Have the Leaders of America Lost Their Minds?

i'm disappointed in Sen. McCain's comments. i thought he had more common sense; maybe he's trying to drum up support for another presidential bid.

And the US is a lot safer now too...........

parados wrote:

And the US is a lot safer now too...........

I know . . . i sleep so much better at night . . .

protests are also an important part of the democratic process.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan-- Islamic groups vowed Monday to keep up their anti-American protests over a purported CIA airstrike that Pakistan says killed innocent civilians instead of the apparent target-- al-Qaida's No. 2 leader.

For the second straight day, thousands of Pakistanis poured into streets in cities across the country on Sunday chanting "Death to America" and demanding U.S. troops leave Afghanistan.

Protesters believe Friday's attack-- in which missiles struck a Pakistani village near the Afghan border-- was the work of U.S. forces in the neighboring country. The United States has 20,000 troops in Afghanistan searching for Taliban and al-Qaida, and Pakistan says it has not given the Americans permission to pursue their enemies across the border.

"There will be more ... bigger protests," said Shahid Shamsi, spokesman for an alliance of Islamic groups.

"Pakistani civilians, including children, were killed," he said. "Principles cannot be broken in the name of (fighting) terrorism."

Two Pakistani intelligence officials said Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant, had been invited to a dinner in the village to mark the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha but passed it up and sent some aides instead.

Investigators were trying to see if they were among at least 17 people killed the attack, which destroyed three houses in the Pashtun hamlet of Damadola, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Pakistani officials have strongly condemned the strike, without directly blaming the United States. The United States hasn't confirmed the incident but Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said al-Qaida can't be treated "lightly."

A leading Republican lawmaker has defended a purported US air strike on a Pakistani village that Islamabad says killed innocent civilians.

Senator John McCain said Americans regretted the loss of life in an attack that was apparently meant to kill Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant.

But "this war on terror has no boundaries", said McCain, who challenged US President George W Bush for the Republican nomination in 2000. "We have to go where these people are, and we have to take them out."

Anger has mounted in Pakistan over Friday's attack in the hamlet of Damadola, an ethnic Pashtun hamlet about 6 km from the border with Afghanistan. Islamic groups held nationwide protests today, with 10,000 people rallying in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, chanting "Death to America" and "Stop bombing against innocent people".

A senior Pakistani intelligence official said 12 bodies, including seven foreigners, had been taken from the village.

McCain said Americans "understand the anger people feel" in Pakistan, but the United States would continue to target al-Qaeda's top operatives in the region.

"The United States' priorities are to get rid of al-Qaeda, and this was an effort to do so," he said on the CBS TV program, Face the Nation. "I can't tell you that we wouldn't do the same thing again."

Counterterrorism officials in Washington have declined to comment on the air strike. A large number of al-Qaeda and Taliban combatants, including al-Zawahri and bin Laden, are believed to have taken refuge in the rugged mountains along on the Afghan-Pakistani border.

Many in Pakistan oppose Islamabad's participation in the US-led war against international terrorist groups, and there is increasing frustration over a recent series of suspected US attacks along the frontier aimed at militants.

January 16, 2006 -- Why is John McCain so supportive of Bush and Cheney after being so viciously attacked by them in the 2000 campaign? The answer to this question may partially rest in Navy records detailing the events that took place on the USS Forrestal in "Yankee Station" in the Gulf of Tonkin at the end of July 1967. The neo-cons, who have had five years to examine every file within the Department of Defense, have likely accessed documents that could prove embarrassing to McCain, who was on board the USS Forrestal on July 29, 1967, and whose A-4 Skyhawk was struck by an air-to-ground Zuni missile that had misfired from an F-4 Phantom.

What have sealed Navy records given to the neo-cons to blackmail McCain? Plenty, according to eyewitness on the USS Forrestal.

According to an eyewitness to the Navy's worst fire disaster that killed 134 sailors and injured 62, McCain and the Forrestal's skipper, Capt. John K. Beling, were warned about the danger of using M-65 1000-lb. bombs manufactured in 1935, which were deemed too dangerous to use during World War II and, later, on B-52 bombers. The fire from the Zuni misfire resulted in the heavy 1000 pounders being knocked loose from the pylons of McCain's A-4, which were only designed to hold 500-pound bombs.

During the fighting of the fire and while VF-74 and VF-11 were still counting their dead, McCain was helicoptered off the Forrestal to the USS Oriskany, which suffered a major fire on October 27, 1966, that killed 44 sailors. In that event, thousand pound bombs were jettisoned away from the fire but the lessons of the Oriskany went unheeded by the Forrestal's officers, including McCain, who served with the VA-163 Saints on board the Oriskany when the fire on that vessel occurred. On October 26, 1967, McCain was shot down over North Vietnam during a bombing sortie from the Oriskany.

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