and have surrounded the parliament and other government buildings and exerted control there, there's still a void and

vacuum. we didn't et -- get it resolve in libya the spite the treasure and blood that was spilled, thankfully not american blood. in lebanon it's an even bigger mess and you have hezbollah controling a significant component of that country and standing out on the streets in the uniforms, under their yellow flags, with their weapons, defiant. they're a terrorist organization, occupying part offings lebanon and beirut and e results in israel, constantly the pressure is on netanyahu and the israelis, don't off little more land you can sacrifice in the belief that you can trade land for peace? there's no model in history that i can find that you can trade land for peace, but still the administration pushes, negotiate to give up something, a two-state solution, let's move the jews out of the west bank because after all, doesn't everybody know that they have no business living in a place

like judea where they have lived since antiquity? it's their ancestral homeland. what jouseties is there in pushing people out. if 20% of the population of israel proper is ashe and they can live in -- is arab and they can live in peace and armny there the fence is to keep people out be the 20e% of arabs they live there they serve on the knessett, they have a voice equal to that of jews that live there, but they can live in relative harmony in israel proper, why is it that jaws -- jews don't have the right to live in places like gaza or the west bank? and then the is netanyahu or the israelis? i don't think so, mr. speaker. i think we need to be in full-throated support with every kind of commitment necessary to bring about the

kind of solutions that promote god-given liberty and things that we know here as american ideals. we need to elect the next president a very astute foreign policy president, who is -- who believes in free enterprise who believes until pillars of american exceptionalism and believes in exporting them to the rest of the world because we're far better off with an american policy than a promotion of our beliefs and our ideals in other places in the world where they want to embrace our way of living, than we are pulling back and allowing that vacuum to be filled by the power-hungry despots of people like a castro, a chavez a maduro a putin. that's the mission for america. it's one of the missions for america. when the presidential candidates come to iowa, mr. speaker, i want to ask them, speak on foreign policy. become a student on foreign

policy. go, travel, draw your own conclusions but in the end, we're a world play e, been a world player for a long time. we need to stay a world player. with that, mr. speaker, i thank you for your attention and yield back the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman yields back. does the gentleman have a motion? mr. king: i move the house do now adjourn. the speaker pro tempore: the question is on the motion to adjourn. those in favor say aye. those opposed, no. the ayes have it. the motion is adopted. acco

moments, a look inside u.s. intelligence from a former national intelligence official. in more than an hour, a hearing on the legislative agenda of disabled veterans. after that, a discussion of the proposed pentagon budget and the cuts spelled out by secretary hagel. itthe new c-span.org makes easier than ever to keep tabs on washington, d.c., and share via facebook, twitter, and other social networks. it lets you access data coverage of events and new tools makes it possible to create short video clips and share them on other social networks. youru can send links to

clips via e-mail. find the share tools on the video player or look for the green icon links. watch on the new c-span.org. if you see something of interest, clip and share with your friends. up next, an insiders look at u.s. intelligence from a former andressional, white house, national intelligence official. he spoke to the world affairs council about intelligence threats, cyber terrorism, and edward snowden. this is a little more than an hour. >> this is the standard list you do of accomplishments of a man and i have to recite them but i will go really fast. he was a white house fellow and he had the experience of working with the national security council with such deadheads as

with thesinger -- general's name? general brent stone. a few minor people like that. he had three major positions in the senate including being the administrative assistant chief , international policy advisor to chris dodd. and a stint with the robert byrd, one of the great characters of american politics. there are few companies he did not touch. i'm sorry. power that he moved their headquarters from texas to greenwich, which was quite amazing.

he was assistant dean of the fletcher school of law and policy and director of communications for the number in position or place intelligence in the united states of america. as thecently communications director of the national geospatial intelligence agency. manage the 16 satellites that guide our navigation systems in the united states. it's quite remarkable. they have 16,000 employees to do that. i think they were doing something else. what are you think? anyway, now he has the role of being chairman of the public utilities regulatory -- what's the last word? authority. [laughter]

let's not how i want to introduce him. he has a lot of skills outside of all of this incredibly serious and important and incredibly intelligent view of the world. he does marvelous imitations and i'm going to ask you to do one. he has an incredible knowledge of languages. to 300 or 400talk people from africa and arthur helped me. business in africa and he had spent a lot of time .n the congo, or zaire they came up in said you got it right. and arthur would say, where are you from?

he said he was from coat dove while --the ivory coast. then someone from togo would come and he would speak the native tongue only in about eight words but he left about 10 africans completely in a blither. how does this white guy from connecticut miller language? with that, can you do jimmy carter? thank you. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you, peter. i can certainly save all the introductions i have received in life, but yours was certainly the most recent. [laughter] you know, i understand that you are now the chairman emeritus of

the world affairs council. we all remember that it comes from two latin words, out of and "deserves to be." thank you, peter. i will forgo your offer to do imitations here. well, maybe one. thank you to megan and the world affairs council for having me here today. you mentioned henry kissinger and the wonderful evening you put on for him. i spoke to him at an event in washington after recalling that. he said it was a great event and he kept the video made of him because it has so many of his friends on it. they play up for visitors who come to the house and he remembers very finally his time here. fondly.members very my first security clearance, i was a youngster in the white house and it was decided that i

,ould write some correspondence decision packages that went from kissinger to the president. i had the last check, common sense, is everything here? so on and so forth. all kinds of security clearances, some the existence of which were classified. was in the cold war days. he was a southern guy. he said to watch after yourself and not do anything stupid. the soviet and eastern bloc nations know how we operate. they know at your job is. there's a good chance trying to compromise you so don't do anything dumb. i said, can you give me a little guidance? what should i expect? ,e looks back at me and he says

i've had a long career in counterintelligence and counterterrorism. i've given this briefing maybe ,00 times and during my career i've never given it to someone as ugly as you are. [laughter] is a woman who is interested in you and what you do in intelligence, you know dam well you are being compromised. [laughter] so, megan -- [laughter] i've been waiting three decades for a learned woman to be interested in what i do in politics. world affairs the council for inviting me here. you had no idea the deep need this has fulfilled. i have a lot of friends here today. when i you go back to was a toddler. some i worked with when i was a white house fellow. others i've known for many

different incarnations and i thank you for coming. in addition to our distinguished peter kelly he was in many careers in addition to law and politics. at patron of the arts, he is also had a career in international relations. we do have our attorney general and i thank you for coming. not everyone knows there are three siblings. as talented as our attorney general is, by far the most attractive and brightest is his sister. i think rita for coming. in the intelligence business, you have to keep secrets. you learn and you promised never to divulge. becca be stressful for many people and a bit lonely.