Rand Paul Eats Up Hoax That John McCain Met With ISIS

[Rob L 3,811]

From the daily beast Sept 17

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/09/17/rand-paul-eats-up-those-long-debunked-mccain-isis-rumors.html

It’s one of the many head-scratching things about Syria that the libertarian Kentucky senator tells The Daily Beast.

In an interview with The Daily Beast on Tuesday, Sen. Rand Paul discussed the war against ISIS—and in doing so, repeated a thoroughly debunked rumor about John McCain palling around with the Islamic extremist group. Needless to say, a certain famously hot-tempered five-term senator and former presidential candidate was not at all amused.

“Here’s the problem,” Paul told The Daily Beast. “He [McCain] did meet with ISIS, and had his picture taken, and didn’t know it was happening at the time. That really shows you the quandary of determining who are the moderates and who aren’t. If you don’t speak Arabic, and you don’t understand that some people will lie to you—I really think that we don’t have a good handle on who are the moderates and who aren’t, and I think the objective evidence is that the ones doing most of the fighting and most of the battles among the rebels in Syria are the radical Islamists.”

Here’s the other problem: The rumor that McCain met with ISIS in northern Syria in May 2013 has been proven false. As reported by The New York Times, pictures of McCain meeting with members of the Free Syrian Army—who have historically opposed ISIS—have been seized upon by conspiracy theorists and McCain skeptics, some of whom have gone as far as to photoshop McCain pinning a medal on the chest of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Emboldening believers is the fact that McCain sometimes misspeaks, like on Monday evening on Fox News, when he asked "Has Rand Paul ever been to Syria? Has he ever met with ISIS?"

In an effort to stake out a position that is at once in stark contrast to that of President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Paul seems to have found himself outlining a foreign policy that often eats its own tail. Paul opposes arming Syrian rebels, but his post-airstrike plan includes providing “technical support” to other local moderates from countries he has blamed for inadvertently arming ISIS. That said, Paul is uncertain that moderates have the capacity to effectively fight at all, calling that concept “mythical”; he says he does not support Assad, but believes any effort to undermine him is fundamentally misguided, and is what paved the way for ISIS, despite a lack of evidence to support the claim. In short: It’s all a little confusing; and the assertion that McCain was pictured with jihadists is just the beginning.

[Pooky 3,343]

Already posted, and so interesting it has been relegated to Page 5 of this forum.

[Dakine10 5,452]

"No, wait, let me keep talking."

Edited September 21, 2014 by Dakine10

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

He's a prat.

[LibCampFireClub 635]

Excluding the extremes, Senator Rand Paul is providing a message that crosses at least some party lines.

It is a terrible tragedy, it is a danger to us as a country, and we need to do everything we can to stop him from abusing our laws,” Paul said. He said later, "We have a president who basically has created a lawless atmosphere in Washington.”

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-rand-paul-blisters-obama-and-clinton-calls-for-gop-diversity-20140920-story.html

Edited September 21, 2014 by ExExpat