i still fail to see how being a POW makes John McCain fit to be president... why is that even important?
not that he was a POW, but that he declined early release, and stood by his fellows. it's a measure of his character, and patriotism.
Really?!?!? Seems like poor judgment to me. He could have used his freedom to help rescue his fellow compatriots.
I agree that his experience and decisions speaks to his character and patriotism. That is why it qualifies him to be a legitimate hero, respected and revered. It does not qualify him to be commander-in-chief especially when he has failed to grasp several important points relating to our foreign policy including the difference between Shiia and Sunni, whether or not Iran was training al-qaeda, the actual U.S. troop levels currently in Iraq etc. On the troop level scenario even though he was clearly wrong he even refused to acknowledge that. So rather than admit wrong he stubbornly grasped on to his ignorance and refused to let go. Those things are much more important to determine whether someone is qualified to be commander-in-chief. We know that McCain is qualified to be a hero and a patriot, but every hero isn't qualified to be commander-in-chief.
More promises of craziness. <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kYm7wZbcGqY&color1=11645361&color2=13619151&fs=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kYm7wZbcGqY&color1=11645361&color2=13619151&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
but isnt bush just as patriotic...obviously if you're a presidential candidate, you're gonna be patriotic. i dont think any presidential candidate hated America or wasnt proud to be an American. and im sorry for putting bush and mccain in the same sentence. he shouldnt get extra points for being patriotic.
Yes, and you could argue that his ordeal has made him too prone to respond militarily to situations that can be handled diplomatically.
What don't all you Sam Fisher nut rider's who keep typing "take the bet" vow to quit posting if Obama loses or better yet just stfu.....
You know, say what you want about America, but thirteen bucks still gets you a hell of a lot of mice.
Once again Josh Marshall is much more eloquent than I. -- Dangerous and Unstable I know I've made this point in various ways in several posts over the last day or so. But watching John McCain speak about the Georgian crisis in the video below should deeply worry anyone interested in a sane US foreign policy -- or the safety of their children. One arch joke from the earlier part of this decade was that the one good thing about the neocons obsession with getting into a war with Iraq was that it distracted them from their much bigger obsessions -- ratcheting up Cold Wars with China and/or Russia. The people that are pulling McCain's strings are the people who want to push us into a new Cold War with the Russians -- and ironically and a bit improbably with the Chinese too. But the Russians are probably more willing to oblige us since their power remains limited to oil reserves and military power. In other words, they're people McCain's folks can understand and vice versa. McCain is going out of his way to cast this as a replay of 1938 and 1939. Is it really in our interest to get into a renewed Cold War with Russia right now? Do we have the military resources for a proxy/advisor war in the Caucasus at the moment? Should we find ourselves in the situation where the Russians want to reassert their sway in Eastern Europe, we would have some very serious and consequential decisions to make. But this just is not that. The key is that McCain, both in terms of policy and temperament, wants to court that result. It's sort of funny when he's just an unhinged senator. But think for a moment where we'd be if this man were president right now, as he may well be in six months. This man takes the counsel of the people who got us into the Iraq War. On foreign policy, he is in league with the people who were so extreme they've now largely been kicked out of the Bush administration. People like John Bolton and others like him. It's beyond Obama or political strategy or dinging McCain on this or that policy. This man is simply too dangerous and unstable to be president. People need to wake up and get a look of the preview he's giving us of a McCain presidency. --Josh Marshall
I agree...except that it makes him any more fit to be president. It, unfortunately, has nothing to do with anything other than making him a great American.
What I find so crazy is that McCain is willing to interject himself into a regional conflict with a bona-fide superpower simply to show he can still lift a saber. It's no secret that Russia has ambitions near all the former USSR countries; look at the elections in Ukraine and how Russia tries to de-stabilize the West-leaning government there by playing to ethnic Russian minority fears. Georgia is now Moscow's first case of "do not mess with ethnic Russians or we will take you out" policy in action. What's scary to me is that McCain has been so ardently anti-Russia throughout his campaign. Yes, Vladimir Putin's restructuring of the constitutional power structure is scary. Yes, the curbs on freedom of speech and the press in Russia are bad omens. But, this is not 1985. It looks bad for us to be hoisting up a Cold War relic like McCain and have him calling for Russia to be kicked out of the G8 and for taking a much more militaristic stance toward them. Russia is not a bunch of men hiding in caves or North Koreans lucky to have electricity. Now is not the time for us to be playing hardball, especially when our military is stretched so thin already. I can sympathize with Georgia being bombed. However, we do not need to be involved. In any capacity. All McCain is doing is antagonizing our former arch nemesis for no distinguishable purpose.
McCain in his video is very one-sided. Russia has just invaded poor little democratic Georgia. No mention that the majority of the folks in Ossetia do not want to be par of Georgia. No mention that Georgia in this instance started the war first by attacking South Ossetia. Of course one of McCain's principle foreign affairs advisors was a paid lobbyist for the country of Georgia. McCain seems amazingly like a Bush clone reading a one sided case for at least a Cold War with Russia.
thanks, i suspected as much. next time you post a video you should at least take the trouble to watch it, rather than relying on josh, or someone else, to tell you what they think it says. in fact, mc josh says very little about the actual content of the video. if you watched it, you see that, and see that rather than craziness, there's an impassioned defender of democracy, and the rights of small democratic nations to be free from bullying by totalitarian thugs. how very...liberal. something you are clearly no longer, if in fact you ever were. when one comes to value political parties over ideals, once crosses a line from patriotism, to...well, i'm sure you can fill in the ellipsis.
Thanks basso, as a master of using other people's content, both attributed, and unattributed, as the sole basis for your posts, these words of wisdom hit home!
via CNN. i guess Saakashvili watched the video. too bad mc mark couldn't be bothered to. [rquoter]At a rally in Tbilisi today, Georgians "roared" when their president, Mikhil Saakashvili, repeated John McCain's statement, "We are all Georgians today."[/rquoter]
