Well, it took nearly a full week of kvetching, but the AP finally got around to running a national story on Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) and his stated desire to launch an unprovoked nuclear attack on Syria.
A congressman who raised eyebrows with recent remarks about personally wanting to drop a nuclear bomb on Syria now says he was joking.
[…]
Johnson did not respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press on Friday. However, he told The Dallas Morning News that he was surprised anyone took his comments seriously and has never advocated a nuclear strike on Syria.
“I was kind of joking you know, we were talking between veterans,” he said. He added that President Bush knew he was joking.
You’ll forgive me if I don’t find this justification reassuring. After all, here we have a sitting member of Congress, who bills himself as something of an expert on military issues, expressing support for a nuclear attack twice — including once to the president at the White House. We should disregard this because, as Johnson put it, he was “kind of joking”?
Put it this way: would Republicans simply shrug their shoulders if a Dem lawmaker joked about such matters, or would they say it’s the latest example of why Dems aren’t trustworhty on national security issues?
For that matter, let’s not forget why Johnson said he wanted to attack Syria in the first place — he said he believed Syria has Saddam Hussein’s WMD, a claim which, to put it mildly, is highly dubious. So, now that we have Johnson on record as “joking” about nuclear strikes, maybe we can get a little follow up on the substance of his claims, too.