Mediaite reports:
Fox News military expert Tom McInerney blamed the attack on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo Wednesday afternoon on “political correctness,” and warned Gotham’s “Communist mayor” Bill de Blasio could bring such fatal decadence stateside.
“Political correctness is killing us, this is a prime example,” Tom McInerney said. “Look, our own president says that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is not Islamic. Please!”
(Just a reminder: David Cameron, the conservative prime minister of the U.K., has said the same thing.)
... Host Brian Kilmeade alleged that many French cops don’t carry firearms, and said at least that wasn’t the case in New York City.
“But with the current leadership in New York, and I’m referring to the communist mayor you have up there, that may change,” McInerney replied. “So I think that the world better wake up.”
Yes, our "communist mayor" will allow a terrorist attack to happen here, says General McInerney -- who, as Dave Weigel reported, came out in 2010 as a birther, supporting Lieutenant Colonel Terry Lakin, who refused deployment to Afghanistan because he questioned whether President Obama was born in America:
The ... American Patriot Foundation's announcement that Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney (ret.) has signed an affidavit supporting court martialed birther Lt. Col. Terry Lakin is actually a pretty big coup.
How wild is McInerney's statement? This wild:
[I]t is my opinion that LTC Lakin's request for discovery relating to the President's birth records in Hawaii is absolutely essential to determining not merely his guilt or innocence but to reassuring all military personnel once and for all for this President whether his service as Commander in Chief is Constitutionally proper. He is the one single person in the Chain of Command that the Constitution demands proof of natural born citizenship. This determination is fundamental to our Republic, where civilian control over the military is the rule. According to our Constitution, the Commander in Chief must now, in the face of serious-- and widely held-- concerns that he is ineligible, either voluntarily establish his eligibility by authorizing release of his birth records or this court must authorize their discovery. The invasion of his privacy in these records is utterly trivial compared to the issues at stake here.
Weigel went on to add:
And is McInerney a serious person? Yes. He's a West Point graduate who ran the Alaskan air command during the Exxon Valdez disaster.... He writes and comments fairly frequently about how America could bomb Iran.
More, from Steve Benen in 2010:
McInerney also recently made headlines for demanding that all young Muslim men "should be strip searched" before they're allowed to board an airplane, which he said is "not racial profiling."
Alas, there's a pattern of idiocy here. In 2002, for example, McInerney assured Americans the war in Iraq "will be a war that is shorter than" the 1991 Gulf War, which lasted 42 days. In 2005, McInerney insisted that terrorists no longer feel the need to attack inside the United States because we have "leftists in America who have aided and abetted the enemy more than Tokyo Rose did in World War II."
In 2006, McInerney was asked about the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the basis for the U.S. invasion. He insisted, in all seriousness, that the weapons were in Iraq, before Russia secretly entered the country to move the stockpiles to Syria.
And as I noted at the time,
[McInerney] was one of the generals featured in a 2008 New York Times article about TV military analysts who carefully coordinated their message with the Bush White House:
..."Good work," Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. "We will use it."
... The full dimensions of this mutual embrace were perhaps never clearer than in April 2006, after several of Mr. Rumsfeld's former generals ... went public with devastating critiques of his wartime performance. Some called for his resignation.
On Friday, April 14, with what came to be called the "Generals' Revolt" dominating headlines, Mr. Rumsfeld instructed aides to summon military analysts to a meeting with him early the next week, records show.... Mr. Rumsfeld's office insisted that "the boss" wanted the meeting fast "for impact on the current story."
That same day, Pentagon officials helped two Fox analysts, General McInerney and General [Paul E.] Vallely, write an opinion article for The Wall Street Journal defending Mr. Rumsfeld.
"Starting to write it now," General Vallely wrote to the Pentagon that afternoon. "Any input for the article," he added a little later, "will be much appreciated." ...
McInerney and Vallely also smeared Joe Wilson in 2005 by spreading the story that Wilson had revealed Valerie Plame's CIA identity in a Fox News green room in 2002.
So, all in all, a really reliable source, no?
Crossposted at No More Mr. Nice Blog
