Mr. President, yesterday, we saw the President of the United States and many others at Dover Air Force Base presiding over a ceremony that is very sacred to those of us who served, and that is a dignified return of remains from the war…
Mr. President, yesterday, we saw the President of the United States and many others at Dover Air Force Base presiding over a ceremony that is very sacred to those of us who served, and that is a dignified return of remains from the war zone. And that process happens beginning in the war zone, through Dover, to the hometown of our fallen heroes.
I have participated in many of those ceremonies myself, to include carrying friends of mine off the plane. One of those is on this bracelet. He was cut in half by an Iranian BFD.
This regime that we are fighting does not care about our partisan politics. They don't care who you voted for, who you pray to, or where you live. They want to kill all of us. They don't just say it; they actually do it. And they have been doing it for 47 years.
This is a war of choice; the Democrats are correct. It is a war of choice that was begun by a radical, lunatic band of terrorists that took over a beautiful nation 47 years ago--took it over with brutality, force, and savagery. And the second they took it over, they didn't free their people, they didn't unleash the largest oil reserves in the world to build schools and bridges. They took it over to murder their own people and to spread their disgusting ideology across the world, and that is exactly what they have been doing.
They don't just say it and talk about it. You don't have to believe what they say. You can simply watch what they have done. They have attacked families, women, children, innocent people. They don't just attack them and kill them. They rape them. They skin them alive, on camera. They celebrate it. They honor those people who do disgusting things that we would put in jail for the rest of their lives in this country, and they do it for fun. And they pay them money to do it, and they are heroes for that nation. They have done it to friends of mine. They have done it to families who have been in this Chamber.
The fact that we sit here and listen to elected officials of this country defend these lunatics who want us all dead--they want all of you dead. They want all of us dead. They don't want us to disappear with the snap of a finger; they want us to be raped, burned alive, and cut into pieces.
Watch the video from October 7. That is what they want to happen, from Maine to San Diego, from Seattle to Miami. They want this country turned into a burning husk of its former self. And you don't have to theorize that. That is what they do--from the 1983 barracks bombing where 280 marines were vaporized in the morning; from the USS Cole to the Achille Lauro; to every terrorist attack from the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas. These are not humanitarian freedom organizations; they are death-dealing cults, and they want all of us to die brutal deaths.
William Buckley was abducted in 1985, an American military officer. He was skinned alive on camera by the Iranians. American prisoners of war who were captured--they were never called prisoners of war because they were captured by lunatic terrorists, so they were not subject to the Geneva Convention. They were captured and murdered--power drills through their brains. This is in Iran.
These are families that have dealt with this, and they have never gotten a single dime. These families have never gotten restitution.
And not a single President has ever stood up to them. Love Donald Trump or hate him, love his policies, hate ICE, love ICE--whatever. There has never been a single President who has stood up to Iran and hit back. For 47 years, our troops and our families have been absorbing attack after attack after attack, all over the world.
And their radical ideology does not stop at the Persian Gulf. It doesn't stop at Tel-Aviv. They want to do this everywhere. It is a global radical ideology, and we have been fighting it for half a century.
We didn't start this war. We did not. But we will finish it. And forever wars are not popular with anybody these days. Both sides love to attack our forever wars. I can promise you, being someone overseas wearing the uniform, when you are fighting for your country, you don't care what party is in office, but you are fighting to defend your country. When you turn on the news and see your elected officials stabbing you in the back, telling you that you are failing, that you have failed every goal of the war is what I just heard--the last time I checked, we have wiped these bastards out. An occasional missile strike and boats in the strait--that is not military strength. Those are the flailings of a failing empire. Those are the flailings of a nation in collapse because they deserve it.
So I encourage our colleagues on both sides of the aisle--whatever is politically convenient, whatever plays well on Twitter or Facebook--to think about the people who are deployed right now, standing on that wall with a loaded weapon, who have volunteered to defend our country and our way of life, because they are there defending us in a just war--because we did not start the war with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
They started it with us 47 years ago, and their attacks have gone unanswered for half a century. It is time to fix this problem and make sure another generation of Americans does not have to fight this murderous, savage adversary.