{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://woodall.house.gov/news-story/woodall-%E2%80%98no-good-options-dealing-isis%E2%80%99", "Woodall: No good options for dealing with ISIS", "2014-09-26", "2014", "2014-09", "Republican", "House", "GA", "Rob Woodall", "W000810", "woodall.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "According to Rep. Rob Woodall, the recent Congressional vote to support a military campaign against ISIS did virtually nothing to change American posture in that part of the Middle East. The vision presented by President Obama simply publicized existing policy.\n\u201cWhat he laid out is to do in public what we have been doing in private for over a year now,\u201d Woodall told members of the Rotary Club of South Gwinnett on Thursday.\nThe plan, Woodall explained, has been to arm and train people whose interests the United States believes best align with our own \u2014 a plan he says is seriously flawed.\n\u201cI can\u2019t find anybody at the Pentagon who believes that plan is going to work,\u201d Woodall said. \u201cWhat they believe is that it is the best of all the worse plans we have.\u201d\nTwo years ago, Woodall said, the U.S. might have been able to do some \u201cgood things\u201d to handle the threat ISIS presents. A year ago, he added, the actions might have been \u201cpassable.\u201d\n\u201cThey were once a small band of guys on the highway,\u201d he said. \u201cWe could have ended that with a cruise missile.\u201d\nThat, however, is no longer the case.\n\u201cToday there are absolutely no good options for dealing with ISIS,\u201d he said. \u201cAbsolutely none.\u201d\nThe U.S., Woodall explained, has never faced a terrorist enemy as well-funded as ISIS. That funding, he added, amounts to $1 to 3 million per day.\n\u201cThese folks have their own funding stream coming from the banks they robbed and now the oil they are selling,\u201d he said.\nWoodall described the threat the 40,000-member terrorist organization presents to the United States as \u201cfrightening.\u201d\nI\u2019ve never seen anything like it,\u201d he said.\nAuthorities have identified at least 200 American passport-holders or Visa Waiver Program participants who have trained with ISIS, Woodall said. At least 40 of them have entered the U.S., 15 have been captured.\n\u201cWe have never experienced an enemy with this kind of funding and this kind of access,\u201d he said.\nWoodall encouraged those in attendance at the Sept. 25 meeting at the Northwood Country Club in Lawrenceville to educate themselves about the situation and get involved in the foreign policy discussion.\n\u201cIf you are not involved emotionally in the decisions that Washington makes, we\u2019re going to make the wrong ones,\u201d he said.\nIt is too easy, he added, to be detached from the reality of what U.S. actions overseas really mean.\n\u201cI know that it is too easy to spend other people\u2019s money and I know that it is too easy to spend the lives of other people\u2019s sons and daughters too \u2014 and that\u2019s the one that really matters,\u201d he said.\nIn order for the U.S. mission against ISIS to succeed, Woodall believes citizens must \u201cbuy-in\u201d to the program.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t see many episodes of wild, wild success that weren\u2019t bought in to by the citizens,\u201d Woodall said. \u201cYou see a lot of episodes of failure and sporadic success and intermittent engagement.\u201d\nAnd success, he added, is of the utmost importance.\n\u201cPeople are going to die and I would tell you that Americans are going to die as a result of this ISIS threat if we cannot contain it,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is their mission, it is their desire, it is their goal.\u201d\nWoodall represents the 7th Congressional District which includes most of Gwinnett and Forsyth counties.", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["http://woodall.house.gov/news-story/woodall-%E2%80%98no-good-options-dealing-isis%E2%80%99"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.749112106859684, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}