McCain

“Treebeard - Ok. Don't answer. It's cool. Sign your petition without thinking about reality. : )

Where is the line drawn? Draw a line and people will still complain when it happens.”

“Let me put it this way. if I were a soldier and in that position, I would think my dedication to my country would force me into the uncomfortable position to have to rise above my personal emotions andput this into the big picture. Not easy, I grant you. But, if the policy of the U.S. is "no torture", then I have to realize that this is part of the cause that my fellow soldiers gave their lives for. Part of maintaining the "higher ground", as we have done in the past, is to show the world that we are above this. How can we move into foreign territory, screaming about moral authority, and placing ourselves above that, if we show blatant violations of said policy? It can't work both ways. I feel the Bush administration has missed the boat on this point.

And, then to tell the American people, "we do no torture!"is a slap in our faces, especially when faced with a 2002 justice dept memo that sought to justify torture, the Abu Graib fiasco, sending detainees to other coutries for torture and the goings on in Guantanimo Bay. Even Dick Cheney is lobbying to exempt the CIA from rules againsgt using torture. Hope this helped...


I did try and answer you. But, my offer still stands!
last edited: 11/15/05 10:33:37 AM”

“So if I understand you correctly, you would go against your better instincts and not torture for the reason that it's policy? The only reason it might be policy is because people like you might sign it. Right? (I'm not arguing, seriously asking ...) Sounds like circular logic to me.
last edited: 11/15/05 10:36:02 AM”

“Didn't you get the point about "higher ground" and "moral authority?" This is crucial. I do not believe in this unilateral crap. I am one of those oddballs that thinks that our allies means something. Sorry if you and the prez don't think so...

And, yes, I think leading by example is equally important. I gave creedence to the point that this would be a difficult moral issue to over come...”

“I am one of those oddballs that thinks that our allies means something. Sorry if you and the prez don't think so...

I haven't made up my mind on this. That's why I asked the question. To get differnt viewpoints.

It's just that when you say it's "higher ground", but you said the thing that would stop you is it's "law". There are some things, like saving your friends' or families lives, that are sometimes worth breaking the law for. Don't you agree?”

“Would you speed if a truck was coming toward you car with your family in it to save their lives?”

““Didn't you get the point about "higher ground" and "moral authority?" This is crucial."

Even if we stop short of cutting heads off if we do as the terrorists do we become no better than they are. I personally don't wanna be counted on the same level as Islamofacists.

And of course there's the whole What Would Jebus Do? thing.”

“To ask it another way, when is the perception of morality more important than establishing realitic and honest law?”

“I take it from your response Nigal that you would not torture an enemy if he knew when and where your fellow soldiers were about to be attacked?

PS - I'm playing Devil's advocate. That's all. Not trolling. I seriously am not convicted on this right now. Looking for honest discussion. Thanks.
last edited: 11/15/05 10:55:43 AM”

“There are a lot of evil things I would do out of fidelity to my loved ones if not constrained by law or morals... doesn't mean I should be permitted to.”

“There are some things, like saving your friends' or families lives, that are sometimes worth breaking the law for. Don't you agree?”
Sarge
11:48:43 AM

I'll agree that there's a gray area there and, being human, I may be subject to my emotions. But, I guess I would have to be in that situation to know for sure. But, I will grant that point. It also depends on where you draw the line between doing what's prudent and being a "loose cannon"”

“V worded that well. Policy should reflect the United States that is the "cream of the crop", as has been in the past. I don't want to say that we have been immune from attrocities. That would be naive. But,I truly think we have goten away from it and that is one of the reasons I am so passionately defiant in my words about this administration. I don't want to see us go down the tubes...”

“According to this op-ed in yesterday's NY Times, the methods employed at Guantanamo and elsewhere were copied from Red Army techniques. They aren't effective at gaining intelligence but do break a prisoner's will and force false confessions that are useful for propaganda purposes.

I really don't think we want to copy the godless commies we spent several generations defeating, do we?”

“just to throw in 2 cents on that topic ... Our intelligence knows about "false confessions", etc.. I think we tend to forget that our intelligence agencies know that there are some things that work and don't. These same things can be found in MI training docs, not just the NY Times. The problem may not be so much a problem with understanding what works, but proper implementation across the entire board. For example, weekend warriors (in the historical use of the word, no offense meant) are not always the best use of our resources in certain situations.”

“I have never seen so many talk to the dead before.”

“OMG!!!!
The NY Times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's THE WORD OF GOD for libbies.
LOL”

“Well, we had had some airing of viewpoints without the same old names being thrown around for a while anyway, Sarge. It's actually good to talk to you when no one's hurling the libbie or neocon sh_t around. I guess that's done...

Anyhow, I was ribbing you, at first. But, I did try and answer your question truthfully. Hope the point came across...
last edited: 11/15/05 12:31:27 PM”

“Yes it did. Thanks.

(you damn hippie)
:P
last edited: 11/15/05 12:33:58 PM”

“Ha! Good one...”

“Stop it, you two!!!”

“LOS ANGELES The California Democratic Party is asking for an investigation of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senator John McCain for alleged violations of campaign finance law.

The allegations center on a scheduled March 20th fund-raiser in Beverly Hills in which donors have been asked to contribute up to 100 thousand dollars for the governor and the state Republican Party. McCain is the featured speaker at the event.

At issue is whether McCain's appearance violates restrictions on federal officeholders taking part in events that solicit political funds.

Ironically, McCain is being accused of violating a law he helped write.

http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=4583969&nav=9qrx”

“McCain is a democrat, regardless of what he claims to be.

I think he's paid by the Dems to spy on the Republicans.”

“Katie Levinson, a spokeswoman for the governor's campaign, called the complaint "nothing more than frivolous nonsense."

The California Dems will do anything & everything to smear the Terminator. McCain was just caught in the crossfire.

The people who know the CA Dems best, the voters here (overwhelmingly Democrat, ironically) give them a job-approval rating in the teens! That oughta' tell you something about the CA Dem officials - their own constituents think they suck!”

“Well, he does have a sense of integrity and fair play. He seems to base his politics and policies on principle a lot of the time. But that puts him outside the mainstream of either party - though, I guess your right - it makes him even more unusual for the Republican party.”

“Integrity? LOL!”

“I'm with Ped on this one. McCain is the only presidential candidate I have ever volunteered to work for, I believe he is an honest politician.

Sarge, please consider whether your smearing him by insinuating he has no integrity is a function of his political positions or whether or not he is truly lacking in integrity - that's a pretty serious charge & I'd really like to know why you believe as you do. Just because he is a Republican doesn't mean he has to be lockstep with the radical elements of the party... my personal belief is the Repubs need to be shaken up as much, if not more, than the Dems. If McCain doesn't tow the party line well then good for him!”

“wanderer, My opinion has nothing to do with him being in lockstep with the Republicans. I am not a Republican, and couldn't care less about that.

He's an adultrous homewrecker.

He's sympathetic to certain mafia members.

He's a hypocrite, accepting TONS of dollars as campaign contributions, including fancy retreats and the typical luxurious gifts that politicians accept, and then came up with the most ridiculous of campaign finance reform bills which is a cheap political maneuver. (Look up "Charles Keating")

The guy lacks integrity wanderer. I don't trust his motives.”

“I disagree with him on a lot of things, but he does seem to be trying hard to steer an ethical course.

I've got a cousin who knows McCain (starting from when both were POWS) - this branch of the family are long time Bush family loyalists. What he says about McCain is that the stuff about his temper does have a basis, but that he is brave and honest man.

I've noticed he gets less involved in public character assasination than most high profile pols.”

“1. He's an adultrous homewrecker.
Who are you to be the judge & jury re how he may or may not have lived his personal life... you have no first-hand knowledge of what really transpired so aren't in a position to pass judgement.

2. He's sympathetic to certain mafia members.
Boy, there's a statement with a lot of meat behind it. What, exactly, does that mean?

3.He's a hypocrite, accepting TONS of dollars as campaign contributions, including fancy retreats and the typical luxurious gifts that politicians accept

Anyone who runs for office has to accept $$ from almost anywhere they can get them just because of the enormous costs of running a campaign. Because he then tried to fix it with his bill is admirable, IMHO.”

“I'm being watched by a McCain now. He's hiding behind a joshua tree. McCains are all over in the same places the commies where 40 years ago. Man , I wish John Birch was here to help.”

“Wow wanderer, you're right. You were able to justify all of his actions. I'm wrong. He has integrity. A real stand up guy.”

“Guys, I am sorry I appreciate the man's heroisim in Vietnam. But lets put it into perspective. (to quote a friend of mine who had three tours flying over there) "There were hundreds of us flying over there and a bunch of us got shot at, John just zigged when he should have zagged."

The man does have a history of corruption, he does have a history of erratic behavior (come on the guy was treated like hell in the Hanoi Hilton)

What I find disgusting is that he is demanding we treat the Muslim terrorists (who are not protected by ANY Geneva Convention treaty) like American Civilian prisoners. There are only THREE countries that have ever followed the Geneva Convention, England, the US, and Australia.

John McCain is loved by the LEFT becuase he will finish the job that Bush 41, DOLE, and Bush 43 have done to eliminate the Reagan Revolution.”

“All I know is that he was a prisoner of war for a long time and served our country well. Gee, he's not perfect, who is?”

“Not asking for perfection. Just some integrity. Anybody can be a POW. You usually become one by screwing up. Not a good basis for voting for somebody.”

“Lipstick, I reference the military hero who was one of our finest Generals (at one time). In fact when he left the Commander in Chief of the American forces stated,"I have lost my right arm."

Will we remember this man for some of the more brilliant operations (albeit with ill trained troops) no, we remember him for when he lost his faith in America. He tried to make a profit by trading his honor...he was Benedict Arnold, and he tried to sell West Point to the British.”

“

The American Tragedy of John McCain

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
-- T. S. Eliot

Arizona Sen. John McCain took a walk through a Baghdad market on April Fool's Day, and may well have burned his presidential campaign down to the ground in the process. That little stroll has visited upon his head a deluge of humiliation and shame vast and astonishing enough to beggar imagination, and that was before the bodies started hitting the ground.

Translated into mathematical terms, McCain's walk was Pythagorean in scope, squared hypocrisy added to squared idiocy equaling squared disgrace. In political terms, McCain's Baghdad walk was a full-blown, bull-moose, train-wreck disaster of truly galactic proportions: a veritable Hindenberg of campaign photo-op debacles. It was so mind-bendingly ugly and deranged and disgusting that the once-iconic "Dukakis in the Tank" blunder now seems quaint by comparison.

The genesis of this catastrophe, in case you missed it, was a verbal gaffe by McCain during a widely broadcast interview last week. After enduring several minutes of sharp interrogation regarding his staunch support of Bush, the war and the "surge," a neuron within his logic circuits apparently misfired. He claimed, with an entirely straight face, that the streets of Baghdad are today entirely safe for an American to walk down. This whopper made even the most shamelessly craven war apologists shake their heads in public, and forced McCain to undertake a desperate face-saving lunge to recover some shred of credibility.

McCain traveled to Baghdad to prove his claim correct, and the pictures appeared shortly thereafter. In the first available frames, the senator was shown walking through a Baghdad marketplace wearing a Kevlar vest, a general on his right and a troop on his left, and a second troop three steps ahead brandishing his rifle. While this kind of protection detail seemed to undermine his claims of safety, the escort and the vest could easily be understood as normal and necessary precautions taken to protect a visiting dignitary. For a time, McCain appeared to have made his point.

It didn't last. On the heels of those narrow-scope photos came reports of what McCain's entourage was actually comprised of. That "safe" Baghdad market had been flooded with more than one hundred battle-ready troops and armored Humvees. Three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache attack helicopters roared overhead, and sharpshooters were posted on the surrounding rooftops. Simply put, McCain's "safe" street was one overly loud mouse-fart away from being paved with flaming lead during every step of that little walk.

To compound the calamity, a report emerged two days later describing the abduction and slaughter of 21 Iraqis who worked in the marketplace McCain's mini-Normandy force had stormed the previous Sunday, an obvious act of retribution for his visit by a violent Baghdad militia. Already belied by the revealed firepower he brought along, McCain's "safe" walk in Iraq led directly to yet another horrific Baghdad bloodbath. There is bad, there is awful, and then there is this thing, this quantum singularity of ignominy that bends the very light now shining upon it.

Call it farce, call it folly, condemn it for its drenching hypocrisy and the mortal consequences suffered by 21 innocent people. One must also see this, in the end, as a true American tragedy of historic proportions.

Once upon a time, John McCain was a man who commanded and deserved great respect. Beyond the awe-inspiring courage and strength that marked his Vietnam service was the integrity he displayed, for the most part, in his political life. While his conservative views did not jibe with many, there was something about his conduct in office, his independence of thought within the rigid confines of his party, that made Americans stand up and take notice. Even the scandals involving him, most notably the embarrassing Keating Five debacle, did not permanently tarnish his image.

This was the man, recall, who came within an eyelash of derailing the George W. Bush Express during the 2000 race, thrashing the Texas governor by 16 points in the New Hampshire primary. A great many people who knew even then that Bush wasn't up for the job he sought breathed a huge sigh of relief after that, because even in disagreement, they saw in McCain a man of honor whose politics did not matter as much as the apparent content of his character.

The roots of this tragedy can be found in the events which took place in the days following the 2000 New Hampshire primary, when all eyes turned to the contest in South Carolina. Bush had all the GOP money and endorsements, but McCain had suddenly made a hash of that seemingly foregone anointment. What followed stands as one of the ugliest chapters in modern American political history.

Bush's people deployed a whisper campaign against McCain, mostly within the Christian Evangelical community of South Carolina, that labeled the senator "the fag candidate," smeared his wife Cindy as a drug addict, claimed their adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually black and the issue of an illicit and interracial liaison, questioned whether his sanity had survived his POW experience, and even went so far as to accuse him of collaborating with the communists in Vietnam to ease his time in that prison. Bush wound up winning the primary by 11 points, and the McCain campaign never recovered.

McCain's simmering rage over what happened in South Carolina was manifestly evident; for many political moons thereafter, the senator could not be compelled even at gunpoint to speak a kind word about either Bush or the Evangelical shock-troops who had propelled that slander-fest against him and his wife. Bush, for his part, treated McCain like a puff adder at all times, avoiding even the possibility of a venomous counterstrike from his furious former opponent by keeping him at a distance.

And then, something happened. It started slowly, with McCain appearing to set aside his anger to defend Bush as the 2004 presidential contest approached. McCain became a Bush campaign staple, and worse, was the respected face and voice who came to defend the administration whenever they made another incredible mess. It was McCain, perhaps more than any other political figure, who helped Bush hold on to the centrists long enough to make it through that second election. The senator's reputation and good word, for many, were enough to convince folks to wait and see.

Over the last year or so, that reputation and good word have fallen to dust. John McCain has expended vast energies trying to staple himself to every Evangelical Christian leader with clout in the Republican Party. He has become the most unabashed supporter of the Iraq war, of each failed and foolish policy put forth in the occupation, a process that culminated in the horrorshow at that Baghdad marketplace on April Fool's Day. He now wears the blinders needed to believe there is hope in Iraq, and there are 21 new bodies in a marketplace over there to prove it.

McCain has embraced George W. Bush, literally and figuratively, as some sort of long-lost brother. In doing this, he betrayed not only the individualism that once defined him, but gave the American people a demonstration of how insipid politics without principle can truly be. The very people who so viciously attacked McCain and his family in 2000 are now, apparently, his best friends in the world. One wonders if the senator avoids facing himself in the mirror nowadays because he does not want to see the whore's face in the reflection.

Even those who disagree with his politics must admit, with hard-won hindsight, that McCain circa 2000 would have been far preferable to George W. Bush. If more Republicans in our government today were like McCain was then, we would all be in a far better place. That distinction has been erased, and John McCain has become just another GOP lickspittle who toes the bloody line and refuses to admit, despite all evidence, that his new best friends have failed us all. This is, simply put, a tragedy for him.

It is our American tragedy, as well, because McCain became this sad fraud out of absolute necessity. One cannot hope to gain the GOP nomination for president without winning over that party's hard-right absolutist Evangelical Christian base, and the opinions almost universally espoused by that base are a lot of the reason this nation is in such dire straits. Our tragedy is found in their power over any national Republican candidate, and over the administration currently running the republic into the ground.

John McCain's reputation is destroyed. He has become one of T.S. Eliot's hollow men, bereft by his own actions of the formidable image that once defined him, and is now just another cheaply-bought candidate peddling himself for pennies on the dollar to the very wretches who once savaged his character and family. He is gone, just completely gone.

Another poet, Yeats, once described a world where the best lack all conviction, and the worst are filled with passionate integrity. McCain has become the essence of that listless best and striving worst, and the transformation is a lesson for us all about just how much selfdom must be sacrificed upon the altar of GOP politics to win an election. McCain has proven himself unfit to be president, and perhaps worse, he has shown us all how cheaply integrity dies when power is close at hand.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6590”

“He reminds me more of Bob Dole every day. Just as Dole carried water for Reagan until his own reputation was wasted, we have this. McCain's ship sailed in 2000, thanks to vermin like Falwell and Robertson.”

“Damned inconvenient being a human being. Too bad, but I lost faith in him some time ago.”

“There was no bigger McCain supporter than me till recently. I so hated the Bush administration ever since the 2000 primary and the mistreatment of McCain by Rove and the boys. They destroyed an honorable man. Now he seems to be drowning in a sea of dispair. He decided to embrace the Bush camp instead of distance himself. It appears his last chance to win would have been as an independant in 2004. Right now he is a man without a party. I still consider him a very honorable man but, I no longer want him to be president. The Dole comparison is very fitting.”

“Hubris.”

“Yeah, sellouts are not pretty. Hate that hit happened to him, but it was his choice, so ...”

“Exacto, you old hippy.”

“Here's McCain's explanation. It has me thinking. Of course his BS about the marketplace doesn't help his credibility.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040601781.html”

“He's no alternative...”

“no, he's not. i agree.”

“What the hell are you doing up this early Pam?”

“McCain= Bush Lite, Same moderate views, half the principles”

“Good ol' Chipmunk Cheeks.”

“LOL....Gets caught in Questionably Ethical Campaign donations, then makes a law to prohibit the donations...then apparently is violating the law he cowrote.”