{"id":6687,"date":"2006-02-23T09:46:06","date_gmt":"2006-02-23T14:46:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6687"},"modified":"2006-02-23T09:46:06","modified_gmt":"2006-02-23T14:46:06","slug":"hatch-clarifies-nobody-with-brains-comment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/hatch-clarifies-nobody-with-brains-comment\/","title":{"rendered":"Hatch clarifies ‘nobody with brains’ comment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just to follow up on a post<\/a> from earlier this week, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) insisted over the weekend, without proof, that “nobody with brains<\/a>” denies that Saddam Hussein “was supporting al-Qaida.” The comment seems to have been dogging him ever since.<\/p>\n

For example, several experts have chided Hatch for his nonsensical claim. Michael O’Hanlon, a terrorism expert at The Brookings Institution, Hatch “went way too far and indeed the body of evidence was that there was no substantiated link.” John Pike, director of the national security think tank GlobalSecurity.org, put it even more succinctly: “I guess I don’t have a brain, then.”<\/p>\n

Tuesday, Hatch started backpedaling<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, Hatch said he may have misspoken at the event, and he was speaking of conditions in post-Hussein Iraq and the terrorist network led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.<\/p>\n

“Saddam clearly had a long history of supporting terrorists, but I was not talking about any formal link between Saddam and al-Qaida before the war,” Hatch said in a statement. “Instead, I pointed out that the current insurgency in Iraq includes al-Qaida, under the leadership of al-Zarqawi, along with former elements of Saddam’s regime.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I realize it must be awkward for Hatch, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to get caught repeating such obvious nonsense in public, but as defensive spin goes, this was pretty weak.<\/p>\n

Hatch’s defense is that he was referring to “conditions in post-Hussein Iraq.” That’s simply not true. Consider the full context<\/a> from the original article on Hatch’s remarks.<\/p>\n

“It’s about bringing effective changes and establishing principles of democracy,” Hatch said following his speech. “If we can be successful (in Iraq), that will put pressure on all of the Arab states. It will be a rise in freedom and a demand for liberty that has never existed in some of those states.<\/p>\n

“And, more importantly, we’ve stopped a mass murderer in Saddam Hussein. Nobody denies that he was supporting al-Qaida.” In a clear attack on Democrats, Hatch added, “Well, I shouldn’t say nobody. Nobody with brains.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hatch was lying and he got caught. I can’t think of a compelling defense, but as it turns out, neither can Hatch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just to follow up on a post from earlier this week, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) insisted over the weekend, without proof, that “nobody with brains” denies that Saddam Hussein “was supporting al-Qaida.” The comment seems to have been dogging him ever since. For example, several experts have chided Hatch for his nonsensical claim. Michael O’Hanlon, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6687","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=6687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}