Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) will file legislation on Friday to ban American citizens who fight alongside the Islamic State (IS) and other terror groups from returning to the United States, where they pose a significant terror threat, according to sources in the senator's office.
Cruz, who first proposed the legislation last year, seeks to strip those Americans who travel abroad to fight with IS (also known as ISIL or ISIS) of their U.S. citizenship rights and stop them from coming back stateside.
The bill, known as the Expatriate Terrorist Act (E.T.A.), tightens and updates existing regulations by which a U.S. citizen effectively renounces his or her citizenship.
Cruz said that he is filing the bill partly in response to President Obama's Tuesday State of the Union address, which he described as "detached from reality" on the foreign policy front.
"President Obama's approach to foreign policy refuses to acknowledge the threats our enemies pose to our national security-it is detached from reality and making the world a more dangerous place," said Cruz, who also is releasing a new video that takes aim at Obama for misleading the nation about these threats in his annual address.
Cruz said stripping American IS fighters of their citizenship is a step toward securing the country and restoring the country's image.
"We've seen the grave consequence of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy unravel with respect to Iran, Russia, and now Yemen," Cruz said. "These consequences are not confined to faraway lands. They directly threaten America and our allies."
"That is why this week, I am re-filing the Expatriate Terrorist Act, which prevents Americans who have fought abroad for designated terrorist groups from returning to the United States," he said. "I look forward to working with senators on both sides of the aisle on this and additional measures to secure our nation and restore America's leadership in the world."
In his new video, an advance copy of which was provided to the Free Beacon, Cruz makes the case that Obama's statements on the foreign policy front do not comport with reality.
King Salman, Saudi Arabia's newly crowned monarch, has a controversial history of helping to fund radical terror groups and has maintained ties with several anti-Semitic Muslim clerics known for advocating radical positions, according to reports and regional experts.
Salman, previously the country's defense minister and deputy prime minister, was crowned king last week after his half-brother King Abdullah died at the age of 90.
While Abdullah served as a close U.S. ally and was considered a reformer by many, Saudi Arabia has long been criticized by human rights activists for its treatment of women and its enforcement of a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
President Barack Obama is scheduled to travel to the Saudi capital of Riyadh on Tuesday to pay respects to Abdullah and meet with Salman, who also has been seen as a moderate friend of the United States.
However, throughout his public career in government, Salman has embraced radical Muslim clerics and has been tied to the funding of radical groups in Afghanistan, as well as an organization found to be plotting attacks against America, according to various reports and information provided by David Weinberg, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
In 2001, an international raid of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, which Salman founded in 1993, unearthed evidence of terrorist plots against America, according to separate exposés written by Dore Gold, an Israeli diplomat, and Robert Baer, a former CIA officer.
Salman is further accused by Baer of having "personally approved all important appointments and spending" at the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), a controversial Saudi charity that was hit with sanctions following the attacks of September 11, 2001, for purportedly providing material support to al Qaeda.
Salman also has been reported to be responsible for sending millions of dollars to the radical mujahedeen that waged jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s, according to Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer who is now director of the Brookings Intelligence Project.
"In the early years of the war-before the U.S. and the Kingdom ramped up their secret financial support for the anti-Soviet insurgency-this private Saudi funding was critical to the war effort," according to Riedel. "At its peak, Salman was providing $25 million a month to the mujahedeen. He was also active in raising money for the Bosnian Muslims in the war with Serbia."
Salman also has embraced radical Saudi clerics known for their hateful rhetoric against Israel and Jews.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey has established an essay competition to honor the late Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, the Pentagon announced Monday.
The competition, to be hosted at the National Defense University over the next academic year, will focus on issues related to the Arab and Muslim worlds, according to the official DOD News.
"This is an important opportunity to honor the memory of the king, while also fostering scholarly research on the Arab-Muslim world, and I can think of no better home for such an initiative than NDU," Dempsey said in a statement.
Abdullah, 90, who ruled since 2005 and was the power behind the throne of his ailing predecessor, King Fahd bin Abdulaziz for a decade before that, died late Thursday and was succeeded by his brother and crown prince, Salman bin Abdulaziz.
Dempsey met the king in 2001, when he served as an adviser to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, which Abdullah commanded.
"In my job to train and advise his military forces, and in our relationship since, I found the king to be a man of remarkable character and courage," Dempsey said.
Though Abdullah was undeniably a key U.S. ally in the Middle East as head of his oil-rich kingdom, the official U.S. response to his death has also drawn criticism by dissidents in the Arab world and human rights groups.
President Obama is cutting short his visit to India to pay his respects to King Salman in Riyadh on Tuesday, and praise for Abdullah from U.S. officials has been effusive.
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Paris Massacre March redux; Obama skips 70th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation Before the din of more than a few national leaders meeting in France to commemorate the Paris Massacre, sans Barack Obama, has faded from earshot, the American Chief Executive has decided to again take a powder on a European meeting of world leaders to remember murdered Jews. As reported by the Washington Free Beacon news portal and also the New York Times, both on Jan. 22, 2015, neither Barack Obama or Vice President Joe Biden nor will Secretary of State John Kerry be representing the United States at the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp next Tuesday in Poland.
With the American delegation headed up by someone further down the Obama Administration's pecking order, Secretary of the Treasury Jacob "Jack" Lew will be the senior American present. Thus far, those confirming attendance includes President François Hollande of France, President Joachim Gauck of Germany and President Heinz Fischer of Austria, as well as the official heads of state to include King Philippe of Belgium, King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands and Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark. In the meantime, Israel, Croatia, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia, and Poland have already announced they are sending top-level delegates.
Piece By Piece, Monks Scramble To Preserve Iraq's Christian History
In an unfinished building in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, displaced Christian children sing a little song about returning to their village. "We're going back," they sing, "to our houses, our land, our church."
Right now, they're living in an open concrete structure. The self-styled Islamic State, or ISIS, took over their home village of Qaraqosh, and the Christians fled in fear, on foot.
They finish their song and applause breaks out from two unlikely figures. One is a beaming Iraqi in white robes, Father Najeeb Michaeel. The other is Father Columba Stewart, a tall, spare and pale Texan with black-rimmed glasses and black vestments. Both are monks.
Michaeel explains that the church and various NGOs have provided shelter, heaters, pots, pans and food. But Stewart's main reason for coming from his monastery in Minnesota is a parallel rescue project, located in a secret house nearby.
Michaeel is afraid to reveal the precise location, but in a cool, sunlit room there is a mass of books.
"It's a big collection of our archive, and the manuscripts there and the old books," he says proudly.
Father Michaeel has stashed a substantial part of what remains of the Christian libraries of Iraq.
There have been Dominican monks in the city of Mosul since about 1750. They amassed a library of thousands of ancient manuscripts and say they brought the printing press to Iraq in the early 1800s. Rattling around in a box, Michaeel brings out Aramaic typeset.
As an Islamist insurgency roiled Mosul in 2008, monks smuggled their library out, bit by bit, to the Christian village of Qaraqosh. Last summer, when ISIS was inching closer, Michaeel took action. He prepared everything and put the collection in a big truck at 5 a.m.
"We passed three checkpoints without any problem, and I think the Virgin Mary [had] a hand to protect us," he says.
