A Congressional delegation that included wingnuts Dana Rohrabacher, Steve King and Michele Bachmann visited Russian security officials and lawmakers last week to discuss dealing with terrorist threats and investigate the Boston bombings. Straight-to-video action movie actor Steven Seagal was credited with setting up the meetings:
[Rohrabacher] repeatedly thanked Seagal, who took credit for arranging the congressmen’s meeting at the FSB, and said it helped avoid the experience of past foreign trips when all of the meetings had been arranged by the U.S. Embassy.“You know what we got? We got the State Department controlling all the information that we heard,” Rohrabacher said. “You think that’s good for democracy? No way!”
Seagal has special expertise in Russian foreign policy in general and relevance to the Boston bombings investigation in particular, having once played a former Russian mobster named “Ruslan” in the 2009 thriller “Driven to Kill.” Alert readers will recall that the Tsarnaev brothers’ outspoken uncle is also named “Ruslan,” making Seagal’s involvement a no-brainer for the US congressional delegation.
Sans the nanny squad from State, Rohrabacher found he likes the cut of Putin’s jib (perhaps peering into his soul as George W. Bush once did) and feels that Putin-backed Chechnyan strongman Ramzan Kadyrov has been unfairly criticized for torture, kidnapping and murder by namby-pamby human rights groups who don’t understand the nature of the enemy:
“Radical Islam is at our throat in the United States, and is at the throat of the Russian people…
“If you are in the middle of an insurrection with Chechnya, and hundreds of people are being killed and there are terrorist actions taking place and kids are being blown up in schools, yeah, guess what, there are people who overstep the bounds of legality.
“We shouldn’t be describing people who are under this type of threat, we shouldn’t be describing them as if they are Adolf Hitler or they’re back to the old Communism days.”
Seagal, who received “a lavish welcome in Kadyrov’s palace,” noted that the strongman has not been indicted.
Rohrabacher & Co. aren’t the first wingnuts to tap Seagal’s cinematic crime and terrorism-fighting expertise to address real-life issues: A couple of years ago, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio enlisted Seagal’s aid in an operation that successfully slew dozens of menacing chickens and a puppy at an alleged cockfighting ring.
Rest easy, America.
[X-posted at Rumproast]Wingnut Lawmakers, Steven Seagal Team Up to Fight TerrorPost + Comments (86)