Letters to the Editor
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McCain, how sad.
I just saw some of McCain's address to the cadets. How sad and dispirited he seemed to me.
I'm sure most people have seen "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." McCain speaks like a pod person who is fully aware that he IS a pod person. One who can remember a time when he was his own person.
His quest for the presidency has cost him his soul. No real vision, no passion, just that one driving idea: "I should be president." Even if he can't exactly remember why. That's the part the pod conversion took from him.
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Poor John
He has become that pathetic nerd in junior high following around the guy who was most popular two years ago, but that guy's schtick is soooooo last year.
In other words, he is so enamored with how Bush whipped his pathetic ass, that he's doing everything he can to emmulate the guy, not even realizing how the entire country now hates Bush.
The guy is beyond pahetic. It's sad. Really.
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Ho-hum
John McCain?
Who cares?
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Good...
George Bush is going down in flames, and I hope he takes John McCain down with him. I have never understood how McCain acquired his reputation as a "maverick" lawmaker who sands up for his convictions against his party's line. I can remember not long ago when McCain was lauded for going toe-to-toe with the administration over their torture bill, even though he quietly sold out all his convictions and his fellow ex-POW's a few days later, giving Bush everything that he had asked for; he called it a "compromise". John McCain has sold his soul and tied his fate to the man who brutally attacked him personally with the most vicious dirty tricks in the playbook only a few years ago. A lot of people profess nostalgia for the days when McCain was his own person. I don't remember any days like that.
So I say, good, if McCain wants to tie the fate of his campaign to the final, desperation lunge of a born loser. He has proved by his completely delusional statements as of late about the "safety" of Baghdad's neighborhoods (plus his ridiculously heavily armed jaunt through a local market) that he either has lost touch with reality on the ground, or worse, is willing to ignore it and lie about it. He does not deserve to be president. We have just spent 6+ years with a delusional fool at the helm, and I don't think we can afford any more. You can't fool all the people all the time, and I hope that McCain is not fooling anyone.
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McCoin knows it's over, he just hangs around to be annoying
His fund-raising efforts tell the story. Big corporate contributors, showing no respect to McCoin who has carried their water for years, are not coughing up the dough. Small donations via the Web, the kind that boosted Obama past Hillary, are all but non-existent.
McCoin's stroll through the cordoned Baghdad market was his "jumped the shark" moment. It was like the clip of Dukakis riding around in a tank.
But McCoin doesn't have to quit yet. As he said, he's having fun. He's having fun, and he's waiting for some more bad crap about Rudy Giuliani to emerge. Maybe a Judith Regan/Bernie Karik sex tape will hit YouTube.
Mitt Romney is already making a complete fool of himself. So McCoin really doesn't have to do anything but hang around and be annoying. Annoying is good press. Any press is better than no press.
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Smiling Pessimism
Now we're denying our troops the resources necessary to PREVENT DEFEAT. Everytime Senator McCain speaks, I feel the need to have an attorney present. How slick is he for not mentioning the "W" word (winning). He accidently spoke the truth.
Fear and Loathing in Washington - McCain must be relying on the premise that no matter how bad things are, the American people remain feebly uninformed and will put him in the White House if he stays "on message". It worked for Bush, so why not for him. While the road up to the last election was mired with adminstration failures, scandals, lies and more lies and all things impeachable, we toddered off to the voting booths to ask for more of the same.
Fool me once, shame on YOU - twice, shame on ME! Anyone for thirds?
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Gosh I don't want to be snarky but
Did Mr. McCain discover that first glimmer of progress down the street from the rug market? Was it shinning bright from the crater left by the prior suicide bomb? Maybe it glimmered the next day when the market was attacked yet again.
perhaps it reflected off the 100 soldiers who were guarding him. no? then off the helicopters overhead...can you imagine the air traffic nightmare if all VIPs who wonder out of the green zone....wait....ohhh they don't leave the greenzone...this was in the greenzone? ditit ditit ditit...breaking news from Iraq...McCain left his flight suit and his Mission Accomplished sign in the bunker...
film at 11.
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Well, McCain isn't the possibility for "R" dissidents...
THE ANGRY ONE
Republican senator Chuck Hagel sounds off on the sorry state of Congress, the president’s lies, and the vote for war that he now regrets
GQ, January 2007
Chuck Hagel came home from Vietnam in 1968 with shrapnel in his chest, scars on his face, and an unyielding certainty that the freedom of men is theirs alone to win. As an infantryman, he had not bombed from above or commanded from behind; he had stood knee-deep in the muck, face-to-face with the enemy, firing on men and watching them die. It’s a hard memory to leave behind. Even after four decades and a lifetime of change—a fortune earned in the investment-banking business; a decade as a senator from Nebraska; and a position as one of the GOP’s conservative torchbearers with a shot at the White House—Hagel has put everything on the line to oppose the war in Iraq, refusing to send a “surge” of new troops into battle, or to forget the lessons he brought home from the killing fields long ago.
Sitting in his office on a recent afternoon, Hagel leaned back in his armchair to explain, in a voice reminiscent of sandpaper on rough oak, how he was deceived by the president, and won’t let it happen again.
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Why do you oppose the “surge”?
For almost four years, this administration has been saying, “Just give us another six months. Give us more time. The Iraqis need more help. We need more troops. We need more money.” I am not willing to sacrifice more young men and women for a policy that isn’t working.
What do you think the real effect of the “surge” would be?
More American lives lost. Billions of dollars going into this hole. It will erode our standing in the Middle East and the world. It will destroy our force structure. It will divide this country in a bitter way not seen since Vietnam. And what do we get in return? The administration likes to point to these benchmarks—the Iraqis wrote a constitution, they had an election, they elected a unity government. The administration takes great pride in saying, “It’s now a sovereign nation. They’re in charge of their own affairs.” It’s completely untrue, but they say it anyway.
What would it take to secure Baghdad?
It’s not ours to secure. We have never understood that! We have framed this in a way that never made sense: “Win or lose in Iraq.” Wait a minute! There is no win or loss for us. The Iraqis will determine how this turns out. We can help them with our blood and our treasure and our standing, but in the end they have to deal with the sectarian problems. That is what’s consuming that country. It’s not Al Qaeda. It’s not the terrorists. That’s not the main problem over there. It’s a civil war!
The administration doesn’t call it that.
They won’t call it civil war. Everybody calls it a civil war! Of course it’s a civil war. The generals call it a civil war. And it’s even worse than a civil war, because in addition to the sectarian violence, you’ve got Shia killing Shia. We have ethnic cleansing of major proportions going on in Baghdad. It’s reminiscent of Bosnia. A truck pulls up and Uncle Joe is put inside; his body is found in a dump two or three days later, arms bound, usually tortured—one of the favorite deals is to drill into their head a little bit while they’re still conscious and then shoot them. We can’t solve that!
If we can’t win and the public wants out, isn’t it the responsibility of Congress to check the power of the president?
Sure.
But it seems Congress has been ineffective at that.
Well, we have. We’ve abdicated our responsibilities. That has to do with the fact that the Republican Party controlled the White House, the House, and the Senate. When that happens, you get no probing, no questioning, no oversight. If Bill Clinton had invaded Iraq and after two years he was having the same problems, do you think the Republican Congress would have put up with that? I don’t think so.
Do you wish you’d voted differently in October of 2002, when Congress had a chance to authorize or not authorize the invasion?
Have you read that resolution?
I have.
It’s not quite the way it’s been framed by a lot of people, as a resolution to go to war. That’s not quite what the resolution said.
It said, “to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.”
In the event that all other options failed. So it’s not as simple as “I voted for the war.” That wasn’t the resolution.
But there was a decision whether to grant the president that authority or not.
Exactly right. And if you recall, the White House had announced that they didn’t need that authority from Congress.
Which they seem to say about a lot of things.
That’s right. Mr. [Alberto] Gonzales was the president’s counsel at that time, and he wrote a memo to the president saying, “You have all the powers that you need.” So I called Andy Card, who was then the chief of staff, and said, “Andy, I don’t think you have a shred of ground to stand on, but more to the point, why would a president seriously consider taking a nation to war without Congress being with him?” So a few of us—Joe Biden, Dick Lugar, and I—were invited into discussions with the White House.
(snip)