September 06, 2011 11:21 PM UTC

The Koch brothers at Bachelor Gulch: As Crazy As You Imagined

• 12 Comments
• by: JeffcoBlue

(What happens behind closed doors doesn’t always stay there. – promoted by c rork)

Brad Friedman has a shocking transcript at Mother Jones today from the secret conference earlier this year at Bachelor Gulch (near Vail) held by the Koch brothers in June.

http://motherjones.com/politic…

“We have Saddam Hussein,” declared billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, apparently referring to President Barack Obama as he welcomed hundreds of wealthy guests to the latest of the secret fundraising and strategy seminars he and his brother host twice a year. The 2012 elections, he warned, will be “the mother of all wars.”

Charles Koch would probably not publicly compare the president of the United States to a murderous dictator. (As a general rule, he and his brother don’t do much politicking or speechifying in public at all.) But Mother Jones has obtained exclusive audio recordings from the Koch seminar, a private event that took place in June at a resort near Vail, Colorado…

I contacted the Kochs numerous times with questions about the seminar, requesting clarification, for example, on Charles’ Saddam Hussein reference. Without addressing the specifics, a spokeswoman for the Kochs merely pointed me to a Koch Industries web page describing the conference.

ABC News reports that a spokesman for Charles Koch denies he was referring to President Obama in his discussion of Saddam Hussein and the “mother of all wars” in the “next 18 months.” Here’s the transcript via Brad Blog, decide for yourself:

But we’ve been talking about — we have Saddam Hussein, this is the Mother of All Wars we’ve got in the next 18 months. For the life or death of this country. So, I’m not going to do this to put any pressure on anyone here, mind you. This is not pressure. But if this makes your heart feel glad and you want to be more forthcoming, then so be it.

The statement from Koch Companies Public Sector LLC:

“It is a matter of public record that similar seminars – all of them private and off-the-record – are held by those who seek the opposite: ever-greater government influence and control over our lives. There are reports about surreptiously (sic) recorded audio taken out of context from a June 2011 conference hosted by Koch Industries. As is typical by far-left groups, these reports attempt to make more false claims about Koch. Specifically, they assert that Charles Koch referred to President Obama as ‘Saddam Hussein.'”

I know it was never supposed to be recorded, and that’s a big problem for Mr. Koch, but if it wasn’t Obama he was referring to, who was it? Who is the “Saddam Hussein” Koch intends to fight the “Mother of All Wars” with if not President Obama?

It’s silly to deny it. Koch should man up like Rush Limbaugh and be proud of the crazy.