Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. WOMACK. Madam Chair, I'm so pleased to hear my friend from Kentucky further discuss the true intent of what his amendment does; and respectfully, I recognize that, in order for the amendment to be made in order, it has to be written broadly. And because it was written broadly, there were concerns expressed by a number of people on both sides of the aisle about what an amendment written this way might do that would negatively affect a lot of
the things that we presently do and have been doing for a long time in Egypt.

I can speak personally to it because it was right after 9/11, while commanding an infantry battalion in Arkansas with the Arkansas National Guard, that I was called to duty to lead a task force of infantry soldiers and other personnel of over 500 men and women to the Sinai in Egypt to become the U.S. battalion so that other forces of the 18th Airborne Corps could go prosecute missions elsewhere in support of the war on terror.

The gunslingers of Arkansas distinguished themselves by going to the Sinai in Egypt on very short notice and executed that mission, the U.S. battalion in the South Sinai Peninsula that does the observe-and-report mission, consistent with all of the protocols that were established with the Treaty of Peace in 1979. In fact, our unit was there during the 20th anniversary of the MFO. Since that time, other State National Guard units have followed this mission and have been doing it consistently--Oregon, Oklahoma, and others--until, because of sequestration, the active component has accepted responsibility for that mission once again. So we've had a lot of our men and women across the country into the Sinai to do the mission of the MFO.

On top of that, our country has had a number of exercises called Bright Star, which is, if not the largest, one of the largest military training exercises that takes place on a biennial basis.

Now it didn't happen in 2011 because of unrest in Egypt, but my understanding is that Bright Star is certainly going to occur again.

So it is our hope, and as I said, I'm glad that my friend from Kentucky has further clarified the intent of his amendment, that it is not designed to affect the Multinational Forward Observer, nor is it designed to affect the training exercises that would happen with a Bright Star operation, nor does it affect what goes on with the Office of Military Cooperation or the Defense Attache program or, as he has indicated, our marine security to outposts in that region.

So again, I am very, very pleased, and we can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief that there is no intent in here at all to abandon, Madam Chair, the Treaty of Peace that was famously signed in 1979, and everybody has the vivid reminder of that picture with Jimmy Carter in the middle and Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin signing over that peace treaty.

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