GOP presidential candidate Lindsey Graham Monday called the claims being made by Donald Trump and Ben Carson over the 9/11 attacks "bizarre," declaring neither of the party frontrunners know enough about foreign policy and the war on terror to be making statements.
"They need to talk to someone who knows what the hell they're talking about and quit making stuff up," the South Carolina senator told
Fox News "America's Newsroom" host Bill Hemmer. "I would ask both of our frontrunners to sit down with Gen. [Jack] Keane, Gen [David] Petraeus, and others to get an idea of how the world actually works."
Carson said Sunday on
ABC's "This Week" that former President George W. Bush should have declared energy independence after the attacks and that would have forced moderate Arab governments to turn terrorist leader Osama bin Laden over to the United States.
Meanwhile, Trump said Monday that
he's not blaming Bush exactly for the attacks, but said that if he had been president at that time, his own policies on immigration would have kept the attackers out of the country.
Both Trump and Carson said they would not have gone into Afghanistan after 9/11, pointed out Graham, but he feels Bush did the right thing in taking the Taliban down.
"The Taliban invited al-Qaida into their country to be their honored guests and launch an attack against our nation," said Graham. "To me, it's beyond bizarre that after 9/11 you would leave the Taliban in place."
Further, the idea that Saudi Arabia and other countries would have found bin Laden faster had energy independence been declared "makes no sense to me," said Graham, and neither does Trump's contention about the attackers, as 16 of 19 of them were in the United States legally.
Graham said he not only would have gone into Afghanistan, but he continued to stress that more troops are needed now in Syria to destroy the Islamic State.
"The next 9/11 is coming, and it will originate from Syria," said Graham. He blames President Barack Obama for the rise of ISIS.
Graham further predicted Hillary Clinton will "mop the floor" with Carson and Trump over their statements on the 9/11 attacks.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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