https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZrDXrwZ8VSU
Connecticut Democratic senator Chris Murphy suggested on Monday that the U.S. invasion of Iraq precipitated last week’s massacre at the Paris offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, saying the attackers were driven by the American occupation of that country rather than their Islamist ideology.
When asked by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow whether he believed the Kouachi brothers represented part of the new threat driven by the Islamic State, Murphy said “it is important just to recognize that the individuals who carried out these attacks in Paris were originally radicalized not by ISIS but in coordination against the United States’ invasion and occupation of Iraq.”
Murphy said that those on Capitol Hill wishing to send ground troops to fight the Islamic state “would essentially be repeating the very mistake that radicalized thousands of Muslims all across the country during our ten-year occupation of that country . . . We’re living with a decade-long mistake in Iraq that had radicalized thousands already, no matter whether or not ISIS was present in that region.”
Murphy did not explain how the invasion of Iraq by American forces drove the terrorists to kill French cartoonists for drawing Mohammed. The Kouachi brothers were trained and financed by al-Qaida in Yemen, not the Islamic State.
via Weasel Zippers