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Ted Cruz is so offensive that he can unite Republicans and Democrats in outrage.
It isn’t just the Obama administration who found Republican Senator Ted Cruz’ suggestion that American forces would be serving in Syria as “al Qaeda’s air force” offensive. Turns out, Cruz also offended Republicans, and not just the perpetually offended like John McCain (R-AZ), but also Iraq Veteran Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).
Watch here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_U6eAJ6nvc
Transcript via This Week:
CRUZ: What it does to Assad in Syria is we should unify international opinion condemning him. But the second piece — and, you know, Mr. McDonough said he was outraged at the suggestion that this attack would help al-Qaeda. Well, I agree it’s outrageous.
But just because Assad is a murderous tyrant doesn’t mean his opponents are any better. In June, the intelligence showed that the nine major al Qaeda — of the nine major rebels forces in Syria, at least seven appear to have significant ties to al-Qaeda.
And the problem with this strike is one of two things is possible, either the strike is really significant, it weakens Assad and the result is the rebels are able to succeed, and if what happened there is al-Qaeda taking over, or al Nusra taking over, and extremist terrorists getting access to those chemical weapons, that hurts U.S. national security.
STEPHANOPOULOS: As you know, your fellow Republican Senator John McCain disagree with that. He said you were uninformed. And Congressman Adam Kinzinger, an Iraq War vet, has also taken exception to your comments.
REP. ADAM KINZINGER, (R) ILLINOIS: They say if we go in and we strike Assad that we are acting as, quote, “al-Qaeda’s air force.” And I believe that’s a cheap line by people to garner headlines.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Cheap line to garner headlines.
CRUZ: Well, look. I don’t know Mr. Kinzinger. I certainly respect his service, he’s entitled to his opinions. What I can tell you is that actual line initially was said by Dennis Kucinich. And where I saw it after that was a current naval sailor who tweeted and said I didn’t sign up to serve as al-Qaeda’s air force.
And the reason why we’re seeing — and I’ll tell you, this past two weeks I have been traveling all across Texas, and everywhere in the state of Texas it has been unanimous of Texans saying don’t put us in the middle of a sectarian civil war, particularly when doing so would help al-Qaeda terrorists.
End transcript.
So, Ted Cruz is claiming that he got his attack line from a naval sailor who tweeted it who was parroting Fox News’ Dennis Kucinich. This is “leading” Ted Cruz style. He seems to think his “opinion” is more weighty than fellow Republican Kinzinger, who flew missions in South America, Guam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Kinzinger is no stranger to far right politics, he was endorsed by Sarah Palin after all. But even he finds Ted Cruz offensive.
Cruz also said that he doesn’t think the President has the authority for limited military strikes without Congress that every president before him has used, “I don’t think he has the authority.”
Ted Cruz would be better off if he stopped “thinking” about the Constitution (especially since he never got around to the War Powers Acts and Resolution), national security and international law. He’s clearly spinning out of control with his Obama Opposition Disorder, and he no longer knows what side is up. He suggested we pressure the U.N. to join us in condemning Assad, but he knows Russia and China are opposing that.
Most obscenely, Republicans usually accuse Obama of leading from behind if he wants the international community to weigh in. Suddenly now Republicans are for the U.N., especially when they know it’s being blocked by Russia and China blocking America and defending Assad.
Can you imagine if sitting US Senators had accused former President Bush of wanting to go into Iraq in order to fight for l Qaeda? That’s an accusation of the highest treason — aiding enemies, and Cruz seems completely nonplussed regarding his lack of evidence for such an egregious accusation.
The Republican Senator saw it on Twitter, after all. Trust.
Cruz is running for president with Obama-impeachment appeasement talk peppered with wild and offensive accusations, so the fact that his latest childish insult comes at a time when our lawmakers should be weighing facts carefully with some relationship to reality is no surprise.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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