Cain says Taliban holds sway in Libya

Herman Cain suggested in Florida Friday that he believes elements of the Taliban are involved in the new Libyan government.


In an Orlando press conference, Cain defended himself from criticism over the meandering, incoherent answer he gave earlier this week to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter’s question about Libya.

Cain insisted he had tried to get the reporter to narrow his question about whether Cain agreed with the Obama administration’s handling of the Libyan revolution. And that’s when Cain said that the Afghanistan- and Pakistan-based Taliban might now hold sway in Tripoli, a city some 3,000 miles away from Kabul.

“Do I agree with siding with the opposition? Do I agree with saying that Qadhafi should go? Do I agree that they now have a country where you've got Taliban and Al Qaeda that's going to be part of the government?” Cain asked reporters, rhetorically. “Do I agree with not knowing the government was going to — which part was he asking me about? I was trying to get him to be specific and he wouldn't be specific.”

UPDATE: In an email, Cain spokesman J.D. Gordon points to Libyan military commander Abdel Hakim Belhadj as a sometime Taliban ally now prominent in the Libyan transitional government. Gordon cites a Reuters article from Nov. 11, profiling Belhadj’s role in Libya and noting that “after fighting with the Afghan Taliban [he] was captured and sent to Libya in 2004, where he was jailed until last year.”

Gordon referred to Belhadj as a “former Taliban-linked fighter in Afghanistan now leading the militia in Tripoli.” That’s plainly not the same thing as having “Taliban … that’s going to be part of the government,” as Cain said, but it’s a fair clarification of Cain’s point.