Carson Mixes Up Iraq, Afghanistan In Baffling Interview
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George Stephanopoulos pressed Ben Carson on comments he made about how if we had declared oil independence, moderate Arab governments would have turned bin Laden over to us within two weeks.
“How would you have gotten the moderate Arab governments to turn over Osama bin Laden in two weeks?” asked Stephanopoulos. “He’d already been expelled by Saudi Arabia. He was already an enemy of those moderate governments.”
Carson claimed said governments would have become uncomfortable with the subsequent financial situation such a declaration from the U.S. would have suggested, hence the rapid handing-over of bin Laden: “I think that probably would have trumped any loyalty that they had to — to people like Osama bin Laden.”
“But they didn’t have any loyalty to Osama bin Laden,” the host responded. “The Saudis kicked him out. He was their enemy.”
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Carson disagreed, and when Stephanopoulos pressed him further on the matter, the presidential candidate digressed into another topic altogether: “My point is, we have — we had other ways that we could have done things. I personally don’t believe that invading Iraq was an existential threat to us. I don’t think Saddam Hussein was an existential threat to us.”
“I wasn’t asking about invading Iraq,” said Stephanopoulos. “I was asking about invading Afghanistan, which had been harboring Osama bin Laden.”
Wait. What?
Carson then claimed he’d originally been talking about Iraq, but also agreed that he never would have invaded Afghanistan.
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