{"id":3676,"date":"2005-03-07T09:31:36","date_gmt":"2005-03-07T14:31:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3676.html"},"modified":"2005-03-07T09:31:36","modified_gmt":"2005-03-07T14:31:36","slug":"blessed-warmonger-finally-gets-noticed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/blessed-warmonger-finally-gets-noticed\/","title":{"rendered":"Blessed warmonger finally gets noticed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Well, it took nearly a full week<\/a> of<\/a> kvetching<\/a>, but the AP finally got around to running a national story<\/a> on Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) and his stated desire to launch an unprovoked nuclear attack on Syria.<\/p>\n

A congressman who raised eyebrows with recent remarks about personally wanting to drop a nuclear bomb on Syria now says he was joking. <\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“I was kind of joking you know, we were talking between veterans,” he said. He added that President Bush knew he was joking.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a> as something of an expert on military issues, expressing support for a nuclear attack twice<\/i> — including once to the president at the White House. We should disregard this because, as Johnson put it, he was “kind of joking”?<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

For that matter, let’s not forget why<\/i> Johnson said he wanted to attack Syria in the first place — he said<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}