Which side are you on?

By Jeff Fecke | June 5, 2009 • Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., is one of the, shall we say, less reality-based voices in Congress. But even still, this is unbelievable:

Sen. Jim Inhofe said today that President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo was “un-American” because he referred to the war in Iraq as “a war of choice” and didn’t criticize Iran for developing a nuclear program.

Inhofe, R-Tulsa, also criticized the president for suggesting that torture was conducted at the military prison in Guantanamo, saying, “There has never been a documented case of torture at Guantanamo.”

“I just don’t know whose side he’s on,” Inhofe said of the president.

Now, I haven’t written about Obama’s speech yet because of general laziness, but the speech was pretty sober and sane, making a general case for why the Middle East should engage with America while not letting radicals off the hook for radicalism. Obama hardly indicated that he thought America should surrender to the International Monolithic Islamofascist Conspiracy. And it’s pretty unbelievably offensive to suggest that Obama’s speech was indicative of anti-Americanism.

So maybe Inhofe was misquoted. Or the quote lacked context. TPM decided to ask, just to make sure:

Curious which ’sides’ Inhofe might have had in mind, I asked his communications director, Jared Young, to complete the picture a bit. According to Young, Inhofe was saying he’s “kind of confused about why the President’s going on foreign soil and in some cases echoing talking points from al Qaeda about Guantanamo Bay.”

So is he saying he think’s the President’s on the side of terrorists?

“No, no, he’s not saying that, no. He just certainly doesn’t seem to be on the side of our men and women in uniform.”

Ah. He just hates American troops, and wants them to die. Perfectly reasonable, if you’re Michele Bachmann.