mr. chairman , i thank the distinguished chairman of the committee on international relations for yielding me this time and for his continued leadership on narcotics issues as we tackle these questions at the international level .  the preceding speaker said that some of these amounts might be fairly small .  well , in madrid it probably was fairly small .  spanish authorities have said that the muslim militant cell exchanged for hashish and cash to fund it .  i do not know how much it was .  it probably was not a truckload of hashish .  it may not have been a big thing , but there are a lot of people dead .  the link between narcotics and terrorism is growing , as the distinguish chairman pointed out ; and we have heard the same thing in the drug policy subcommittee , and that is anywhere from slightly below half to slightly over half of the major terrorist organizations in the world are funded by drugs , most likely heroin and hashish , but also cocaine .  as we get better at driving them underground , we are going to see an increase in narcotrafficking and terrorism around the world , as we will see in human trafficking , as well , as we drive this underground .  as far as mandatory minimums , i hope there are mandatory minimums on people funding direct terrorist attacks on the united states .  if you are selling drugs , and even inadvertently , and these groups often are hear no evil , see no evil , and they pretend like they are not involved in narcotics trafficking , but as they swap with different cells and work with these cells around the world , i hope they have a mandatory minimum , if they blow up and terrorize america , terrorize london and terrorize spain .  we need stiff penalties .  we need to look for these gaps and these holes so we can go after these groups and break them up .  we have had multiple efforts around the world where we see some of these terrorist organizations starting to interact with each other .  we need to have conspiracy clauses that enable us , as they start to interconnect from south america , asia and the middle eastern gangs as they swap cocaine for other things and convert and move in the underground market .  we need to stay up with how the terrorists are working .  as they start to interconnect , we need laws that can address this , and i commend the chairman from the committee on international relations with trying to address this rapidly growing threat in all regions of the world .  i urge this congress to send a strong message that this needs to be part of the patriot act as we look at the international efforts and the international connection in the funding of terrorism .  