(Mark) Udall apologizes for comments on slain hostages

[alp227]

DENVER (AP) — Sen. Mark Udall on Monday apologized for saying that two reporters beheaded by militants in the Middle East would agree that the United States should not "be impulsive" in responding to their deaths.

Udall, a Democrat, made the comments in an untelevised debate with challenger Rep. Cory Gardner on Saturday night in the western Colorado town of Grand Junction. Udall has been criticized by Republicans for saying the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which currently controls much of Iraq's heartland, is not an imminent threat to the United States. At the debate, he argued that the two American journalists whose beheadings it filmed and released would agree with him.

"Steve Sotloff and James Foley would tell us, don't be impulsive," Udall said. "Horrible and barbarous as those executions were, don't be impulsive, come up with a plan to knock ISIL back."

Video of the exchange first surfaced Monday on the conservative web site National Review Online.

full: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/udall-apologizes-comments-hostages

video:

[gratuitous]

1. What are Udall's critics saying? We should be impulsive?

I guess speaking for those not present who can't speak for themselves is technically wrong, but the next time a Republican apologizes for speaking for the American people when he's really just voicing his own opinion will be the first time.

[merrily]

2. Issue is, he is pretending to speak for beheaded people he never met.

And perhaps because the family of one of them criticized Obama.

A Republican once said that Johnny Cash would vote Republican if he were alive and the Cash family asked that person to refrain from trying to speak for Cash. I was pretty happy about that, esp. since Cash had braved criticism by having Pete Seeger on his (Cash's) show when no one else in broadcasting was touching Seeger.

This is not all that different from the Cash family speaking up, except that the deaths of the two journalists are a lot fresher than Cash's was at the time. (The Cash comment was made either when Dimson or McCain was running.)

[JI7]

3. there is NOTHING WRONG with what he said, it's what we should ALL say and do

and it shows how things are fucked up in this country when he has to apologize for that.

[Dawson Leery]

4. The house (including 22 Democrats) agreed that a US service member

should have stayed in the hands of the Taliban.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014892242