President Joe Biden was asked by a reporter in Israel on Wednesday what made him confident that the Israelis weren’t behind the explosion that killed hundreds at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday.
Biden responded that it was “the data I was shown by my Defense Department.”
Two U.S. officials told ABC News the Pentagon independently concluded the Gaza hospital blast was likely caused by an errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that fell short of its target.
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He was asked on the street by a random reporter.
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His quote includes “likely”
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For the last couple years Bidens off the cuff remarks haven’t exactly been reliable.
Yet people are treating this as an official stance of the US Government…
I’ll take what the president says as the stance of the US government, and I don’t think that’s remotely unreasonable…
If he’s making mistakes with off the cuff remarks, then he needs to stop making off the cuff remarks.
Well, the president is stopping short of saying it was Hamas yet, so there you go.
Nobody thinks it was Hamas. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) is a different Iran-supported group.
“Iraq has WMD’s” is a similar statement, backed by an entire administration, that also led to unnecessary deaths.
Its a political statement, because if Israel did attack the hospital, then that’s another outright war crime right after Israel was threatened by Jordan, Lebanon, and Iran.
Uh, did you miss this part?
Two U.S. officials told ABC News the Pentagon independently concluded
The embedded tweet:
While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday.
So the investigation isn’t concluded, there might not have even been an official investigation, and all they’re saying is Israel “isn’t responsible”.
None of what OPs headline claims.
That’s a tweet from the white house national security council. That’s completely independent of the article’s claim that two pentagon officials gave them info.
- He was asked on the street by a random reporter.
Out of anything this is the strangest complaint. Why wouldn’t he answer a street reporter?
Because Biden’s biggest fans have spent years defending his misspeaking by saying his stutter makes him get words mixed up when he’s randomly asked questions…
So when he’s stopped to get asked a random question, we need to wait a day or two to see if that’s what he really meant to say, or if his stutter made him somehow say the wrong words again.
If the administration comes out with a revision or clarified updated statement then I’ll likely accept that too. For now, words out of the presidents literal mouth are as much of an official statement that I need.
