beyond the rhetoric and mostly silly back and forth accusations between the Obama and Clinton campaigns, the reality is that in spite of the Clinton camp attempt at brainwashing the democratic primary voters into believing she's the most qualified and "ready from day one", HRC is totally unqualified to be President. She has no core beliefs and she is a serial panderer and a triangulating, focus group driven politician. She will change a position a 180 degrees on a dime if her insider corporatist consultants and focus group results indicated to her that changing her position would be more popular and less controversial. She voted for the Iraq war not because she was fooled for one moment by the fraudulent rational of the Bushies, but because she believed that in NY with it's influential Jewish population, an attack on Iraq would be popular and politically beneficial when she ran for President. Her refusal to apologize for her vote is partially an attempt to portray herself as tough on national security, but mainly it's because she knows that many influential NY Jews still see the Iraq war as beneficial to Israel. The worst thing that can happen, beside a Republican victory, is to have a Democratic president that's so uninspiring, lacking core and convictions who only perpetuate the status quo. HRC is a pandering, focus group driven, triangulating Republican Lite, which is exactly what we shouldn't have.

We need to dispense with the myth that Hillary Clinton is qualified in any way to be president. She has failed miserably in the most important vote of her US Senate career, and she has kept compounding that tragic mistake by supporting US imperial conduct and military aggression around the world, so in that sense, she's a failed US Senator. When given the task of reforming the US health care system shortly after her husband's election, she failed miserably, demonstrating in the process arrogance, inability to listen to diverse views and a pre-disposition toward trusting large corporations like the insurance companies and HMO, who are part of the problem, not the solution. Her experience comes down to being a corporate attorney in a backward, anti-labor state like Arkansas, and of being the spouse of a governor and then president. Just because Bush has been the worst president in US history doesn't mean we should nominate another unqualified person(and fairly unethical) as the Democratic candidate.

and why you have friends like that is extremely puzzling to me..

if McCain has given any thought to the small issue of who is going to finance the wars he apparently craves so much. It's questionable whether the Chinese, with the dollar so weak, would be willing to lend him the trillion or two necessary for him to play Napoléon Bonaparte.

for being such a war loving military warshipping asshole. Lest we forget, McCain is responsible for many Vietnamese civilians MIA which he obliterated with his criminal bombing sorties on civilian targets during that war. The guy has always been an immoral chauvinistic asshole and even when he's targeted by flakes, it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

if the US public had any collective wisdom, Bush wouldn't be giving that speech last night and Cheney wouldn't be sitting right behind him next to the Speaker. Both would have faced a firing squad years ago.

"Oh, I guess you're one of those "kumbaya" liberals who believe that Ahmadinejaid, Putin and the Chinese military will just fly over and shower us with love because we elect our First Black President."

So you get Tuesdays off in idiot school?

1. McCain was singing the praise of the initial invasion strategy and of Rumsfeld until it became unfashionable to do so, then he made a complete turn started criticizing them.

2. The "surge" has been a failure, not a success. Political reconciliation is nonexistent and the reduction in violence in the area between Anbar and Baghdad has been achieved for a myriad of factors, among them: the Sunnis got fed up with the extremism of the jihadists affiliated with AQ and decided to to use their militias to kick them out and the massive bribery of Sunni warlords with money and weapons by the US. However, the Shi'ite controlled government has refused to integrate the Sunni militias in the new Iraqi army. In response, the leader of a 13,000 strong Sunni militia in Fallujah, a crucial Iraqi ally of the United States in its recent successes in the country is threatening to withdraw his support and allow al-Qa'ida to return if his fighters are not incorporated into the Iraqi army and police.

"If there is no change in three months there will be war again," said Abu Marouf, the commander of 13,000 fighters who formerly fought the Americans. He and his men switched sides last year to battle al-Qa'ida and defeated it in its main stronghold in and around Fallujah.

"If the Americans think they can use us to crush al-Qa'ida and then push us to one side, they are mistaken," Abu Marouf told me in an interview in a scantily furnished villa beside an abandoned cemetery near the village of Khandari outside Fallujah. He said that all he and his tribal following had to do was stand aside and al-Qa'ida's fighters would automatically come back. If they did so he might have to ally himself to a resurgent al-Qa'ida in order to "protect myself and my men".

3. McCain was never a war hero. He obeyed orders to murder civilians from high above without ever seeing the faces of those he killed. He was treated by his captors far better that he treated the villagers he had massacred.W

4.here's no such thing as "Left wing" in the US. What's labeled as left wing by the wingnuts would be considered Center/Right in western Europe.