In Columbus, OH Fred had a few words to say about Mike Huckabee's lack of knowledge about Iran and the National Intelligence Estimate:
"Not only is Iran the major long-term threat to our country, the nuclear program is the most important part of the Iran consideration. For a presidential candidate not to know that and not to keep up with that is very surprising," said Thompson.
"These are the kinds of things I've been talking about all of my life. Now, if the American people have other priorities, if they want someone who smiles a lot more than I do, or someone who is a better quipster than I am, who has no experience in these areas, that's for the American people to decide."
UPDATE: Yesterday on MSNBC Huckabee found an excuse as to why he didn't know about the NIE:
HUCKABEE: Well, I don't blame my staff. It is a situation where a report was released at 10:00 in the morning, the president hadn't seen it in four years and I'm supposed to see it four hours later.
Think Progress notes the following:
1) The NIE was released the previous day, not that morning. The NIE was released to the public in the early afternoon on Monday, December 3rd. The dinner where Huckabee was asked about the NIE took place on the evening of Tuesday, Decemeber 4th.
2) Huckabee had more than "four hours." According to the timeline above, Huckabee could have learned about the NIE anytime overnight or during the course of the next day if he had picked up a newspaper. Hotline notes, on the same day Huckabee said he hadn't heard of it, the Iran NIE "not only dominated the Democrats' debate here in town but also prompted a presidential press conference in response."
3) Bush couldn't have seen the report "four years" ago. The NIE was initially completed only a year ago, thus Bush couldn't have had "four years" to see the report. While the intelligence community did eventually learn that Iran shut down its nuclear program four years ago, that knowledge didn't come to the intelligence community until this past summer.
Mike Huckabee should be a little more thoughtful before looking for a clever quip.
No comments:
Post a Comment