Bernie Sanders Explains Why Arming Syrian Terrorists Is A Bad Idea-- Mark Walker (R-NC) Campaigns On War Against Mexico

The GOP has a lot of freaks and nuts running for Congress this cycle. As we've explained before, few are as off-the-chart out of their minds, as North Carolina extremist Mark Walker. Watch the video up top, in which he talks about "blitzing somebody [Mexico] with a couple of fighter jets to make our point" and how he doesn't have a problem with going to war against Mexico. Or is that his stand up comedian role? But, really, how much crazier and off-the-rails are the fanatics like Walker than the Republicans already in Congress. Wednesday the bulk of the House Republicans-- 159 of them, acting on orders from Boehner-- voted for Buck McKeon's moronic amendment "to train and equip appropriately vetted elements of the Syrian opposition and other appropriately vetted Syrian groups or individuals." In other words to arm the nonexistent moderate Syrian terrorists, a figment of John McCain's overactive imagination.

Yesterday the Senate voted on the whole budget CR that the House passed and sent over including funds to arm the Syrian terrorists. It passed 78-22 with most progressive senators-- Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Pat Leahy (D-VT), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) voting NO. This is the press release Bernie Sanders released right before the vote explaining why he would vote no, and beneath that is his floor speech. If you'd like to help his run for the presidency… we have a page for that.

The Senate prepared to vote Thursday on whether to allow the American military to arm and train Syrian rebels. Sen. Bernie Sanders voted against the United States training and arming Syrian rebels. Sanders said the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria "is a brutal and dangerous extremist organization which must be defeated, but this war cannot be won by the United States alone. There needs to be a real international coalition led by the countries most threatened-- Muslim countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey and Iran. The worst thing that we can do now is allow ISIS to portray this struggle as East vs. West, as Muslim vs. Christian, as the Middle East vs. America. That is exactly what they want and that is exactly what we should not be giving them."

The senator faulted wealthy Middle East nations for doing too little to protect their own interests, especially when Saudi Arabia has the fourth largest military budget in the world. He also questioned why American taxpayers are footing the bill when royal families that rule those Mideast nations are worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

"This is not just a question of whether young men and women in Vermont and across America should be putting their lives on the line in another Mideast war. It is not just about whether the taxpayers of our country should once again pay for a war in the Middle East. It is about the reality that, long term, this struggle will never be won by the United States alone. It must be won with the active participation of the Muslim countries in the region," Sanders said.

Sanders said he supports President Barack Obama’s judicious use of airstrikes which already have shown some success, but in opposing the resolution Sanders said, "I fear very much that supporting questionable groups in Syria who will be outnumbered and outgunned by both ISIS and the Assad regime could open the door to the United States once again being dragged back into the quagmire of long-term military engagement."