Senior Donald Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway is being mocked after she seemingly invented a terrorist massacre to justify her boss's controversial policies.
Speaking in an MSNBC interview on Thursday with Chris Matthews, Conway defended President Trump’s recent ‘travel ban’ executive order which denies visas to visitors from seven Muslim majority countries including Iraq.
Conway said:
I bet its brand new information to people that President Obama has a six month ban on the Iraqi refugee programme, after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalised, and they were the masterminds behind the bowling green massacre. Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.
Bowling Green is a town in Kentucky. There was not a massacre there, nor were the men charged with planning one.
Conway appears to be making reference to a 2011 action by President Obama, in which the processing of refugees from Iraq was paused following the arrest of two Iraqi nationals. In addition refugees from Iraq had their fingerprints checked against those found on IEDs.
The Iraqi pair, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 25, and Waad Ramadan Alwan, 41, were arrested for a failed attempt to send money and weapons to al-Qaeda in Iraq. Bowling Green is where Hammadi and Alwan lived at the time of their arrest.
In 2012 when their arrest was announced, the Department of Justice stated:
Neither was charged with plotting attacks within the United States.
The two men admitted to attacking US soldiers in Iraq, but no “massacre” occurred at Bowling Green, Kentucky, or on American soil by that name.
Conway’s suggestive phrase comes from the same mind that coined "alternative truth". Many found this reference to a massacre just as ridiculous.
One still shudders to think how bad the Bowling Green massacre would've been if not for the heroic intervention of Fred Douglass.— Alec MacGillis (@Alec MacGillis) 1486095303
I was a student at BGSU when the Bowling Green Massacre didn't happen. I'll never be able to not forget what I didn't see that day.🙏— Jim Osborne (@Jim Osborne) 1486098849
Finding these Bowling Green Massacre jokes to be a little too soon. Out of respect, we should wait until it takes place.— Justin Shanes (@Justin Shanes) 1486103026
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