Hey, Louie- Saudi Arabia!



Representative Louie Gohmert (R- Executionville) is really getting into it- on the House floor and in interviews.

Hayes Brown of Think Progress finds Gohmert on the House floor pontificating

But what kind of interview must that have been of the guy who was going to blow off arms and legs and kill a child and who had dreams of killing so many more. What kind of interview must that have been when you can’t use the word jihad, you can’t talk about his Muslim faith? Did they even bring up Tamerlan’s Muslim faith in that interview? [...] Is it any wonder that the FBI came away from their interviews and said, ‘We don’t find any problems?’ Well, I guess not. [...] What kind of interviews must those have been when you can’t use the terms that let you get to the bottom of what may be a plot to kill people down the road? There’s no problem in the Justice Department, there is a problem with leadership that will not let them do their job. And it needs to change.

Brown defends the FBI. He notes that when it was warned by Russia's intelligence agency, the FSB, in 2011 that the brothers Tsarnaev were suspicious, the agency launched a three month investigation of the duo, later requesting further information (which was never received).   He notes also that Gohmert has been called out before for his stunning Islamophobia.

No More Mister Nice instead quotes the Texan from a radio interview in which he maintained

It's very clear to everybody but this administration that radical Islam is at war against us.   And I'm hoping either this administration will wake up or a new one will come in at the next election before irreparable damage is done. Because radical Islam is at war with us. Thank God for the moderates who don't approve of what's being done. But this administration has so many Muslim Brotherhood members that have influence that they just are making wrong decisions for America.

NMMN concludes

his talk is the downmarket version of the way mainstream Republicans criticize the president, Democrats, and liberals -- notice how rapidly the Boston Marathon bombing has been turned into an Obama administration failure by Republicans, who didn't even pause briefly to treat the incident as one in which Americans ought to feel united. Gohmert is just cranking that message up to 11, and peddling his version to the more rabid members of the GOP base -- thus keeping those voters' fear and anger stoked, and solidifying their loyalty to conservative Republicanism. 

If you're a "respectable" Republican, you think Gohmert is over the top, but you nod in agreement when the more responsible-sounding Lindsey Graham criticizes the White House on Sunday talk shows; to you, that's the "real" GOP. But if you're a World Net Daily fan, you need more than Graham -- and wen you hear Gohmert on WND Radio, you get what seems like the raw, angry version of the Graham message, and your party loyalty is reinforced.

So Gohmert and Bachmann aren't embarrassments to the party. They ensure that the party can effectively service all right-wing markets.

There are two ways of characterizing the GOP.  One, acknowledged by the mainstream media, is recognizing three wings- foreign policy, economic, and social (actually, cultural).  The other, which NMMN recognizes, is a far-right wing and a further-right wing.  And not only do the likes of Gohmert and Bachmann ensure support from the further-right wing, they move the goalposts, allowing conservatives such as Graham to appear moderate.

Nevertheless, Gohmert is, in a way, almost right about one thing.   The federal government has downplayed the threat posed by one sector of the Muslim world.   But that's not "the Muslim faith" or even "Muslims" and it's not primarily this Administration.  In September, 2011 Raw Story reported that the co-chairperson of the congressional inquiry into the 9/11/01 terrorism attacks and former chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, former Democratic Senator Bob Graham

on Monday called on the U.S. government to reopen its investigation into 9/11 after a report found that links between Saudi Arabia and the hijackers were never disclosed by the FBI to the 2002 joint Congressional intelligence committee investigating the attacks.

“In the final report of the congressional inquiry, there was a chapter related primarily to the Saudi role in 9/11 that was totally censored, every word of the chapter has been withheld from the public,” Graham said on MSNBC’s The Dylan Ratigan Show.

“Some of the other questions we ought to be asking are if we know that the Saudis who lived in San Diego and now apparently in Sarasota received substantial assistance, what about the Saudis who lived in Phoenix, Arizona? Or Arlington, Virginia? … What was happening in those places?”

“I believe these are questions for which there are definitive answers, but the American people and largely their elected representatives have been denied that information.”

There are questions about national security policy pertaining to the Muslim world.  Unfortunately, Louie Gohmert has no idea what they are.






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