My grandmother used to confuse me with my uncle and at the time I thought it was crazy.

Then it got worse as she started going through a list of names of male relatives before she got to mine.

I find it hard to believe that people that are backing McCain aren't frightened by the possibility of a 3AM phone call going the way of my grandmother: 'Hello, uh, Vlad, uh, uh, Mike, uh, uh, uh...'

John McPAIN: "Iran is training al-Qaeda operatives."

Joe LIE-berman: "No No No No! That's wrong."

John McPAIN: "IRAQ is training al-Qaeda operatives."

Joe LIE-berman: "NO NO NO NO! THAT'S WRONG!"

John McPAIN: "George W. Bush is training al-Qaeda operatives."

Joe LIE-berman: "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Maybe."

Lindsey "RatFace" Graham: "In MY learned opinion...."

McPAIN and LIE-berman(as one voice): "WHO ASKED YOU??????"

WE GET THE MESSAGE, Glenn Greenwald, WE CAN'T AFFORD HAVING ANY OF THESE "THREE STOOGES" BOMBASTIC MORONIC IGNORAMUSES & MEALY-MOUTHED CRETINOUS IMBECILES, GET EVEN NEAR THE WHITE HOUSE IN 2008!!!!!

The man who actually led VA-163, (McCain's Skyhawk squadron), was CDR Bryan Compton, acknowledged as an exceptional leader and awarded the Navy Cross "for leadership and coordination skills in an attack strike over North Vietnam that resulted in destruction of the Hanoi thermal power plant".

I'm coming to this very late, but the comment by Kurtz that McCain "led a Navy squadron during the Vietnam war" is the kind of lazy, almost-true crap that passes for journalism these days.

As I've posted on other sites, there's a very interesting thesis by Peter Fey about this subject. It's titled “THE EFFECTS OF LEADERSHIP ON CARRIER AIR WING SIXTEEN’S LOSS RATES DURING OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER, 1965-1968”. It’s available at:

http://www.skyhawk.org/2e/vietnam/1965-68_oriskany_rolling-thunder.pdf

I think this thorough and historically accurate report is extremely interesting for insights into what makes John McCain tick, and the culture that produced him.

Author Fey describes his work as follows: “During Operation Rolling Thunder, Carrier Air Wing 16 suffered the highest loss rates of any unit in naval aviation during the Vietnam conflict. During three separate cruises on the USS Oriskany (CVA-34), the air wing was continually plagued with high losses. The worst losses were taken during the June 1967 through January 1968 deployment. During 122 days of combat the USS Oriskany lost one-half the airplanes assigned to her and one-third of her pilots. Twenty aviators were killed or missing in action, seven taken prisoner of war, and thirty-nine aircraft lost. This thesis will examine the factors that led to Carrier Air Wing 16’s extreme loss rates. It will first provide a background of the Rolling Thunder campaign. This thesis will then discuss the divide between America’s strategic goals and the operational level goals, and the resulting affects on the United States Navy. Next it will examine the underlying reasons for attrition at the tactical level. The thesis will then examine the leadership in the air wing and analyze what role, if any, it played in the losses. This study will conclude with the resultant morale issues arising from these experiences and implications for a professional military dependant on volunteers.”

John McCain served with Carrier Air Wing 16 during that fateful June 1967 to January 1968 deployment.

McCain was part of a group that developed a death-or-glory mentality that was peculiar to the times. McCain himself recalled: “When orders came down to escalate the bombing campaign, the pilots on the Oriskany were ecstatic. As the campaign heated up, we began to lose a lot more pilots. But the losses, as much as they hurt, didn’t cause any of us to reconsider our support for the escalation. For the first time we believed we were helping to win the war and we were proud to be usefully employed.”

Fey writes: ” . . . these pilots quickly adopted a careerist attitude towards the war, in that they had a vested interest in the institutional success of naval aviation, regardless of the politics of the war. Many believed it their professional obligation to fight the war to the best of their abilities, while working hard to enhance the reputation of naval aviation. The ultimate litmus test for these men, therefore, was to fly in combat. Most of them had flown and trained too long and hard, enduring constant danger, to simply give up and not go to war. Not flying in combat, i.e. Vietnam, for a naval aviator during Rolling Thunder was tantamount to failure”.

And I roughly timed the Meet The Press segment that purported to be about the three presidential candidates. Russert devoted (by my rough count) 30 minutes to Clinton and Obama and three minutes to John McCain. The first part trumpeted a Charles Krauthammer column and an incendiary Reverend Wright clip and the deep thoughts of Todd, Robinson, Meacham and Noonan.

The second part was a quick couple of questions, no follow ups, no graphics, and the smarmier half of the panel didn’t even take part.

An absolute disgrace.

the only foodstuffs apropos of Honest John are jerk and salami; the former because he is one, the latter because he was playing hide the salami with his current wife while still married to his first, now long jettisoned, wife. typical republikan morals. I guess the fascisti are relieved he wasn't tap dancing in an airport men's room with his pants around his ankles. Go Johnny go.

Remember, Bush ran two oil companies, Arbusto and Spectrum 7, before becoming President. How much good did Bush's vaunted "expertise" do for America? Last time I looked, oil was at over $100 a barrel.

Note the semantic evasion of Howard Kurtz: "... to say he doesn't have experience in this area is simply not true."

What is "experience in this area"?

a. Being shot and captured in a war?

In which case, McCain has no more experience than the tens or hundreds of thousands of soldiers who were injuried in the past century of military conflicts.

b. Talking about wars?

Makes him a little more experienced that the local tavern drunk with an opinion.

c. Visiting foreign places?

Puts him on a par with anyone who can frivol away a few thousand dollars on an international airline ticket.

What Kurtz hopes to conflate is military experience or foreign experience with foreign policy insight. Arguing a particular policy in the Senate (or on Meet The Press) isn't "experience", it's just the ability to expound (mistakenly) on military strategy or tactics.

So, it is true that he has as much policy experience as any candidate for President, or townhall drunk, but he has no history of exceptional knowledge or keen analysis that would distinguish him from any of the others.

His sole claim to fame is that "He was a major proponent of the surge," which, in his mind, was a complete and transcendental success. But, "add more troops" is not a policy, nor even a strategy. It's a momentary tactic, at best. Whether it succeeded or failed is - in spite of representations by the remaining military servants of the administration - still a matter in factual dispute.

That McCain has no grasp of the facts of the matter is now fairly evident. He's always been wrong on the policy because he's always been wrong on the facts: WMD, AQ in Iraq, nuclear weapons in Iran, etc., etc.

McCain has one foreign policy position: "kill the bad guys", whoever they are, wherever they are, until there are no more boogeymen left anywhere in the world. Just gird your loins, because it's going to be a million years of death and destruction.