MSNBC Guest: Tsarnaevs' Chechen Background Had 'Nothing To Do' With Bombing

April 21st, 2013 9:39 AM

You think Tamerlan and Dzokhar Tsarnaev's roots in Chechnya—which has produced radical Islamist terrorists responsible for some of the bloodiest attacks of modern times—might have something to do with the brothers having carried out the Boston Marathon bombing?  Don't be foolish.

Nope. Where the Tsarnaevs came from had "nothing to do" with the bombings.  These were just two guys who were either depraved, crazy or both.  At least, so said Baher Azmy on today's Up With Steve Kornacki on MSNBC. Azmy is head of the "Center for Constitutional Rights", founded by radical lawyer William Kunstler. View the video after the jump.



The show's theme of the day was one fashionable in liberal circles: don't let the Boston bombings become a cause for fear of "the other." Azmy made his absurd assertion in criticizing Senator Chuck Grassley's call to reconsider immigration reform in light of the bombings.
 

BAHER AZMY:  Grassley and others are using this as a platform, an attempt to push some pre-existing agenda, which I think we should be really wary about  in light of some of lessons after 9/11, that sort of the use of the Patriot Act, fomenting a climate of fear to get policy changes. And just to address this argument on the merits, obviously, this had nothing to do with their immigration status or a broken immigration system. It is an act of criminal depravity or mental instability or some combination. It's not a function of where they came from.