Chiming in with his latest ramble against conservatives, CNN political analyst and former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein took to the airwaves of Wednesday’s AC360 to denounce the GOP candidates for “their bellicosity” in Tuesday’s debate that featured “a recklessness that was astonishing.”
Asked by host Anderson Cooper about the various foreign policy differences that were on display within the Republican Party, Bernstein first explained that he didn’t spot much of a difference between Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio “in their bellicosity.”
Bernstein continued by chastising the GOP for “a recklessness that was astonishing to the whole debate” and “an ignorance about real foreign policy and national security policy and history.”
Taking issue with Cruz’s use of the term “carpet bombing” concerning his plans for defeating ISIS, Bernstein complained that employing heavy military power to destroy the Islamic terror group would “satisfy an apocalyptic vision that ISIS would like us” to carry out.
The same person who wrote a book cheering Hillary Clinton and compared the Bengahzi Committee to engaging in McCarthyism closed his short take with one last jab at the GOP by claiming that a broad consensus of experts disagree with them: “This is real recklessness and the generals, if you talk to the generals, you talk to the foreign policy experts in the national security community, they are horrified by this kind of talk.”
The relevant portion of the transcript from CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 on December 16 can be found below.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360
December 16, 2015
8:09 p.m. Eastern
ANDERSON COOPER: Carl, what's interesting in the exchange, we saw many like it, because there really is this divide in the GOP. You have the Rand Paul on one side, Chris Christie, you have Rubio and Cruz.
CARL BERNSTEIN: I don't think Rubio and Cruz are too far apart in their bellicosity, actually. I think there was a recklessness that was astonishing to the whole debate. A bellicosity, an ignorance about real foreign policy and national security policy and history. We carpet bombed last in Vietnam, didn't work. These strategies of going in on our own and boots on the ground to satisify an apocalyptic vision that ISIS would like us, to be invited in, to see our soldiers beheaded. This is real recklessness and the generals, if you talk to the generals, you talk to the foreign policy experts in the national security community, they are horrified by this kind of talk.
