McCain Wrong on Iraq Security, Merchants Say

The American Tragedy of John McCain
The American Tragedy of John McCain
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Friday 06 April 2007

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

- T.S. Eliot

Arizona Sen. John McCain took a walk through a Baghdad market on April Fool's Day, and may well have burned his presidential campaign down to the ground in the process. That little stroll has visited upon his head a deluge of humiliation and shame vast and astonishing enough to beggar imagination, and that was before the bodies started hitting the ground.

Translated into mathematical terms, McCain's walk was Pythagorean in scope, squared hypocrisy added to squared idiocy equaling squared disgrace. In political terms, McCain's Baghdad walk was a full-blown, bull-moose, train-wreck disaster of truly galactic proportions: a veritable Hindenberg of campaign photo-op debacles. It was so mind-bendingly ugly and deranged and disgusting that the once-iconic "Dukakis in the Tank" blunder now seems quaint by comparison.

The genesis of this catastrophe, in case you missed it, was a verbal gaffe by McCain during a widely broadcast interview last week. After enduring several minutes of sharp interrogation regarding his staunch support of Bush, the war and the "surge," a neuron within his logic circuits apparently misfired. He claimed, with an entirely straight face, that the streets of Baghdad are today entirely safe for an American to walk down. This whopper made even the most shamelessly craven war apologists shake their heads in public, and forced McCain to undertake a desperate face-saving lunge to recover some shred of credibility.

McCain traveled to Baghdad to prove his claim correct, and the pictures appeared shortly thereafter. In the first available frames, the senator was shown walking through a Baghdad marketplace wearing a Kevlar vest, a general on his right and a troop on his left, and a second troop three steps ahead brandishing his rifle. While this kind of protection detail seemed to undermine his claims of safety, the escort and the vest could easily be understood as normal and necessary precautions taken to protect a visiting dignitary. For a time, McCain appeared to have made his point.

It didn't last. On the heels of those narrow-scope photos came reports of what McCain's entourage was actually comprised of. That "safe" Baghdad market had been flooded with more than one hundred battle-ready troops and armored Humvees. Three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache attack helicopters roared overhead, and sharpshooters were posted on the surrounding rooftops. Simply put, McCain's "safe" street was one overly loud mouse-fart away from being paved with flaming lead during every step of that little walk.

To compound the calamity, a report emerged two days later describing the abduction and slaughter of 21 Iraqis who worked in the marketplace McCain's mini-Normandy force had stormed the previous Sunday, an obvious act of retribution for his visit by a violent Baghdad militia. Already belied by the revealed firepower he brought along, McCain's "safe" walk in Iraq led directly to yet another horrific Baghdad bloodbath. There is bad, there is awful, and then there is this thing, this quantum singularity of ignominy that bends the very light now shining upon it.

Call it farce, call it folly, condemn it for its drenching hypocrisy and the mortal consequences suffered by 21 innocent people. One must also see this, in the end, as a true American tragedy of historic proportions.

Once upon a time, John McCain was a man who commanded and deserved great respect. Beyond the awe-inspiring courage and strength that marked his Vietnam service was the integrity he displayed, for the most part, in his political life. While his conservative views did not jibe with many, there was something about his conduct in office, his independence of thought within the rigid confines of his party, that made Americans stand up and take notice. Even the scandals involving him, most notably the embarrassing Keating Five debacle, did not permanently tarnish his image.

This was the man, recall, who came within an eyelash of derailing the George W. Bush Express during the 2000 race, thrashing the Texas governor by 16 points in the New Hampshire primary. A great many people who knew even then that Bush wasn't up for the job he sought breathed a huge sigh of relief after that, because even in disagreement, they saw in McCain a man of honor whose politics did not matter as much as the apparent content of his character.

The roots of this tragedy can be found in the events which took place in the days following the 2000 New Hampshire primary, when all eyes turned to the contest in South Carolina. Bush had all the GOP money and endorsements, but McCain had suddenly made a hash of that seemingly foregone anointment. What followed stands as one of the ugliest chapters in modern American political history.

Bush's people deployed a whisper campaign against McCain, mostly within the Christian Evangelical community of South Carolina, that labeled the senator "the fag candidate," smeared his wife Cindy as a drug addict, claimed their adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually black and the issue of an illicit and interracial liaison, questioned whether his sanity had survived his POW experience, and even went so far as to accuse him of collaborating with the communists in Vietnam to ease his time in that prison. Bush wound up winning the primary by 11 points, and the McCain campaign never recovered.

McCain's simmering rage over what happened in South Carolina was manifestly evident; for many political moons thereafter, the senator could not be compelled even at gunpoint to speak a kind word about either Bush or the Evangelical shock-troops who had propelled that slander-fest against him and his wife. Bush, for his part, treated McCain like a puff adder at all times, avoiding even the possibility of a venomous counterstrike from his furious former opponent by keeping him at a distance.

And then, something happened. It started slowly, with McCain appearing to set aside his anger to defend Bush as the 2004 presidential contest approached. McCain became a Bush campaign staple, and worse, was the respected face and voice who came to defend the administration whenever they made another incredible mess. It was McCain, perhaps more than any other political figure, who helped Bush hold on to the centrists long enough to make it through that second election. The senator's reputation and good word, for many, were enough to convince folks to wait and see.

Over the last year or so, that reputation and good word have fallen to dust. John McCain has expended vast energies trying to staple himself to every Evangelical Christian leader with clout in the Republican Party. He has become the most unabashed supporter of the Iraq war, of each failed and foolish policy put forth in the occupation, a process that culminated in the horrorshow at that Baghdad marketplace on April Fool's Day. He now wears the blinders needed to believe there is hope in Iraq, and there are 21 new bodies in a marketplace over there to prove it.

McCain has embraced George W. Bush, literally and figuratively, as some sort of long-lost brother. In doing this, he betrayed not only the individualism that once defined him, but gave the American people a demonstration of how insipid politics without principle can truly be. The very people who so viciously attacked McCain and his family in 2000 are now, apparently, his best friends in the world. One wonders if the senator avoids facing himself in the mirror nowadays because he does not want to see the whore's face in the reflection.

Even those who disagree with his politics must admit, with hard-won hindsight, that McCain circa 2000 would have been far preferable to George W. Bush. If more Republicans in our government today were like McCain was then, we would all be in a far better place. That distinction has been erased, and John McCain has become just another GOP lickspittle who toes the bloody line and refuses to admit, despite all evidence, that his new best friends have failed us all. This is, simply put, a tragedy for him.

It is our American tragedy, as well, because McCain became this sad fraud out of absolute necessity. One cannot hope to gain the GOP nomination for president without winning over that party's hard-right absolutist Evangelical Christian base, and the opinions almost universally espoused by that base are a lot of the reason this nation is in such dire straits. Our tragedy is found in their power over any national Republican candidate, and over the administration currently running the republic into the ground.

John McCain's reputation is destroyed. He has become one of T.S. Eliot's hollow men, bereft by his own actions of the formidable image that once defined him, and is now just another cheaply-bought candidate peddling himself for pennies on the dollar to the very wretches who once savaged his character and family. He is gone, just completely gone.

Another poet, Yeats, once described a world where the best lack all conviction, and the worst are filled with passionate intensity. McCain has become the essence of that listless best and striving worst, and the transformation is a lesson for us all about just how much selfdom must be sacrificed upon the altar of GOP politics to win an election. McCain has proven himself unfit to be president, and perhaps worse, he has shown us all how cheaply integrity dies when power is close at hand.

McCain not seen as a winner in 2008
McCain is toast! ---BBB

2008 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
McCain not seen as a winner in 2008
By Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers
4/6/07

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - John McCain has lost his maverick magic.

The Arizona senator lags behind rivals in fundraising for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. He's lost ground in public opinion polls.

And in this state where he claimed his biggest victory the last time he ran, many Republicans see him as old, tired or too willing to bow down to an unpopular president or to his onetime foils, such as Christian conservative leaders.

"I was a strong backer of McCain last time," said George Carlisle, a retired corporate executive from Portsmouth. "The guy was magical. I don't think he's the man he was seven years ago. He's done. Stick a fork in him, he's done."

McCain aides on Wednesday blamed his third-place showing in fundraising - $12.5 million, well behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's $20 million and trailing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's $15 million - on the mechanics of his campaign.

They announced a new fundraising team.

They also delayed the formal kickoff of his struggling campaign, setting aside the scheduled April 11 date in favor of a new speech explaining his support for the Iraq war. Earlier this week in Iraq, he argued that things are better there than Americans have been told, only to be contradicted the next day by ordinary Iraqis, who said his visit was a staged media show and that the security he saw at one Baghdad market had been ramped up because he was there.

Interviews with voters, pollsters and analysts in New Hampshire - where McCain upset front-runner George W. Bush in 2000 - suggest that the senator's problems are deeper than campaign management and that he's now the establishment figure at risk of being knocked off in the nation's pivotal first primary.

"Compared to a year ago, he's not doing so well," said Dick Bennett, a New Hampshire-based pollster. "He's lost support. It isn't like it was eight years ago. He's holding his own, but it isn't anything like it was."

The most recent survey by Bennett's firm, the American Research Group, found McCain still holding an edge over the field but by a much narrower margin. He lost 6 percentage points in the first three months of this year - as did Giuliani - while Romney gained 8.

A new CNN poll of New Hampshire voters released Wednesday put McCain in a tie with Giuliani at 29 percent each, with Romney at 17 percent and former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson at 14 percent.

That's comparable with the CNN poll's findings in February. McCain campaign spokesman Brian Jones noted Thursday that McCain still leads or is tied for the lead in New Hampshire polls, saying: "In recent visits to New Hampshire, John McCain has spoken to sold-out crowds and he remains a formidable candidate to win the primary. He still enjoys a high level of support in New Hampshire."

A common complaint among Republicans in New Hampshire is that McCain has lost the rebel quality that they liked so much in 2000.

"He's trying too hard to appeal to all parts of the Republican Party. Appealing to all parts of the party is a death knell," Carlisle said. "He looks old and tired. He is old and tired."

"His time is past," said John Tinios, a caterer and restaurateur from Portsmouth.

Reminded that other Republicans have run and won a second time, such as Ronald Reagan, Tinios said, "Reagan had energy. I don't see the energy in McCain that he had when he ran before. He's searching for an identity."

"He's lost that glitter he had," said Renee Ridel of Stratham, who works in commercial real estate. "He's just not the same guy. He seems weak. Maybe he wants to win too much."

McCain spokesman Jones disputed the notion that McCain is old or tired.

"That's a mischaracterization," Jones said. "The level of energy he has is unlike any other candidate. . . . He's still John McCain. He'll still talk about any subject."

He agreed, however, that the senator is running a different type of campaign this time. "It is a different campaign. . . . He was an insurgent. But he lost the nomination."

For all McCain's courting of conservatives, he remains suspect in their eyes for putting limits on campaign spending in the McCain-Feingold law as well for as his readiness to break with the party on many occasions.

"Conservatives admire him for staying the course on Iraq. But he doesn't talk about the issues that social conservatives care about," said Dante Scala, a political scientist at Saint Anselm College in Manchester.

Indeed, even when McCain traveled to the Rev. Jerry Falwell's Liberty University last year to reach out to religious conservatives, he didn't mention issues such as abortion or marriage.

"He's going to need to do something to attract more conservatives. They're not sold," Scala said.

McCain has to do that because he can't count on support from independents as he did in 2000. For one thing, many of them are turned off by his wooing of conservatives. For another, they're increasingly drawn to the Democratic Party.

"I like McCain," said Tracey Tucker of Portsmouth, a project manager for a nonprofit organization. "But he doesn't have that spark anymore. I don't think he's a maverick anymore."

Another problem for McCain is his unwavering support for the unpopular Iraq war. Rivals Giuliani and Romney also support the war, but McCain essentially doubled his bet this week by traveling to Baghdad and arguing that things are better there.

Then there's his support for Bush, which his campaign aides see as key to winning over a party establishment that crushed him last time after New Hampshire.

"They see him as too close to Bush," said Bennett, the pollster, noting that Bush has a 17 percent approval rating in New Hampshire.

"I don't understand it. If John McCain were to say, "I was the one who warned you about Bush,' he could be way out front without compromising his principles.

"It's not a safe place to be. You scratch the surface of the conservative base, and find they're pretty disgusted with Bush too. It isn't working for him. It could be, but at the moment, it isn't."

San Antonio War Reporter Challenges McCain's View of Iraq
San Antonio War Reporter Challenges McCain's View of Iraq
Sig Christenson
By E&P Staff
Published: April 09, 2007 10:20 AM ET

Sig Christenson, a founder of Miltitary Reporters and Editors (MRE), is back in Iraq for his fifth tour of reporting duty for the San Antonio Express-News. E&P has covered each of his tours over the past four years. Besides sending back articles to his paper, he also maintains on this trip a blog at its site, at www.mysanantonio.com.

Here is his entry from yesterday, which he forwarded to E&P.

Four long years have passed since the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall. The war that was supposed to be quick and easy has become long and hard. The misery index here in Baghdad is about as high as the temperature in August.

Imagine you live in Muholla 212 in Karkh, a district in Baghdad only
recently liberated from vicious fighting. The high-rise apartments are
riddled with bullets, a few of the windows scorched from missile strikes.
Some of your neighbors were killed by terrorists, at least one of them a
boy.

A drive to the market, if you're lucky enough to have a car rather than the three kids I saw the other day racing down Haifa Street in a donkey cart, is a heroic act of faith.

The killing goes on in parts of this country even as I write this sentence.

We reporters here aren't making it up. We're doing our jobs and sharing the same risks as U.S. troops and millions of Iraqis, and we're not running for any public office.

The same can't be said of Sen. John McCain. He's the pro-war presidential candidate, and he was just here last week on a nice dog-and-pony show to a Baghdad market.

The good senator is luxuriating back home again, indulging himself in
another rant on the media's coverage of this war.

"The new political-military strategy is beginning to show results," McCain, R-Ariz., wrote in Sunday's Washington Post. "But most Americans are not aware because much of the media are not reporting it or devote far more attention to car bombs and mortar attacks that reveal little about the strategic direction of the war.

"I am not saying that bad news should not be reported or that horrific
terrorist attacks are not newsworthy. But news coverage should also include evidence of progress."

Enough already. There have been enough distortions for one war.

This is a crass act of politics designed to energize the senator's
conservative base, which for the most part very badly wants to believe that things are much better over here than the media lets on.

This is a crass act of politics every bit as low as using Iraqis in a
run-down market as props in his race to the White House.

You've got to have a lot of ambition to have that kind of gall. It's truly
brazen.

But it takes even more courage to report Iraq as it is these days, and
here's the litmus test for it: I dare John McCain or any other officeholder to go to that market in a small and often unreliable Iraqi car, his only support an Iraqi driver and translator.

That's how a lot of us media types got around Iraq three years ago, before it became too dangerous to work without high-end security. Photographer Edward Ornelas and I not only drove all over Baghdad with that arrangement, we also spent time far outside of the city, working in remote rural areas with no protection at all.

The Christian Science Monitor's Jill Carroll worked that way until she was kidnapped. We were luckier. Two of our cars broke down, once in Tikrit the morning after Saddam's capture. Somehow, and certainly with God's guidance, we made it home.

It seems McCain is proud of the fact that he's made five visits to Iraq
since 2003. Curiously, so have I. But I'd guess that my visits have run
longer and involved more danger, starting with the invasion. I'd bet that every journalist who has been here could say the same thing, but listen to him: "I just returned from my fifth visit to Iraq since 2003 ?- and my first since Gen. David Petraeus's new strategy has started taking effect. For the first time, our delegation was able to drive, not use helicopters, from the airport to downtown Baghdad."

That must have been a thrill, my friend. But you almost certainly rode the old "Highway of Death" in a Rhino, a big armored bus.

Ed and I have ridden the Rhino. We came in once on a blue school bus with no protection at all, a soldier next to me gripping his rifle so hard his knuckles were white.

What McCain is trying to convey is that things are safer because you can take a big armored bus on that once-perilous journey from the airport to the Green Zone.

He's claiming that an hour-long market tour has convinced him that Baghdad is coming back to life.

Well, it is ?- to some degree. There also are parts of Baghdad that are war zones, and soldiers die pretty much every day in this city. That's the real story.

It isn't happy news, but it's the truth and no soldier I've met would
dispute it.

You are welcome to believe everything McCain says. His testimony is based on a whirlwind tour of modern Mesopotamia with a "60 Minutes" crew in tow.

Or you can believe the reporters who come here for embeds that run months, or the truly intrepid journalists who spend years here.

But there's one thing I know from having lived this war, and something the senator should have never forgotten from his years as a POW. I am reminded of it every time I wear my Society of Professional Journalists T-shirt, which bears this thought. "Talk is cheap. Free speech isn't."