War Handwavium

A little while ago, Obama said that he wasn’t going to do a knee-jerk reaction to Afghanistan and simply send more troops without a good strategy to go with a surge. Within the next day, someone leaked a military report that said America will “fail” in Afghanistan if we don’t add more troops.

The gossip going around is that someone in the Pentagon leaked the report to put pressure on Obama to do the knee-jerk reaction and send more troops.

What has been leaked *since* is that the report says that Afghanistan will need a total of half a million American troops and will take at least 5 years

If true, I’m definitely in the “need a strategy” camp before sending more troops. Half a million troops and five years is just plain crazy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-andrews/classified-mcchrystal-rep_b_298528.html

http://news.aol.com/article/the-point-afghanistan-mcchrystal-report/681449

Obama is living in a fantasy world regarding the Mideast peace process.

Netanyahu knows that nothing Israel does will ever threaten the billions of dollars that the US sends Israel every year. Nothing. Therefore Netanyahu continues to build illegal israeli settlements on palestinian land, knowing that there are no real repurcussions to his actions.

Netanyahu is like the schoolyard bully who has to go to the principal’s office once in a while to listen to some pointless lecture about being nice, and then he goes back out into the schoolyard and bullies other students again. A stern lecture from Obama is of no significance to Israel so long as the money keeps coming in.

It looks more and more like the only way to break this chain is for the rest of the world to bring Israel up on war crime charges from it’s 2008 bombardment and invasion of Gaza, and force the US to face it’s inaction (and monetary support) around Israel being a bully.

So long as the US continues sending billions of dollars to Israel every year, so long as the US uses its veto power on the Security Council to prevent the UN from condemning Israel’s actions, there will be no peace in the middle east.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/09/20099248482648228.html

Obama is pushing to stop the release of torture photos. He says it’s because the photos will be a recruiting poster for terrorists and American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan will be killed.

CQPolitics has an article today (16 June 2009) that questions this claim with evidence. The Abu Ghraib photos were first seen on “60 Minutes” on 28 April 2004. The image above shows American deaths in Iraq over time. For 2004, the numbers of dead/wounded are:

January: 47/188
February: 19/150
March: 52/323
April: 136/1214
28 April 2004: Photos appear on “60 Minutes”
May: 80/757
June: 42/589
July: 54/552

The one thing these numbers show is that the number of deaths and wounded drop after the photos are released. It is doubtful that the photos caused the numbers to drop, but to say the photos caused the number of attacks to rise would first require the numbers to actually be higher from before to after, and second would require that the photos were what actually caused the rise in numbers.

Since the numbers actually fell after the photos were made public, one cannot assert that the release of photos would cause attacks to rise without disregard to the historical evidence to the contrary.

The CQ Politics article states:

Defense Department data and independent experts confirm there is no clear link between the Abu Ghraib scandal and violence in Iraq.

Drawing a connection between the Abu Ghraib photos and the lethal violence that occurred afterward in Iraq “is opinion, not analysis,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Simpler reasons exist for why Obama does not want the photos of Americans torturing Iraqi prisoners to be released than the fabrication that it will cause more attacks. Americans might finally demand that Obama prosecute Americans who committed torture and the Bush administration people who authorized torture. And Obama has said repeatedly that he wants to “look forward, not back” on torture. He has made clear that he doesn’t want to investigate criminal activity.

And though Obama says he doesn’t want the photos released because of attacks, the facts don’t support that notion. So, it might be more accurate to say that Obama doesn’t want to release the photos so he doesn’t have to prosecute the people who committed and authorized torture.

http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?docID=news-000003143986&cpage=1

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iraq_casualties.htm

For all you ignorant folks who are mad at Obama for apologizing to Iran because you don’t think we did anything wrong:

It’s called Operation Ajax. Learn about it. Deal with it.

In 1950′s, Iran had a democratically elected government. At that time, they were also under a colonial relic with the British that gave all (no, really, ALL) of Iran’s oil to Britain, and Britain paid Iran a pittance. And the Iranians decided it was their oil and they should get the money for it.

The British responded by telling the US that Iran was turning communist, which plugged into the cold war fear that gripped America in the 50′s. So, the US sent the CIA over to Iran and they purchased a revolution and installed a puppet dictator, the Shah of Iran.

The Shah ruled Iran for a quarter century. He stayed in power because America made certain that he had money and military equipment to crush any opposition. By the 1970′s, the Shah’s secret police had tens of thousands of Iranians in secret prisons and was torturing them to force their compliance and make the rest of the Iranian population think twice about opposing his rule.

In 1979, the Iranians had had enough and overthrew the Shah’s government while he was out of the country. The Iranian Revolution was supported by many Iranians across the political spectrum. The Iranians demanded that the Shah be returned to Iran to stand trial for his crimes of torture and murder. But the United States offered to host the Shah, which incensed the Iranians and reminded them of who had put the Shah in power in the first place. It was at this time that Iranians stormed the Embassy and took the Americans there hostage.

The Iranian students who stormed the embassy had three demands. The return of the Shah to Iran. That the US apologize for the 1953 overthrow of the democratic government of Iran. That the US release Iranian assets currently frozen in the US.

The US did none of those things.

The US overthrew the democratic government of Iran in 1953 and installed the ruthless dictator the Shah of Iran for 25 years. This dictator radicallized the Iranian people and eventually sparked the Iranian Revolution which overthrew the Shah. The resulting power vacuum was eventually filled by the Ayatollah Khomeini and the radical religious extremists that followed him.

This is what America did. This is the mess that America created. If you don’t think America should apologize for these actions and you don’t think Iran should need an apology, just imagine if our worst enemy came into America in 1953, overthrew our goverment, installed a dictator who tortured tens of thousands of people over 25 years. Just imagine that the Soviet Union somehow sent KGB spies who managed to overthrow Eisenhower and install a puppet government. Do you think Americans might be a little mad after 25 years of oppression? Do you think Americans might be a little mad if some foreign country was taking all our oil and paying us nothing for it?

The founding fathers fought the British back around 1776 because they were taxing our tea. Originally, there was a large portion of “loyalists”, people loyal to Britain, in the colonies. In earlier times, the “revolution” against the British was called “Boston’s fight” by colonialists in other parts of the land who wanted to remain British subjects. The Boston Massacre, an incident in which British troops killed 5 colonialists, radicalized a huge swath of the colonies against Britain.

The difference was that we were luckier than the Iranians after our revolution. The original constitutional convention was mostly a fight between state’s power and federal power. The constitution is mainly a functional document about who has power and how they get it. The Bill of Rights wasn’t added until later when some states refused to sign without it. There were some mention of our first president, George Washington, becoming the next “King George”. And our constitution wasn’t exactly the great document of freedom that we like to think of today: white male land owners had the political power. Women couldn’t vote. Blacks couldn’t vote. The instutition of slavery was codified into the Constitution as “other persons”.

It took America another hundred years to finally face the immorality of slavery, and even then, it took a civil war because half the country didn’t want to give it up. It took another hundred years before blacks had anything resembling true equality. Women didn’t get to vote until 1920.

America had a direct hand in overthrowing the democratic government of Iran in 1953. If you think the Iranian’s were supposed to just roll over and accept that, you don’t even know how our own nation began.

Obama is the first president to suggest that he ought to be able to preventively detain anyone, for any reason, for as long as he wants, without any evidence of an actual crime, just in case that person might commit a crime in the future.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/05/22/preventive_detention/index.html

Some people with a sense of civil liberty saw this coming.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/12/09/guantanamo/

This isn’t saying we want to hold POW’s until the end of the war. POW’s are captured on a battlefield. POW’s do not include civiliians and are limited to armed combatants. And the “War On Terror” is a propaganda campaign with no end in sight. We’re still waging a “War on Drugs” decades after it started. Politicians will be waging a “War On Terror” for decades into the future.

This is Obama saying he wants to detain anyone, foreign or American, whether they committed a crime or not, whether there is evidence or not, on the grounds that maybe, perhaps, possibly, they might commit a crime in the future.

Obama is proposing America’s first Pre-Crime unit.

The reason, and I mean the only reason, anyone is proposing this is because every single detainee in Guantanamo has been tortured, and torture makes evidence inadmissable, which means none of these detainees can be convicted in any legal court of law. Not to mention that torture creates a demand that the torturers be prosecuted for torturing. Had Bush and Company not been so hot to trot to cut a man’s testicles and repeatedly bring men close to death via drowning, we wouldn’t have this problem now.

But now it’s Obama’s problem. And the right thing to do is to return to the rule of law, not invent laws that say there is no law. Obama wants to maintain his popularity, and Cheney and other psychopaths will howl murder if a single detainee is released from Guantanamo. And because Darth Cheney has tainted the evidence against every detainee, we cannot secure any convictions unless we submit to Darth Cheney’s notion of Rule of Law: It’s legal if I say so.

If this becomes “law”, America is doomed.

The Obama administration finally released the last four secret torture memos from the Bush administration that clearly show the Bush administration approved the use of torture.

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/olc_memos.html

Obama then announced that “nothing will be gained” by prosecuting people who committed war crimes… because… they… were… Americans.

“Our national greatness is embedded in America’s ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.”

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/countdown-special-comment-future-us-depend

I can’t tell if Obama is naive and thinks that Bush was a singular bad apple the likes of which America will never see again. (Bush will not be the last tyrant America will have to suffer. Future tyrants will see Bush’s ability to get away with 8 years of torture and take that as a green light to more tyranny.) I can’t tell if Obama is avoiding a political storm and merely hopes that it all magically goes away. (It won’t go away. Ignoring it will only make it worse.) But what I realized is that it doesn’t matter what Obama’s motivations are. What matters are his actions, his deeds. And his deeds are that of a man who is suggesting that we should not prosecute war criminals because they happen to be American.

Glenn Greenwald goes into the legal details here: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/17/prosecutions/index.html

To quote General Pace, http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hirsch.php?articleid=8678

“It is the absolute responsibility of everybody in uniform to disobey an order that is either illegal or immoral.”

Pace was saying this to Iraqi commanders before the US invaded, but it applies to everyone in uniform.

Anyone remember Abu Graib? The torture of prisoners by American soldiers? Ring a bell? Pfc. Lynndie England defended her part in the crimes committed at Abu Graib by invoking the “we were just following orders” defense. http://hnn.us/articles/5378.html

“We think everything was justified because we were instructed to do this and to do that.”

Abu Graib is not a precedence that America wants to continue with the crimes at Guantanamo and the crimes at the American base in Bagram, Afghanistan. We do not want to be a nation that acts solely on the moral compass handed to us by our superiors. We cannot.

And we become complicit if we allow our country to do that without strong vocal protest for justice, for transparancy, for rule of law, for democracy, for freedom, and for liberty. Because what is liberty if it is solely what our politicians decide they are willing to grant us? What is justice if it is solely what our politicians tell us? What is democracy if it is solely what our incumbent political leaders say it is, which they generally say is more of them.

Democracy only exists as long as it is sourced by “we the people”. If we sit back and allow this grand injustice to pass without comment, then we are no longer a democracy. We’re a volunteer tyranny.

Write your representatives and give them an earful. Let them know that Americans still demand rule of law, due process, and that criminals be prosecuted even if they were working for the government at the time. Tell them “I was just following orders” isn’t good enough. And tell them that the people in the Bush administration who gave the orders that others followed should be prosecuted first.

http://www.congress.org/congressorg/officials/congress/

One of Bush’s more heinous war crimes was having people black bagged and shipped off to Guantanamo to be held indefinitely without ever being charged. In 2008, the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush ruled that detainees at Guantanamo still had basic rights like a right to habeous corpus, the right to due process, etc.

In response, Bush simply diverted all detainees to a different detention center, namely a base in Bagram, Afghanistan. His argument was that the Supreme Court ruling only applied to Guantanamo detainees and that detainees in other sites didn’t have any rights unless the Supreme Court specifically named each location where detainees had rights.

Whether Bush wanted an exhaustive list by city and country or whether he wanted them formatted in terms of latitude and longitude is unclear. What is clear is that interpreting the Supreme Court ruling as only applying to detainees in one particular geographic location was Bush’s attempt to gaming the system.

Fast forward to February 2009, Obama declared that he embraced Bush’s view that detainees in Afghanistan had no rights and could be detained indefinitely.

In March 2009, a Federal Court rejected this notion that the Supreme Court had to list the ten-thousand names of God before the Executive branch would be required to give detainees basic human rights.

Obama has appealed the ruling, making clear that he wants the power to inprison people indefinitely without giving them any rights to due process and the rule of law. And yet as a Senator and during his campaign, Obama stated that he was AGAINST Bush’s policies to strip people of their basic rights of due process.

Glenn Greenwald has all the gory details here:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/11/bagram/index.html

12 February 2009, Obama gave a speech on Lincoln’s 200th birthday. Towards the end of the Civil War the defeat of the South had become a certainty. And during this time, Obama said, Lincoln “could have sought revenge”, but instead Lincoln insisted that no Confederate troops be punished.

“All Lincoln wanted was for Confederate troops to go back home and return to work on their farms and in their shops,” Obama said. “That was the only way, Lincoln knew, to repair the rifts that had torn this country apart. It was the only way to begin the healing that our nation so desperately needed.”

“We are far less divided than in Lincoln’s day,” Obama said, but “we are once again debating the critical issues of our time.”

“Let us remember that we are doing so as servants to the same flag, as representatives of the same people, and as stakeholders in a common future,” Obama said. “That is the most fitting tribute we can pay and the most lasting monument we can build to that most remarkable of men, Abraham Lincoln.”

http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=6655426

This might actually explain something of how the Obama administration was seemingly blindsided by the partisan Republican opposition to Obama’s stimulus package. Obama may very well have sincerely thought that he could channel Abraham Lincoln and reach across the party divide and get Republicans to embrace something that is the antithesis of the Republican laissez fair worldview.

This might also explain why Obama has undergone a 180-degree reversal on his position on State Secrets abuse committed by the Bush administration and on his apparent foot-dragging reluctance to have the previous administration investigated for War Crimes. Obama says he is more interested in “looking forward” than in “looking back”, even though the US is bound by law to investigate and pursue possible war criminals. Glen Greenwald explains that part of the law here:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/01/18/prosecutions/

Glenn Greenwald also goes into all the details you need to know about Obama’s flip-flop on State Secrets here:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/02/10/obama/index.html

The short version is that innocent people who had been black bagged by US personel and suffered extraordinary rendition to various third world countries to be tortured are now trying to sue the people who committed these very real, very heinous crimes against them. Bush invoked a blanket interpretation of State Secrets law and said that even so much as talking about what happened in a court of law would reveal State Secrets and therefore the entire case must be dismissed out of hand.

One of Obama’s campaign promises was to correct the problem of this over-reaching use of State Secrets law and allow legitimate cases their day in court.

And now Obama’s administration has told the courts that they are maintaining Bush’s exact same position on State Secrets.

There are plenty of explanations flying around as to why he would do a complete reversal on his position. The hawks argue that Obama must have learned that there really were some State Secrets that would be revealed during the lawsuit. Those with a more jaded perspective believe Obama is reserving the right to maintain State Secrets because of the power it would grant himself in the future.

On a related topic, Obama has repeatedly said that he is not interested in investigating the potential crimes and war crimes of the previous administration. The hawks will argue that no crimes took place, all is fair in love and war, and all that. The jaded will say that Obama needed to say that to get elected and that he would have to expend great political capital to launch an investigation now that he’s in office.

All of those explanations may have some truth to them. Or they may be complete fiction. But since many are handing out their analysis in the dark, here’s mine.

I think Obama may think he is channeling Abraham Lincoln on this topic.

Obama explained Lincoln’s position as this: After the Civil War, Lincoln could have sought revenge, instead he sought forgiveness.

Obama may consider himself to be in essentially in the same position as Lincoln was at the end of the Civil War. Either he can seek vengeance against the previous administration or he can forgive him.

If this is part of what’s behind Obama’s position on not enforcing the rule of law against potential war criminals and in burying the crimes of the past under a blanket “State Secrets” position, if Obama sees himself as “forgiving” the previous administration the way Lincoln “forgave” the South after the Civil War, then there’s a fundamental problem there.

You cannot forgive someone for actions they committed against someone else.

Lincoln as president and political leader of the North could conceivably invoke the royal “we” and say “We the North forgive the South for their war against the North”, and then go on to push for reconciliation.

But the crimes and war crimes committed by the Bush administration weren’t committed solely against the royal “we” of America. Bush invaded two sovereign nations, one on completely cooked up intelligence. Bush ordered that the Geneva Convention on war be completely disregarded as it applies to prisoners of war.

Bush’s crimes are many, but the people seeking justice right now in court are innocent people from foreign countries who had nothing to do with Al Queda or terrorism but were black bagged, shipped off to secret prisons, and tortured for years by Americans or people working for Americans.

These are the people that Bush’s State Secrets are trying to bury the truth on.

And it may very well be that Obama thinks that it is more important to “forgive” the people who committed these crimes and bring the nation together the way Lincoln forgave the South and united the nation.

But Obama cant forgive something that was done to someone else.

Within the context of the American Civil War, the war and all its horror was essentially contained within our own borders. Americans were killing Americans. Brothers were killing brothers. And within that context, brother can forgive brother. The North can forgive the South.

But in the context of Bush’s war against the rest of the world, once you cross international boundaries, wage war against foreign citizens, and torture foreign prisoners, you must be held to acount based on the international agreements you’ve committed to. In this case, the Geneva Convention.

Obama is in no moral position to forgive the Bush administration for their crimes against the rest of the world. Obama is not the one against whom the crimes were committed. The innocent people who were tortured want their day in court, their only chance at justice, and Obama has no moral standing to block their attempt to redress their grievances.

And so, borrowing some of Dr. King’s words, I ask President Obama to discontinue Bush’s abusive use of State Secrets, to bring back the great beacon light of hope we call inalienable human rights, and allow these innocent victims, seared in the flames of withering injustice, to end the long dark night of their captivity and torture with justice reclaimed rather than justice buried.

This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.  Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

http://www.hawaii.edu/mauispeech/html/mlkdream.html

(voice over) It’s Three AM in the White House and the phone is ringing.

(cut to inside, McCain reaching from bed and shouting into phone)

Who the fuck are you and why are you calling me at Three AM, you fucking cunt?

(a pause)

Bomb the mother fuckers.

(pause)

Bomb the bastards! Bomb em to the stone age!

(McCain slams phone down and goes back to sleep)

 (cut to scene, next day, white house briefing room. General Smith hands a report to McCain.)

Mission Accomplished, Mr President. Spain has been bombed off the map as ordered.

(McCain nods, then slowly stops. he looks up at the General with a vague sense of confusion on his face)

What was that last part?

(fade to black)

…

Some observations from the first debate between Obama and McCain. McCain made good his promise to bring a crotchety old man to the election. All he needed was a cane and shout at Obama to get off his lawn. 

(McCain shakes cane angrily) You lousy kids just don’t understand what it’s like!

The question folks should be asking themselves is:

Would I really want InSane McCain with launch codes during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

Hell no.

The other observation was how much McCain wanted to talk about experience, except when experience would show how fundamentally wrong he was.

At one point, McCain went on a long shpeel about how he was against sending troops to Lebannon, for the first Gulf War, for Kosovo, against Somolia…. and then his recollection of history… STOPS.  McCain was vehemently for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that quagmire we’re in now, but McCain never mentioned that.

McCain’s version of world history appears to start around the time of Alexander the Great and to stop at Bill Clinton’s presidency. The next several years of history appear to have been a casualty in McCain’s battle with Alzheimer’s.

When Obama mentioned that McCain was for the invasion of Iraq, mentioned that McCain said there were WMD’s in Iraq, mentioned that McCain said Iraq would be easy, mentioned that McCain said we’d be welcomed as liberators, when Obama pointed out just how wrong McCain was about the current mess we are in right now, McCain suddenly wanted to focus on the future.

 ”The next president won’t have to decide if we invade Iraq or not” McCain said.

Is Early Stage Alzheimer’s setting in for you, McCain?

Will the next president not have to decide whether we have to BOMB BOMB BOMB BOMB IRAN you crotchety old fuck?

Will the next president never have to decide whether we should bomb Spain?

Will the next president never have to decide whether to bomb al queda targets inside Pakistan?

Are you saying that the next president will be faced with an intenational theater in which his only job is mopping up THE STUPID WAR YOU VOTED FOR???

North Korea suddenly drop off the map, McCain?

Russia has lost all interest in Georgia?

Somalia has stopped pirating ships and vessels in international waters?

The president will not have to decide whether to invade Iraq or not, because you totally fucked that one up for us already. Thanks to you, McCain, we’ve been in Iraq longer than we were fighting in WW2.

But are you saying the next president won’t have to worry about using military force in any new engagements? That we needn’t worry about any new threats? Have you somehow magically divined that the next four to eight years will be free of such incidents?

 What the fuck kind of a world to you live in that your profound demonstration of piss poor judgement in the past is suddenly unimportant to the kinds of decisions you’ll make in the future?

 John McCain was stumping to invade Iraq as early as October of 2001 on the David Letterman show. He tried to blame Iraq for the anthrax attacks that came from america. Before the invasion, McCain told everyone it would be easy, that we would find WMD’s there, that we would be welcomed as liberators.

And suddenly, McCain doesn’t want to focus on his experience? Suddenly, the office of presidency is nothing more than a janitorial position intended to clean up the 8 years of Bush/McCain decisions?

John McCain made a point to talk about Eisenhower before D-Day and two letters he wrote, one was a congratulations of victory and one was a resignation because of defeat. John McCain talked about FIRING the SEC chairman, about finding the people responsible for making bad decisions and kicking them out. And yet, by McCain’s own logic, the SEC chairman could simply respond to calls for his resignation by saying

“Hey! It’s not like the next SEC chairman will have to decide whether to allow the country to slide into the worst economic failure since the great depression, right? Why focus on the past? What are the sorts of decisions we need to make going forward?”

And yet John McCain clearly made a fucked up decision to rally the country into a stupid war for stupid reasons and stupid plans that were sketched out on a napkin. MCCAIN VOTED TO INVADE IRAQ.

And his response to Obama pointing out MCCAIN’S TOTAL FAILURE to make the right command decision about Iraq is to sidestep his own responsibility, to sidestep saying I FUCKED UP.

Obama: Hey Grandpa, did I ever mention the time you VOTED FOR THE INVASION OF IRAQ?

McCain: Listen, you little snot-nosed kid, the next president isn’t going to have to decide whether to invade Iraq or not, OK? You little cunt. That bad decision has already been made, and we don’t have to worry about someone making that decision again. You just don’t understand.

Short McCain: MISTAKES WERE MADE, WHO MADE THEM ISN”T IMPORTANT. 

Straight talk express, my ass. This guy has shown himself to be a complete political weasel. Whenever things got really tough during the debate, McCain would invoke some emotive plea about dead soldiers (soldiers he voted to war), or about how he would take care of veterans (many veterans groups give McCain a lousy score on his voting record) or the fact that he’d been a prisoner of war.

McCain: Did I ever tell you the story about the time I was a POW in Vietnam?

Obama: Every day, Grandpa. Every god damn day.

John Mccain spent 26 years in government fighting for deregulation. What did that get America? The current economic crash we’re seeing now. Mortgage crisis. Stock market plummetting. Major financial institutions needing bailouts or declaring bankruptcy. Economic experts handing out advice on how to protect your money when the banks collapse. During the last year of his campaign, McCain repeated over and over that the “fundamentals” of the economy were sound, that he supported deregulation. Now that that economy is a smoldering ruin, what does John McCain want you to believe? That he’s the guy to go to if you want economic regulations to keep the speculators from causing the economy from imploding.

 Apparently the “straight talk express” means telling you exactly what you want to hear.   source

John McCain is a George W. Bush suck up and kiss ass.

Check out the lower right photo. Get a fricken room, you two!

John McCain voted in support of George W. Bush 91 percent of the time. His campaign staff includes 134 lobbyists who have lobbied for dictators, big oil companies and every corporate special interest you can think of. source.

“he (George W. Bush) WILL NOT SQUANDER this unique moment in history by allowing America to retreat behind empty threats, false promises, and uncertain diplomacy. He will confidently defend our interests and values wherever they are threatened.”
– John McCain, 1 August 2000, Republican National Convention source

“by supporting George W. Bush I serve my country well.”
– John McCain, 1 August 2000, Republican National Convention. source

“I think the president (George W. Bush) is doing a great job in leading America and making us aware of the challenge we face.”
– John McCain, 21 October 2001. source

“I am proud of the leadership of the President of the United States (George W. Bush).”
– John McCain, 19 March 2003, shortly before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. source

“I believe the President of the United States (George W. Bush) has done EVERYTHING NECCESSARY and has EXERCISED EVERY OPTION short of war, which has led us to the point we are today.”
– John McCain, 19 March 2003, shortly before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. source

McCain is also a military nincompoop 

“there are still massive amounts of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
– John McCain, 19 March 2003, shortly before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. source

Just before the invasion of Iraq, McCain said the war would be a day at the beach. Years later, when McCain decided to run for President, and the war still going, McCain said he always said the war would be a long and difficult battle, and anyone who said it would be a day at the beach was an idiot.

(here is the transcripts, video link below)

 ”The success (in Iraq) will be fairly easy.” –John McCain 2003

“I believe that we can win an overwhelming victory (in Iraq) in a very short period of time.” –John McCain 2003

 ”Easy.” –John McCain 2003

 ”The American people were led to believe that this would be some kind of day at the beach, which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking.” –John McCain, January 2007

“I knew (Iraq) was probably going to be long and hard and tough and those who voted for it and thought somehow it was going to be an easy task, then I’m sorry they were mistaken. They didn’t know what they were voting for.  ” –John McCain, 1-4-2007

video

“Bomb, bomb, bomb. Bomb, bomb Iran. hehehe.” 
–John McCain,  video

McCain on Meet the Press:

Tim Russert: “Here are the sorts of comments we often hear when US troops are overseas: There’s no reason for the US to remain. The American people want them home. I believe the majority of congress wants them home. Our continued military presence allows other situations to arise which could then lead to the wounding, killing or capture of more American fighting men and women. We should do all in our power to do that. What should be the criteria is our immediate, orderly withdrawal. … For us to get into nation-building, law and order, et cetera, I think, is a tragic and terrible mistake.”

John McCain: “My response to that statement is, and what happens when we leave? Listen to all of the experts who will tell you that we can have a situation which will in the long run will entail far greater casualties, far greater dislocation, far greater threats to our national security, than trying to give this an opportunity to succeed.”

Tim Russert: “Those are your words, from (14 October) 1993 about Somolia, and that’s the kind of thing we’re hearing about Iraq now. You felt that way about Somolia when you saw no end in sight. And many Americans are now echoing your words because they see no end in sight.”

Video

Hey, McCain, doesn’t that make you a complete and total FLIP FLOPPER about the ONE THING (military operations) you continually claim total expertise in?

A man with a short fuse in charge of the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet? The Cuban Missile Crisis would have sparked WW3 and we’d all be buried in a nuclear winter right now.

And if you’re want some more info on just how bad this guy is, try this short video.

McCain would keep the US in Iraq for the next HUNDRED YEARS. insane McCain

Barack Obama correctly assessed the phantom WMD’s and predicted exactly what would happen if we invaded Iraq.

“Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles”
– Barack Obama, 2 Oct 2002, a week before Congress approves Iraq War authorization. source

“I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a US occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.”
– Barack Obama, 2 Oct 2002, a week before Congress approves Iraq War authorization. source

Sarah Palin? Are you kidding me?

A politician whose total experience is summed up as Mayor of a town with a population of ten-thousand people, fifty polar bears, and a couple hundred moose, and then was elected to be Governor of Alaska two years ago?

She’s got so much political expertise that McCain won’t let her speak to the press and answer non-rehearsed questions until someone teaches her where Iraq is on the map, how the Khyber Pass has affected Afghanistan, and how to spell Potatoes.  She is the female equivalent of Dan Quayle in that regard, completely inexperienced politically, though that librarian thing makes her look smarter than Danno.

She’s a politician whose views can be summed up as

1: “as pro-life as any candidate can be” (her own words),

2: abstinence-only sex education (while her underage daughter is pregnant),

3: against same-sex couples getting health benefits (cause, you know, that’s what made Canada and Western Europe sink into the ocean)

4: in favor of teaching creationism in school (and teaching the controversy that aliens may have helped build the pyramids in Egypt).

5: a young earth creationist who thinks dinosaurs and humans coexisted on the planet a mere 6,000 years ago. source

6: into banning books (While Palin was mayor, she asked a librarian what the process would be to ban a book, the librarian said she’d fight any attempts to ban books, Palin then fired the librarian. Only because of public outrage did the librarian get her job back. Word is Palin wanted to ban a book written by Rev. Howard Bess, a liberal Christian preacher from the nearby town of Palmer. source)

7: willing to use her position as Governor to get members of her staff to make dozens of phone calls get the Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire her sister’s ex-husband from his job as State Trooper (confession), and willing to fire Monegan because he wouldn’t do her bidding.

8: a hankering for government perks and earmarks, while squawking about being against wasteful government spending

9: and some sort of notion that we’re waging “God’s War” in Iraq and the rest of the world (I think the Ayatollah said something similar)

Politically speaking, she is, for all intents and purposes, a female Pat Buchanan, just a lot easier on the eyes than ol’ dog face. In short, she’s a right wing religious nutjob who sure as hell shouldn’t be given launch codes or be allowed to nominate someone for the Supreme Court (unless you want the US to become a fascist theocracy, that is).

She twice used her position in office to fire people who wouldn’t go along with her personal vendetta’s (a librarian who refused to ban a book by a “liberal” priest, and a state official who refused to fire her sister’s ex-husband).

If anyone is wondering why Palin’s handlers are harping on anything but the issues, it’s because the moment Palin starts expressing her political views, it’ll be abundantly clear that she’s a fascist religious nutjob who wants to impose her God into your bodies, your schools, your taxes, your job, the books you read, and the military operations your sons and daughters will have to carry out in some foreign land.

And when she slips up during an interview and makes it painfully obvious that she doesn’t know what the “Bush Doctrine” even is, the Right Wing knuckleheads suddenly come out of the woodwork and say that said doctrine is too “amorphous” to define in any specific way. Yet, back in 2005, McCain specifically explained what the “Bush Doctrin” was during his own interview.

The Bush Doctrine is a doctrine of cause-less preemptive war. Up until Georgie-Porgie-Puddin-Pie, centuries of international law had drawn a line in the sand saying that a country could preemptively attack a second country if that second country was clearly about to launch an imminent attack against the first. This was usually defined as the mobilization of military forces and such. Georgie decided that put the bar too high and required too much objective evidence that was just too hard to fabricate. So, instead, Georgie came out with a “Doctrine” that said he could invade any country, at any time, for any reason. Even if attack from that country was not emminent.

This “Doctrine”, this idiotic line of “thought”, is exactly the “thinking” that got us into Iraq. Intelligence agencies were saying there was no link between Iraq and 9/11. American and UN weapon inspectors were saying there were no WMD’s in Iraq, and that inspections should be completed in a few months to certify Iraq was free of WMD’s. But because Georgie the Decider made decisions based off how his “gut” happened to “feel” at any particular moment, he felt that we should invade Iraq.

When asked she supported the idea of making Georgia (which directly borders Russia, and which Russia invaded just recently) a member of NATO, Palin said yes. When the interviewer asks if making Georgia a member of NATO, wouldn’t that mean we’d have to go to war with Russia if they invade Georgia again, Palin, like a clueless schoolgirl, says “Perhaps so”. War with Russia?!? Even Vizzini knows never get involved in a land war in Asia. But Palin wants to jump right in.

McCain singing “Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran” is nothing more than a continuation of this moronic “Bush doctrine”.

And the reason McCain’s handlers are harping on anything but the issues is because the moment McCain opens his mouth about ANYTHING, it’ll be clear that he’s saying whatever he needs to say to be elected, saying what he needs to say to appeal to his new base of right wing religious nutjobs, and even saying stuff that DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS everything he said even a couple years ago.

That’s why the Republicans are outraged over Obama’s “lipstick on a pig” comment, because it’s avoiding talking about political issues like the economy, Iraq, and so on. That’s why McCain needed a little video reminder that he had used the same “lipstick on a pig” to describe Hillary Clinton and her policies. That’s why McCain took DAYS to come out and say Obama didn’t call Palin a pig, finally, because it distracts from the issues.