Those middle easterners are so confusing
by digby
Scott Walker has been making a lot of gaffes, some of them about foreign policy, which indicate that he’s not ready for prime time. But what can you say about a Senate presidential candidate who sounds even dumber than he does. Steve Benen reports on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this morning:
At the recent CPAC gathering, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), a likely Republican presidential candidate, seemed to stumble on one of the basic facts of the Middle East. “The reason Obama hasn’t put in place a military strategy to defeat ISIS is because he doesn’t want to upset Iran,” the Florida Republican said.
The senator seemed confused. In reality, President Obama has put an anti-ISIS military strategy in place, and that’s fine with Iran, since Iran and ISIS are enemies.
I’d hoped that Rubio just misspoke, or had been briefly poorly but an aide, but apparently not – -at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing this afternoon, the far-right Floridian continued to push this strange theory, pressing Secretary of State John Kerry on the point. “I believe that much of our strategy with regards to ISIS is being driven by a desire not to upset Iran so they don’t walk away from the negotiating table on the deal that you’re working on,” Rubio said. “Tell me why I’m wrong.”
[…]
Honestly, it was like watching a competent teacher trying to explain the basics of current events to a student who failed to do his homework. Andrea Mitchell said the Secretary of State took Rubio “to school.”
Not the sharpest tool in the shed, is he? But then he’s not the only one. Ben Carson said that we need to be worried about “the Shia” and ISIS apparently failing to understand that they are actually enemies. When it comes to ISIS, the Ayatollah and Lindsey Graham are on the same page …
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