Rep. Doug Lamborn on SFR

Frank Gaffney: Welcome back, I’m very pleased to say that a distinguished member of the House of Representatives joins us. A senior member of the Armed Services Committee in that body, the Chairman of the House Natural Resources committee’s Energy subcommittee: a very important post, he is representative Doug Lamborn. Representing the 5^th congressional district in Colorado. He serves as the co-chair of the Republican Israel caucus, and so much more. It’s always a delight to have him with us. Congressman, welcome back and thank you. I know you’re out in God’s country I appreciate you taking a few minutes to talk with us.

Rep. Lamborn: Frank it is always good to chat with you and your listeners.

Frank Gaffney: Thank you. Congressman, one of the things that is kind of in sharp relief particularly after the attack in Orlando is the distinct problem that we don’t seem to really understand what we’re up against. This was evidenced by the redacted transcript of the shooter’s calls to 911. I’m interested in your thoughts on that and if you might tell us a little bit about the effort of your democratic colleagues to divert attention further onto gun control and what you think of that idea.

Rep. Lamborn: They had this sit in and they were trying to bring back the days of civil rights protests in the 60s. And yet, their objective was to take away civil rights. To impose restrictions on our second amendment right – to keep and bear arms in a way that is against civil rights. And they are shifting attention, if they can get away with it, away from terrorism and the influence of ISIS on homegrown terrorists like Omar Mateen in Orlando. And they’re trying to put it on gun control. You know even if their solutions had been enforced, that would not have stopped Mateen. So it is ironic that they really don’t even have solutions. The ones they’ve proposed wouldn’t have made a difference.

Frank Gaffney: When you hear the administration talking terrorism, if you will, or violent extremism as they call it having nothing to do with Sharia, with the jihad that it impels, or with Islam more broadly. It does seem as though that is blinding us to certain realities, and we were talking earlier in the program with Dr. Zudhi Jasser who testified before Senator Ted Cruz earlier this week. He made the point that not only is this precluding us from being able to prevent violence by understanding what is coming and nipping it in the bud, but it also is really undermining people like himself – reform minded Muslims. We seem to be doing the bidding of the Muslim Brotherhood and its ilk.

Rep. Lamborn: You know Frank, the President refuses to even mention the phrase Islamic terrorism or jihadism for that matter. He just doesn’t get it. He refuses to even acknowledge the source of these inspired attacks – ISIS and other related inspired attacks, then we can’t really deal with the problem. You know it starts with having our eyes wide open as to where the problem comes from. It is kind of like his inability to have a foreign policy strategy. He is just letting Syria and Iraq deteriorate. It happened in Libya also under Hillary Clinton. They just let conditions deteriorate. At this point he is waiting a hoping he can wash his hands of it and let the next president deal with it. But when we precipitously withdrew from Iraq without any status of forces agreement, no US presence, they turned to Iran, things deteriorate between the Sunnis and Shiites. Or in Syria when he withdrew from the red line he had given to Bashar Al Assad without any consequences. Things just deteriorate…

Frank Gaffney: And predictably so.

Rep. Lamborn: Yeah predictably so…So ISIS now has huge territory – they call it a caliphate. They are finding disturbed people, aimless people, disgruntled people like Omar Mateen in Orlando to do these horrific attacks in Europe and here in the US. And that is going to continue. We required him to come out with a policy on Syria; he still doesn’t even have that. His one proposal was to do a new authorization of the use of military force, and by the way we are gonna make it very restrictive and shackle the next president. Well we’re not gonna shackle the next president. We’re not going to take his advice.

Frank Gaffney: Thanks but no thanks as they say. You know, I’m sure the administration and its apologists would claim that we are rolling up the Islamic State. They have less territory today than they used to. But that doesn’t take into account that they have opened up new franchises in places like Libya for example, and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Hey speaking of the broader problem, Congressman Doug Lamborn, I wanted to ask you about the relationship of the United States government under President Obama to the Palestinians, including among them I’m sorry to say, Hamas – very much a terrorist franchise associated by the way with the Muslim Brotherhood of course. And more broadly, sir, what do you make of the US policy towards Israel?

Rep. Lamborn: You know I’m working with others in congress to call attention to the fact that we are giving hundreds of millions of dollars to the Palestinians through the UNWRA program overseen by the United Nations to…

Frank Gaffney: This is the welfare relief agency, right

Rep. Lamborn: Yes that’s what it stands for. And yet this group through the UN is giving money to Palestinian groups and organizations that are inspiring hatred. They are inciting hatred and terrorism through the textbooks that they put out, and other public acts that they make, payments that they give to the families of terrorists who murder innocents in Israel. Yet we’re funding that with very few conditions; fewer if any conditions. That is the kind of short sightedness that our administration is doing that does not create peace in the Middle East and is actually making things worse.

Frank Gaffney: Congressman let me turn finally to something near and dear to your heart I know. The president seems determined to get all of those in Guantanamo Bay, out. Some he’s just evidently, going to turn loose on foreign countries, therefore probably in short order foreign battlefields. Some, I think, he still intends to bring to the United States even though that is not permissible under existing law. One of those places where they might be put is SuperMax, not too far from you. What is your view of whether the President can do this under the law and whether congress will take further steps to ensure that he doesn’t?

Rep. Lamborn: Congress will do everything and I will do everything that I can to prevent him from doing that. However he has acted above the law on other occasions like with Dhaka, he said twenty times I don’t have the right to give immigrants who are here illegally, citizenship and will deport them, and he turns around and does the exact opposite. With Guantanamo Bay, Frank, we here in Colorado are very disturbed about the fact that they might be brought to our soil and be put into our communities here in Colorado. But whether it is in Colorado or anywhere that they would come, there’s so many problems. There are security problems, there are radicalization of others problems, and there are constitutional problems. They would be able to demand certain kinds of Habeus Corpus rights or if they go to trial, the release and the opening hearing a lot of sensitive intelligence sources and methods that would be detrimental, devastating, to our intelligence gathering in that part of the world. There are so many things wrong with bringing them to our soil. And it’s all based on foolish campaign promises he made to close down Guantanamo. He’s broken all kinds of campaign promises, why can’t he break this one too? He says that this insights the radicals to come against the West. They came against the West at 9/11 before they had even heard of Guantanamo Bay.

Frank Gaffney: Congressman Doug Lamborn we have to let it at that for the moment. I appreciate very much your time and the great work that you do on behalf of the people of the 5^th district of Colorado and all of us for that matter on the House Armed Services Committee and elsewhere. Keep it up. Come back to us again if you would very soon, sir.