The Case Against John McCain

More about the Anbar Awakening thing:

http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/07/mccain_wrong_on_iraq_msnbc_oth.html

One detail from that -- evidently CBS didn't air that part of the interview. It was just unearthed when the full transcript was posted on their website (not sure who was the first to go "hey...!")

I'm seeing more about this than I usually see about McCain's substantial gaffes (and he makes a lot of those as well as non-substantial ones), maybe this'll finally focus some things, we'll see.

He's been complaining lately about the treatment he's gotten from the media (as if!) so maybe they're finally primed to look at him more critically.

I think it's because McCain "is" senile is the cause of his "lies."

So whats your excuse?

I have an excuse for being an idiot; I'm senile.

CI said this on 7-22-08

Heres an interesting article from TIME magazine about McCain...

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1729891,00.html

Has McCain Flip-Flopped on Torture?



(snip)




So according to TIME magazine, McCain has NOT changed his position,at least not as of the time the article was written.

Many economists see McCain better for stocks: poll

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. stock market would fare better in the first year after a victory by Republican presidential candidate John McCain than by his Democratic rival Barack Obama, according to a majority of economists at U.S. banks and research groups polled by Reuters.

But the survey of 29 firms taken alongside a regular Reuters economic poll also found that economists had mixed views on the two candidates' economic plans.

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being "very good", 12 economists gave McCain's proposals higher marks, while nine rated the two candidates equally and eight preferred Obama's policies, according to the poll released on Wednesday.

The economy has supplanted the Iraq war as the main issue in the November presidential election between Arizona Sen. McCain and Illinois Sen. Obama.

The troubled housing market, tightening credit conditions and rising costs of food and energy have driven U.S. consumer confidence to a 28-year low.

The survey, conducted this week, found that 21 of the economists polled thought McCain would be better for the stock market in the first year after the election, while six chose Obama and two gave no response.

The sample includes a cross-section of U.S. financial institutions, large and small, including several prominent Wall Street names.

For investors, a key concern this election year is taxes on dividends and capital gains, which Obama has pledged to increase. He also favors allowing income tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush's administration to expire, while McCain wants them made permanent.

"Preserving the capital gains and dividend tax rate (at) 15 percent is in my view very important to investors and therefore very important to Wall Street," said Hugh Johnson, chief investment officer of Johnson Illington Advisors in Albany, New York, explaining why he thought stocks would fare better under a McCain presidency.

McCain has said the Treasury Department and Federal Reserve's steps to shore up troubled mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were correct and he hoped Congress would approve them.

Obama said any action to rescue Fannie and Freddie should be aimed at helping homeowners and not just shareholders, managers and investors.

Obama has called for a $50 billion economic stimulus package on top of the $152 billion plan passed earlier this year. McCain has proposed low income taxes and incentives for small businesses as ways to boost the economy.

A Reuters/Zogby poll released last week showed that just 10 percent of Americans gave the Bush administration positive marks for its handling of the economy.

The poll also found that Obama held a 7-point lead over McCain in the presidential race, and had a small edge on the question of who would best manage the economy.

That article could easily have been titled, 'only a minority of economists see McCain's plans as better then Obama's.' And it would have been just as accurate.

In other news, part of the case against McCain is that he doesn't know what he's talking about most of the time.



Reality is biased against him.

Cycloptichorn

the NYMag piece I linked elsewhere about this sorta suggests that the interview and transcript were posted on the CBS together. Not so much a "hey!" as a question about everybody's editing practices.


(another zing for my dream of a media forum)

errr CBS website

Anbar Sheik Cited By McCain Was Assassinated Last Year

The major Sunni sheik who John McCain said was protected by the surge and subsequently helped lead the Anbar Awakening, was actually assassinated by an al-Qaeda led group in midst of the surge.
link

Really? You don't say!

Cycloptichorn

By "hey!" I meant that I'm not sure who was the first person to notice that part of the transcript and its import... CBS went ahead and posted the whole transcript but didn't make it part of their report or otherwise point it up in any way. Olbermann talked about it but I think there was already bloggy buzz before that.

I liked the NYMag piece, thanks for posting.

The absolute first I heard about it was a diary on DKos detailing Olberman's intro. I don't believe it was known that CBS had switched the answers to questions in their editing.

Cycloptichorn

Looks like McCain is trying to back-track on his "surge worked" rhetoric by saying the moves before it was announced by Bush had several components.

Who's buying this bridge? There's also one in Montana for sale.

It is increasingly clear that McCain is clueless on the most important issues.

IRAQ
A Surge Of Confusion

In an interview on Tuesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) asserted that the 2007 troop surge in Iraq "began the Anbar awakening," the process by which Sunni tribal leaders allied with U.S. force and turned against al Qaeda in Iraq. McCain also suggested that to disagree with his version of history "does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed" in Iraq. In fact, it is McCain himself who has done a disservice to history. The Anbar awakening began in the late summer and early fall of 2006, months before the surge was announced in January 2007. While the Anbar awakening is an important contributor to the drop in violence in Iraq, it is only one of several factors. Meanwhile, the stated goal of the surge -- Iraqi political reconciliation -- remains unmet.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: The awakening began in the town of Ramadi in Anbar province in September 2006, under the command of Army Col. Sean MacFarland. MacFarland sought to build ties to local leaders to draw their support away from the insurgency. In his account of the events in Ramadi, MacFarland wrote: "A growing concern that the U.S. would leave Iraq and leave the Sunnis defenseless against Al Qaeda and Iranian-supported militias made those younger leaders open to our overtures." Eventually U.S. forces were able to establish credibility with local leaders, who turned against the insurgents. The new approach eventually spread outward to other Iraqi provinces. A second important factor in the decreased violence was the decision by Shi'a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to declare a "freeze" of his Jaysh al-Mahdi militia in the wake of violent clashes in the shrine city of Karbala in late August 2007. The Jaysh al-Mahdi had been regarded by the U.S. military as a threat equal to, if not greater than, al Qaeda in Iraq by virtue of their being an indigenous, nationalist movement with strong political support among poor Iraqis. Gen. David Petraeus himself recognized Sadr's cooperation as an essential component in the drop in violence in and around Baghdad. A third factor was the separation of Sunni and Shi'a Iraqis into protected enclaves as a result of a massive and terrifying campaign of sectarian cleansing by Sunni and Shi'a militias in Baghdad, and the construction of concrete barriers around these enclaves. The addition of 20,000 more U.S. troops to Iraq encouraged, supported, and consolidated each of these phenomena, but very likely could not have worked without them.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG: While Gen. Petraeus is credited with reviving the Army's counterinsurgency doctrine, the Anbar strategy that is the center-piece of the surge violates a central tenet of that doctrine in that it does not redirect political authority toward the central government. The deals that have been made are between Sunni tribal militias and U.S. forces, not the Iraqi government. The Sunni militias have not been incorporated into the Iraq Security forces in any substantial numbers, and questions remain as to their loyalties and intentions. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made clear that he views these militias as a threat to the authority of the central government. In a February 2008 report from the Center for American Progress on the Awakenings movement, Brian Katulis and others wrote that "what has been extolled as a central 'success' of the surge has also exacerbated existing political divisions and fomented new political cleavages in an already fractured and fragile Iraqi body politic. [The Sunni militias] are challenging each other, traditional Sunni Arab political parties, and the Iraqi government." Echoing this, Steven Simon wrote in Foreign Affairs that "the recent short-term gains have come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq." Simon also wrote that the lack of accommodation between the Iraqi government and the Sunni militias "will impede Iraq's political development for years to come unless specific steps are taken in the near term to bring the Sunni army the surge created under the rubric of the state." Simon concludes, "These steps are not being taken."

GOAL OF THE SURGE REMAINS UNMET: When President Bush announced the surge in January 2007, he declared that the goal of greater security was to "help make reconciliation possible." More than a year and a half after that speech, this reconciliation has not occurred in any meaningful way. Though some benchmark legislation has been passed, most of these laws have been worded so vaguely as to make their implementation extremely problematic. On Wednesday, after months of intense negotiating, Iraqi President Jalal Talibani "rejected the recently passed provincial elections law...a move that appears to doom what has been touted as all-important legislation for the country." This is one of many indicators that, as Matthew Duss wrote in the Guardian, "no real consensus yet exists among Iraqis as to what the new Iraq will be." As evidenced by numerous statements from Iraqi government officials over the last months, "consensus does exist...around the belief that no genuine, sustainable Iraqi unity can develop while the Iraqi government continues to be underwritten by a foreign military presence."

--americanprogressaction.org

About the most galling of all statements to insult Americans and everybody else:

McCain also suggested that to disagree with his version of history "does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed" in Iraq.

Why is this guy still running for president? He's an embarrassment on almost every topic he addresses.

Too bad McG fails to understand that comic strip.

By all means C.I., explain it to me.

The cartoon has a valid point. We should get the hell out of Afghanistan ASAP. We should never have occupied the country to begin with. We had to go in and get al-Qaida, but should not have stayed to occupy the country and impose a government.

We are now fighting Afghans for no good reason. We should let them run their own affairs.

Obama has to go after Osama to let the Bush-league know that it was possible in short order - rather than taking longer than five years.