Appearing before a group of Iron County, Utah, business leaders Saturday, Hatch said: "And, more importantly, we've stopped a mass murderer in Saddam Hussein. Nobody denies that he was supporting al-Qaida," he said, according to The Spectrum newspaper in St. George. "Well, I shouldn't say nobody. Nobody with brains."
This is so patently untrue that even the notoriously truth-impaired Bu$hCo crowd has distanced itself from it. Today, Hatch tried the same, with uninspiring results (but then, he's pretty uninspiring at the best of times.)
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.
"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."
...
Utah Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Holland said the Republican Hatch can't credibly claim to have misspoken.
"Senator Hatch, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, no less, stood in front of a crowd of people and made a statement, a statement that is just not true, in what seems to be an attempt to mislead and misinform the people of Utah," Holland said in a statement. "This is not leadership. This is not honesty. This seems nothing more than dirty politics and negative messaging. This is insulting to the people of Utah."
I guess tomorrow we'll here that he misqouted himself misquoting himself.
No comments:
Post a Comment