McCain and Palin: The Pretenders are Unfit to Lead

Good post, Ramafuchs.

Without any doubt, McCain choose Palin precisely to invigorate the extremists who have a strangle-hold on the Republican party. He is pandering to the extremists and pretending to be something he's not to the moderates and independents. Hopefully, once the honeymoon with the PRETENDER Palin wanes, the moderates and independents will take a closer look at the PRETENDER McCain and withhold their support at the voting booth.

The temperment of our nation's commander and chief doesn't matter very much? You might be fooling yourself, but some of us refuse to wear blinders. We live in a volatile world. If we want to survive, we must resort to cooler heads and diplomacy rather than a shoot first, ask questions later mentality. We cannot trust McCain to use his head rather than his emotions when it comes to military force. Here's what McCain said:

"I hate to tell you, there will be more wars."--John McCain.

The culture-war surge in the U.S. election campaign has come at the expense of meaningful debate about the real wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That's dangerous because they stand at critical junctures.

We've had Sarah Palin at the Republican National Convention bringing foreign policy debate to a new low with her attempt to mock Barack Obama's approach to international terrorists: "He's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

I'm sorry, Ms. Palin, but out there in Alaska, between moose shoots, did you hear about Bagram, Abu Ghraib, renditions, waterboarding, Guantánamo and the rest?

John McCain knows what happens when those rights disappear. He described his Vietnamese nightmare the next night: "They worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me."
Two intractable wars should preclude the culture war McCain has just so shamelessly embraced. He loves the word "fight." So fight on the issues - and let the people decide.http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/09/07/opinion/edcohen.php?

And just as we keep our promise to the next generation here at home, so must we keep America's promise abroad. If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander in chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have.

For while Sen. McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats that we face. When John McCain said we could just "muddle through" in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights. You know, John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell -- but he won't even go to the cave where he lives.

And today, as my call for a time frame to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush administration, even after we learned that Iraq has $79 billion in surplus while we are wallowing in deficits, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war.

Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.

Palin misleads and lies when she said:

Quote:

Al Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America, and he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.

Re: OmSigDAVID(Post 3393770)
It's funny you should challenge my post, when McCain talked about me, me, me, me...for most of his speech. At least that's the "impression" I got.

Am I wrong?

Mr. President, I am proud to be sponsoring this amendment with the senior senator from West Virginia. He's absolutely right that Congress has abrogated its oversight responsibilities, and one way to reverse that troubling trend is to adopt a sunset provision in this bill. We did that in the Patriot Act, and that allowed us to make important revisions to the bill that reflected our experience about what worked and didn't work during the previous 5 years. We should do that again with this important piece of legislation.

But I want to take a few minutes to speak more broadly about the bill before us.

I may have only been in this body for a short while, but I am not naive to the political considerations that go along with many of the decisions we make here. I realize that soon, we will adjourn for the fall, and the campaigning will begin in earnest. And there will be 30-second attack ads and negative mail pieces, and we will be criticized as caring more about the rights of terrorists than the protection of Americans. And I know that the vote before us was specifically designed and timed to add more fuel to that fire.

And yet, while I know all of this, I'm still disappointed. Because what we're doing here today - a debate over the fundamental human rights of the accused - should be bigger than politics. This is serious.

If this was a debate with obvious ideological differences - heartfelt convictions that couldn't be settled by compromise - I would understand. But it's not.

All of us - Democrats and Republicans - want to do whatever it takes to track down terrorists and bring them to justice as swiftly as possible. All of us want to give our President every tool necessary to do this. And all of us were willing to do that in this bill. Anyone who says otherwise is lying to the American people.

In the five years that the President's system of military tribunals has existed, not one terrorist has been tried. Not one has been convicted. And in the end, the Supreme Court of the United found the whole thing unconstitutional, which is why we're here today.

We could have fixed all of this in a way that allows us to detain and interrogate and try suspected terrorists while still protecting the accidentally accused from spending their lives locked away in Guantanamo Bay. Easily. This was not an either-or question.

Instead of allowing this President - or any President - to decide what does and does not constitute torture, we could have left the definition up to our own laws and to the Geneva Conventions, as we would have if we passed the bill that the Armed Services committee originally offered.

Instead of detainees arriving at Guantanamo and facing a Combatant Status Review Tribunal that allows them no real chance to prove their innocence with evidence or a lawyer, we could have developed a real military system of justice that would sort out the suspected terrorists from the accidentally accused.

And instead of not just suspending, but eliminating, the right of habeas corpus - the seven century-old right of individuals to challenge the terms of their own detention, we could have given the accused one chance - one single chance - to ask the government why they are being held and what they are being charged with.

But politics won today. Politics won. The Administration got its vote, and now it will have its victory lap, and now they will be able to go out on the campaign trail and tell the American people that they were the ones who were tough on the terrorists.

And yet, we have a bill that gives the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 his day in court, but not the innocent people we may have accidentally rounded up and mistaken for terrorists - people who may stay in prison for the rest of their lives.

And yet, we have a report authored by sixteen of our own government's intelligence agencies, a previous draft of which described, and I quote, "...actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay..."

And yet, we have Al Qaeda and the Taliban regrouping in Afghanistan while we look the other way. We have a war in Iraq that our own government's intelligence says is serving as Al Qaeda's best recruitment tool. And we have recommendations from the bipartisan 9/11 commission that we still refuse to implement five years after the fact.

The problem with this bill is not that it's too tough on terrorists. The problem with this bill is that it's sloppy. And the reason it's sloppy is because we rushed it to serve political purposes instead of taking the time to do the job right.

I've heard, for example, the argument that it should be military courts, and not federal judges, who should make decisions on these detainees. I actually agree with that. The problem is that the structure of the military proceedings has been poorly thought through. Indeed, the regulations that are supposed to be governing administrative hearings for these detainees, which should have been issued months ago, still haven't been issued. Instead, we have rushed through a bill that stands a good chance of being challenged once again in the Supreme Court.

This is not how a serious Administration would approach the problem of terrorism. I know the President came here today and was insisting that this is supposed to be our primary concern. He's absolutely right it should be our primary concern - which is why we should be approaching this with a somberness and seriousness that this Administration has not displayed with this legislation.

Now, let me be clear - for those who plot terror against the United States, I hope God has mercy on their soul, because I certainly do not. And for those who our government suspects of terror, I support whatever tools are necessary to try them and uncover their plot.

But we also know that some have been detained who have no connection to terror whatsoever. We've already had reports from the CIA and various generals over the last few years saying that many of the detainees at Guantanamo shouldn't have been there - as one U.S. commander of Guantanamo told the Wall Street Journal, "Sometimes, we just didn't get the right folks." And we all know about the recent case of the Canadian man who was suspected of terrorist connections, detained in New York, sent to Syria, and tortured, only to find out later that it was all a case of mistaken identity and poor information.

In the future, people like this may never have a chance to prove their innocence. They may remain locked away forever.

And the sad part about all of this is that this betrayal of American values is unnecessary. We could've drafted a bipartisan, well-structured bill that provided adequate due process through the military courts, had an effective review process that would've prevented frivolous lawsuits being filed and kept lawyers from clogging our courts, but upheld the basic ideals that have made this country great.

Instead, what we have is a flawed document that in fact betrays the best instincts of some of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle - those who worked in a bipartisan fashion in the Armed Services Committee to craft a bill that we could have been proud of. And they essentially got steamrolled by this Administration and by the imperatives of November 7th.

That is not how we should be doing business in the U.S. Senate, and that's not how we should be prosecuting this war on terrorism. When we're sloppy and cut corners, we are undermining those very virtues of America that will lead us to success in winning this war. At bare minimum, I hope we can at least pass this provision so that cooler heads can prevail after the silly season of politics is over. Thank you.

On the issue of national security, it is very clear to me that it was a wrong decision of the United States Supreme Court. [Barack Obama] supports that decision to give, I understand Osama Bin Laden if he were captured, habeas corpus rights. So we have a fundamental disagreement about it. And I think Mayor Giuliani, who is very well qualified on this issue having been Mayor of New York City at an incredible time in American history, has put it very well, [Obama] doesn't have an understanding of the nature of the threat. And I will look forward to that debate quite often in the future. And I think that the American people will agree with me that these are enemy combatants, that we passed legislation with an overwhelming majority of the Congress, which he opposed that set up military commissions and commissions that would address and give some rights to the enemy combatants who were being held, but certainly not in a radical departure from history and to want to give them the same rights that citizens have in this country.

The Pretenders are Unfit to Lead

Obama's basic message is that John McCain is a good person who has same policy positions as George Bush. Biden's basic message is that Sarah Palin is a good and "smart, smart, smart, smart, smart" and "tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough, tough" [I may have miscounted] woman who has the same policy positions is George Bush.

The message itself is flawed on multiple levels. In particular, because it simply isn't true, it gives the GOP a free pass to keep lying over and over again. Second, it is weak and wonkish (yes, I know that is redundant, but Obama apparently doesn't), and the public naturally prefers tough, tough, tough and attacking.

Neither McCain nor Palin are "good people" as most Americans use the term. They are serial liars who have invented phony positive stories about themselves and phony negative ones about Obama. ...

* * *

Thus, one winning strategy in US national political campaigns, the Rovian approach, can be summarized as "lie, lie, and then lie some more." Lies of course are much more politically effective than the truth because lies can be crafted to fit a compelling narrative. So Sarah Palin -- one of the most successful politicians in the country at using lobbyists to transfer US taxpayer money to Alaskans through earmarks-- can become some sort of maverick opponent of lobbying and earmarks. And John McCain -- one of the strongest and most consistent opponents of clean energy for his entire career, someone who thinks "The truly clean technologies don't work", someone who actually mocks energy efficiency -- can become a champion of clean energy, even in the eyes of relatively informed people....

* * *

She claimed to oppose the Bridge to Nowhere, but in fact she supported it. When Congress killed the bridge to nowhere, she pocketed the money of the Americans tax payers anyway. She isn't a "skilled politician" in a positive sense, which is how any listener would take it. She is an old-fashioned porkbarrel politician, who hired a lobbyist for her town of 7000, to get her tiny town more than $20 million of US taxpayer money.

She is selling a lie, just like McCain. If the Obama campaign can't or won't explain that to the American people -- which would require constantly repeating the message in all venues, advertising, and surrogate appearances, then they stand a good chance of losing.