Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., in an interview with Newsmax, blasted intelligence officials over the Hamas attack on Israel.
Waltz, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, made his remarks during a Tuesday appearance on "Wake Up America."
"I want to know what went wrong on our end," he said. "My concern is perhaps that we did collect [information on the pending attack] and that we have so many Iranian sympathizers, apparently in the senior levels of the Biden administration, that did the collection happen and they essentially didn't want to hear it or turned away from it because they were so focused on appeasing Iran to get an Iran deal.
"We have requested briefings from members of the intelligence community on what went wrong there. I have all kinds of questions of what the heck has gone on here."
Waltz noted that in 2020 under then-President Donald Trump, the Pentagon was able to track down and kill Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite Quds Force.
"They turned him into dust outside the Baghdad airport with a drone strike," he said.
Waltz also condemned Hamas' taking of hostages.
"It's disgusting," he said. "It's wrong. It's a violation of every norm and rule of warfare. For those of us who have been dealing with the Taliban, al-Qaida, ISIS as I and others have for decades, now this is what evil looks like."
And he ripped media outlets for not referring to Hamas as terrorists.
Waltz said: "Just really shameful and disgusting and, listen, it's not 'killing' civilians. It's slaughtering them in cold blood. It is slicing children's throats. It is raping women in front of their children. I mean, we need to call this and describe it as horrific as it is.
"People need to hear it because I promise you in just a few weeks when Israel goes into Gaza and does what it needs to do, you're going to see sympathizers and the U.N. starting to squawk. You're going to see the Europeans get weak-kneed. And I fear you're going to see this administration starting to pound the table for Israel to enter into a cease-fire."
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Jeffrey Rodack ✉
Jeffrey Rodack, who has nearly a half century in news as a senior editor and city editor for national and local publications, has covered politics for Newsmax for nearly seven years.
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