Sen. Vitter on Iraq, Immigration, and Boko Haram

The following are excerpted quotes made by Senator David Vitter on Tuesday’s Secure Freedom Radio. The entire interview may be listened to here.

On Iraq:

I think we are where we are because this Administration made decisions regarding getting troops out of Iraq on a domestic political basis, not on a national security basis. Now, what’s done is done, but I think that needs to be said and recognized. This is a direct consequence of us really rushing out. Nobody wanted us to stay there forever, but us rushing out and not leaving anything adequate to defend our gains in any way–again, that was pure U.S. politics, not national security. Now the question is what we do, and the clock is ticking.

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We need to be really careful, and certainly we don’t want whatever we do and whatever happens to actually increase the hand of Iran- – its already way too significant with this government and with Iraq. We don’t want to increase that.

On illegal immigration:

I think we need to recognize the mistakes we’ve made as a country. This is a direct result of having a policy of little to no enforcement. This has encouraged the problem to actively grow and multiply, including this new exploding problem of unattended minors.

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Frank, like you, Ronald Reagan is a hero to me, but one of the most significant mistakes he made is signing that amnesty bill in 1986. And if you remember, all of the arguments and all of the promises were, at that time, similar to these arguments and promises related to so-called “comprehensive immigration reform” today…The amnesty happened immediately, the enforcement never happened. So instead of solving the problem, it quadrupled the problem.

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We need to stop sanctuary cities. We need to stop this amnesty trend. We need to have real enforcement. We need to take a step-by-step enforcement approach, which we’re not doing at all now. Right now, the message is exactly the opposite. “Come on in, the water’s fine. You’re going to not only probably get into this country, but be able to stay and possibly even get your family here.” And that’s a big, big issue with this unattended minor influx.

On Boko Haram:

Of course what we’re talking about is this horrendous group that kidnapped these young girls in Nigeria and still holds them, is probably forcibly converting them and perhaps even worse… For many years under her watch, Hillary Clinton and the State Department refused to properly label [Boko Haram] as a terrorist organization. We’ve been digging into it and we’re finding that they also misrepresented facts to Congress and failed to properly report required facts to Congress. Now the obvious question is, why–and we’re looking into that. One issue that I think is a serious issue is the fact that there are major contributors to the Clinton Foundation who did not want this designation to happen because they were working on commercial developments in Nigeria, and that would have hurt their prospects of completing these commercial developments with success [if there was] any hint of significant terrorism there.