Letters to the Editor
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Glenn. Thanks. Your defense is believable.
It's a wonder you are not punched out by the Supreme Court and the Supremes Singers, in a Self-Defense argument.
A scoundrel waste every bodies time,
It's to be worst than a old time donkey.
It's To Steal Time, oil, and blog space.
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casual_observer.
How about @ the commercial break?
He begs to seesaw with all the con-pals.
He should have been a jag legal dentist.
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Settimbrini
do you know how depressing your Odom post was? here we have someone who if they were per impossible to become president could apparently really change things for the better and instead we have to go with lesser qualified folk or even unqualified ones for various irrational factors . . .
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For the record
The "fact" that John McCain "led a Navy squadron during the Vietnam War" is not material experience for foreign policy purposes and, as a matter of fact, it is not accurate and therefore is NOT a fact.
John McCain did not lead a Navy squadron during the Vietnam War. He flew in one. It was not until he was back home and had completed his recuperation from his war injuries that he was given command of a Navy squadron - a training squadron based in Pensacola, Florida. It was during the period he commanded this training squadron that he divorced his first wife - the one who stood by and waited for his return from war. He never had command of a ship, much less a task group, task force, or fleet.
Therefore, other than attending the Naval War College, what particular training did McCain receive in the area of foreign policy? Granted, he knew how to fly an airplane, although he crashed 4 of them (more than even B-1 Bob Dornan), but so did George W. Bush and we know know how much this talent is worth (it's said you can teach a monkey to fly an airplane and I guess that proves it)?
Would anyone consider his relationship with Charles keating to be counted as expertise in global finance?
Ok. Now, I'll go back and read the posts.
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Jayman
Thank you for your post. Its worth seeing again:
A little perspective about Senator McCain's foreign experience: McCain still maintains, as he always has, that the USA should have and could have won the war in Vietnam. This is the bedrock of his “experience”. This is what we know about that. His experience in Vietnam was 22 bombing runs over Vietnam and one unsuccessful run where he was shot down, imprisoned and tortured for 5.5 years in Hanoi. His experience in Vietnam is analogous to an Afghani fighter captured in Afghanistan and put in Guantonimo for 5.5 years. That Afghani would understand as much about the USA and its people as McCain learned in his experience about the Vietnamese. (The biggest difference in those two experiences is that McCain actually killed thousands—which may make his torture by the Vietnamese more understandable.)
If McCain had studied the history of Vietnam he would know we should never have waged that war and would never have succeeded. If he had studied the history of that nationalistic war for independence he would have realized the immoral nature of his bombing runs. The Vietnamese have been successfully beating back foreign invaders for the last 1000 years in the same way they defeated us.
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Howard Kurtz on Strom Thurmond:
"You're welcome to criticize Thurmond's Civil Rights views, but I think to say he doesn't have experience in this area is simply not true. He has more than Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush combined when they were presidential candidates. He fathered an illegitimate child with an African American woman. He's been in the forefront of Civil Rights debates for two decades. He just completed his eighth visit to a segregated lunch counter. He was a major proponent of "separate but equal". Now experience isn't everything, as Obama frequently points out, citing the very experienced Cheney and Rumsfeld and how they botched the war. But Thurmond is not a newcomer to these matters."
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Challenge To The Press
I defy anyone in the press to name someone with the experience required post Bush:
Returning a nation's moral standing in the world after it has admitted to torture.
Ending an unpopular war, without worsening the regional instability wrought by our own unprovoked invasion.
Restoring the SS Dollar.
Combatting the Global Warming long denied by the Bush administration.
Returning Americans' civil liberties while maintaining an active vigil for true terrorist plots.
Bringing one tenth of the support America enjoyed from allies and enemies alike after the horror of 9/11.
No one has ever had to do this before. But anyone who thinks we can do it while launching more unprovoked attacks IS NOT AN EXPERT. He is a moron.
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maniondl
Your experience with your relative nails it:
"Across the board, even moderate/swing Republicans were outraged that the gaffe was presented for their dissection. Their response: "He's suffered for his country and has earned the right" to screw up, to be hard line, to do whatever you name. His extreme, soul-destroying torture over five years is an important issue to voters looking for a sense of ethos and traditionalism in a time of intense conflict within and outside our country."
Emotionally driven non-sequiters that cannot be countered with rational persuasion unless your interlocuter has a profound commitment to reason as the final arbiter. I feel it myself, a sort of awe at what he went through and survived. With such things you enter a sort of mythic space that short circuits rational argument in a very depressing way.
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Bill Owen
thanks for the info on EFPs. Another bit of empirical evidence is always nice to have.
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At least other parts of the world understand McCain's foreign policy
From an AP story today:
Arabs keen to see the end of George W. Bush's presidency fear that a win for likely Republican candidate John McCain will bring little change to U.S. policies they blame for destabilizing the Middle East.
/snip/
Syrian political commentator Thabet Salem said McCain's pro-Israeli stance and comments against Syria, as well as a commitment to keep U.S. troops in Iraq could lead to more Middle East instability.
"McCain has exhibited little willingness to depart from the foreign policy of the neocons, which encourages spread of fundamentalism and terrorism," he said.
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2sec9e
"little willingness to depart from the foreign policy of the neocons" -- That is a phrase that deserves repeating every day, in every possible forum.
Better still, Salem points out to us that McCain's policies will lead to increased terrorism. Will this story grow legs? Don't hold your breath.