John McCain on the War

Salon:

Early last year, John McCain seemed to lash his political fortune to the success or failure of the troop "surge" in Iraq. Backing the surge fit his carefully tended reputation as a maverick; his allies noted that McCain was bravely risking his political career to do what he believed was right. "I have just finished an election campaign," Sen. Joe Lieberman said last January when he and McCain pushed the surge at a meeting at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "If rumors are correct, he may be starting one," Lieberman said of McCain, standing at his side. "He is not taking the easy way out here. But he is taking the way that he believes is best for the safety of our children and grandchildren and the values and the way of life that America has come to represent."

A year later, leaving aside the question of its long-term effects, the surge has had a tangible short-term security impact in Baghdad. And McCain, in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, isn't going to let us forget that he knew better all along. "I'm proud to have been one of those who played a key role in bringing about one of the most important changes in recent years," McCain trumpeted during the GOP debate in Manchester, N.H., on Jan. 6. "And that was the change in strategy from a failing strategy in Iraq pursued by Secretary Rumsfeld." Two days later, McCain won the Granite State primary.

In fact, lately former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has become quite the punching bag for McCain on the campaign trail. Part of the McCain mantra, whether recited on the stump or to reporters on his campaign bus, is that he knew that Gen. David Petraeus' surge of troops would work better than Rumsfeld's light footprint approach. It's his way of supporting the war while criticizing the way it was executed by the Bush administration without ever uttering the word "Bush." It is also meant to be proof of the gravitas McCain would bring to the job of commander in chief. "I have the knowledge and experience and judgment, as my support of the Petraeus strategy indicated, and my condemnation of the previous Rumsfeld strategy," said McCain in a Jan. 9 NBC "Today" show interview. "No other candidate running for president did that on either side."

But to buy into the McCain-knows-best version of the Iraq war, you have to ignore a lot of history. McCain was among the most aggressive proponents of a preemptive strike against Saddam Hussein, cosponsoring the resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq. He also expressed full faith in the way it would be executed -- a war plan conceived and executed by Rumsfeld.

McCain losing it about losing it

CNN:

A frustrated Sen. John McCain snapped Wednesday when asked by CNN about his troubled presidential campaign and vowed he would no longer answer questions on that topic.

“I’m not going to talk about my campaign anymore,” McCain said in a sharp tone. “I’m finished with talking about it. I’ve talked about it for two weeks. I will not discuss it or any aspect of it. Thank you.”

Your Law and Order Republicans

Rudy Giuliani

After evaluating the facts, the president came to a reasonable decision and I believe the decision was correct.

Tell us, Mr. Former-Federal-Prosecutor, what exactly is reasonable about commuting the sentence of a man convicted of lying to federal investigators about his role in a conspiracy to out the secret identity of an undercover CIA agent?

John McCain:

Election Central just sent an e-mail to John McCain campaign spokesman Danny Diaz, asking if the Senator has any comment on the Libby commutation. His reply: "Nope."

Because, God knows, leaders know when to lead.

Mitt Romney:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who as Massachusetts governor refused to pardon an Iraq war veteran's pellet gun conviction, on Tuesday called U.S. President George W. Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence "reasonable."

Defending Bush, Romney said at a campaign stop that "the president looked very carefully at the setting" before deciding to commute the 2 1/2-year sentence of Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, who was convicted in the CIA leak case.

The prosecutor in the case "went after somebody even when he knew no crime had been committed," Romney said. "Given that fact, isn't it reasonable for a commutation of a portion of the sentence to be made?"

No crime? You mean other than perjury and obstruction of justice? Very carefully? You mean that, facing actual prison time, Libby might have decided to talk to prosecutors about who else was involved in the criminal conspiracy to out the CIA agent's identity, so Bush very carefully concluded that any minor backlash against the commutation would be better than risking the truth being revealed?

Fred Thompson

I am very happy for Scooter Libby. I know that this is a great relief to him, his wife and children. While for a long time I have urged a pardon for Scooter, I respect the President's decision. This will allow a good American, who has done a lot for his country, to resume his life.

Thanks for your concern for the treasonous felon. Any concern for the former CIA agent, whose career was destroyed? Any concern for the lives of the network of undercover agents she managed? Any concern for our nation, which lost a critically important national security team that was specifically focused on stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction?

As Joshua Marshall points out:

Paris Hilton did more time than Scooter Libby.

John McCain Shows Compassion For The Victims Of The VT Massacre

AP:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain declared Wednesday he believes in "no gun control," making the strongest affirmation of support for gun rights in the GOP field since the Virginia Tech massacre.

Or not. Good thing the Senator has his priorities straight.

John McCain Makes A Funny

Sydney Morning Herald:

Republican US presidential contender Senator John McCain's joke on how to deal with Iran is not making everybody laugh.

He responded to a question from an audience in South Carolina on Wednesday by breaking into the melody of the Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann" but changing the lyrics to "Bomb Iran."

"That old, eh, that old Beach Boys song, 'Bomb Iran',' McCain joked and then added: "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb ... anyway, ah ..." The audience responded with laughter.

Because, you know, war is a joke.

McCain Owns This War

New York Times:

Senator John McCain said that the buildup of American forces in Iraq represented the only viable option to avoid failure in Iraq and that he had yet to identify an effective fallback if the current strategy failed.

“I have no Plan B,” Mr. McCain said in an interview. “If I saw that doomsday scenario evolving, then I would try to come up with one. But I cannot give you a good alternative because if I had a good alternative, maybe we could consider it now.”

In a discussion of how he would handle Iraq if elected president, Mr. McCain said that the success of the Bush administration’s strategy, which seeks to protect Baghdad residents so Iraqi political leaders have an opportunity to pursue a program of political reconciliation, was essentially a precondition for a more limited American role that could follow.

Brilliant. Except, you know, Bush's strategy is a disastrous failure. So, McCain just wants to be Bush's heir to this disastrous failure.

Meanwhile...

New York Times:

Two car bombs killed 15 people and wounded 50 when they exploded in quick succession in a mostly Shi'ite neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad on Sunday, police and hospital sources said.

North of Baghdad, two U.S. military helicopters crashed near a large U.S. air base, killing two soldiers and injuring five in what appeared to be a mid-air collision, the U.S. military said.

The first of the two car bombs in Baghdad exploded at a market in the al-Shurta al-Rabeia neighborhood, while the second one went off seconds later at a nearby intersection, police said. Mortar rounds also landed in the area, police said, in an apparent coordinated attack.

The Bullshit Express

Democratic Senator James Webb, a decorated Veteran, and Secretary of the Navy under Reagan, gives John McCain some genuine straight talk.

Bloomberg:

Democratic Senator James Webb accused Republican John McCain of questioning the patriotism of those who disagree with him on Iraq and ``hiding behind the troops as political justification'' for a misguided policy.

``I think that John McCain has been impugning people's patriotism and I really regret that he is doing that,'' Webb, of Virginia, said on Bloomberg Television's ``Political Capital with Al Hunt,'' scheduled to air today. ``I'm very disappointed in him.''...

In the television interview, Webb said McCain had approached him on the Senate floor and said lawmakers should avoid the type of personal attacks that occurred during congressional debates about the Vietnam War 30 years ago.

Since that conversation, Webb said McCain has been ``consistently'' attacking those who disagree with him about the war.

The Media Are The Menace

Los Angeles Times:

Last week, in an essay labeled "Opinion," Pizzey took Republican Sen. John McCain to task for asserting that some neighborhoods in Baghdad were safe enough to stroll through.

"For Senator McCain to claim there are places here where all is well is to woefully minimize the dangers faced by the troops he otherwise so admirably supports," he wrote. " … Any time Senator McCain wants to walk the streets of Baghdad, unarmed and without a serious security detail, we'd be glad to lend him a camera so he can record his experience."

Pizzey said he felt compelled to write the piece because McCain "was talking utter rubbish." (In a piece airing Sunday on "60 Minutes," McCain said he misspoke.) He was also motivated by a belief that the media were not skeptical enough in the run-up to the war — a mistake he does not want to repeat.

"We the media gave the Bush administration a free ride for this war," he said. "We did not question sufficiently the statements made by politicians. I'm as guilty as anybody else. We climbed on board, and that's not what we should do."

McCain Hires Nixon's "Jew Counter"

Media Matters:

On April 3, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) 2008 presidential campaign announced that it had hired former Nixon staffer Fred Malek as its national finance co-chairman. However, as David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation, noted in an April 3 entry on his Capital Games weblog, the McCain campaign's press release "left out an interesting piece of Malek's history: when he counted Jews for President Richard Nixon." As Corn reported, Nixon suspected that a "cabal" of Jews at the Bureau of Labor Statistics was skewing economic figures to make the administration look bad and assigned Malek to report back on how many Jews were employed at BLS. When former President George H.W. Bush hired Malek as a top official at the Republican National Committee (RNC) in 1988, revelations in the press regarding Malek's work for Nixon reportedly led him to resign. McCain's hiring of Malek would seem to warrant the same disclosures from the media, but so far, only one news outlet other than The Nation has reported it.

The Bullshit Express

Last Monday, John McCain said:

There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.

CNN's Michael Ware, reporting from Baghdad, called the claim "luddicrous," and added:

[I]n the hour since Sen. McCain’s said this, I’ve spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There’s multiple humvees around it, heavily armed.

On Sunday, though, McCain actually took such a walk. Sort of:

A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions.

“What are they talking about?” Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal!”

The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.

ThinkProgress has video.

The Bullshit Express

John McCain will go to South Carolina and preach abstinence.

The AP has the story:

The Arizona lawmaker is scheduled to speak Sunday night to about 1,500 middle and high school students about abstaining from premarital sex.

Atrios provides the analysis:

I know it will never happen, because it would cause David Broder to faint, but any politician or public figure should be asked if they, in fact, saved themselves for marriage, and whether they were abstinent between their multiple marriages.

And CNN reports that the Great Man will be the only Senator to not show up for today's vote on the non-binding resolution opposing the Iraq War escalation.