Pennsylvania’s Democrat nominee for U.S. Senate, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, called America’s response to al-Qaeda’s attacks on September 11, 2001, a “really tragic and tremendous overreaction,” days before the tenth anniversary, according to Breitbart News.

In a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article published September 8, 2011, Fetterman called the horrific terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of 2,977 people “a giant sucker punch” and dubbed al-Qaeda “the new bogeyman.” He also took issue with how the United States responded to the attacks and categorized it as a “tremendous overreaction”:

While lamenting the loss of American lives Sept. 11, Mr. Fetterman, now 42, said that “there’s been a really tragic and tremendous overreaction to that day,” noting that the United States is still embroiled in two wars, thousands of military men and women have been killed and the U.S. is on the “brink of bankruptcy.”

He added that America should have honed in on al-Qaeda rather than engaging in a pair of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and asserted that “[i]f [President George W.] Bush had the same resolve and intelligence as [President Barack] Obama has, they would’ve gotten [Osama] bin Laden in Tora Bora.”

Breitbart News asked Fetterman’s campaign if he stands by the comments labeling the United States’ response an “overreaction.”

“John believes like President Trump that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake and that the hundreds of billions we spent in Iraq should have been spent on our own country instead,” said the campaign’s communications director Joe Calvello.