Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain used a well-known photo of a drowned Syrian boy to give a floor speech about the Syrian refugee crisis but failed to give the picture context.
The three-year old boy, Aylan Kurdi, reportedly drowned along with his mother and five-year old brother when the family attempted to take a small dingy from the Turkish resort town of resort town of Bodrum to the Greek Island of Kos.
The ultimate goal was to make it to Europe so Aylan’s father, who brought the family into Turkey three years ago and worked in construction, could get his teeth repaired. However, McCain was either unaware or did not want to acknowledge the most recent information about the boy and his family. He went on to say that the photo “opened the world’s eye to this devastating crisis.” (RELATED: Story Begins To Unravel About Drowned Syrian Boy)
“This image has haunted the world. But what should haunt us even more than the horror unfolding before our eyes is the thought that the United States will continue to do nothing meaningful about it,” he said.
The Arizona Republican told the press to stop calling them “migrants” and that they are “refugees fleeing from torture, from murder, from killing, from genocide.”