Another star for the General
The General [and Rhodes Scholar who was first in his class at West Point] addressed McRib’s [ranked 894 out of 899 in his class at the Naval Academy] war record on Face The Nation and now the Republicans have their panties in a bunch.
Wes Clark’s comments are being called “controversial” but … come on, America … that’s crap. I know a lot of older folk who were silent hero’s in World War II and some from Vietnam … I wouldn’t want ANY of them as president. Logic 101 — if WAR marks your life and authors your wounding, that is what your life will be about. McCain doesn’t want his war record questioned because it ain’t so pretty … some of it is even tin-foil hat stuff [where there's smoke, there's fire; no pun intended -- if you want to follow this thread, go here.]
And … in terms of echo’s … hasn’t it occurred to anyone that both Dubby and McRib are rebellious bad boys who chose Hot Dog roles as fly boyz? Scholastic underachievers given to attention-seeking tantrums and envelope-pushing misadventure, who repeatedly needed their powerful Daddy’s to bail them out of the messes they made? Bush III INDEED!
I’ve always liked Wes Clark, even though he’s Hawk, by definition … at least he stops to think about the reasons one would engage in warfare; he’s the rare military type [these days] who insists that diplomacy and nation building is part of any foreign effort. This outrage on the Right due to Clark’s FTN performance is preposterous and hypocritical, the usual cry and hew because one of their own takes a hit, while they’re busy trying to make Michelle Obama look like Mrs. Malcom X.
The GOP does its best to be Rambo’esque from the top down, and mud-slingers from the bottom up; what Mac has going for him is the flawed notion that the Republicans own “security” and that their boy is a war hero. This whole conversation … indeed, this entire campaign … is still about the damned Flag Pin. The Republicans don’t need facts when they can manipulate emotions; we’ve seen how that works for eight years. If Clark can punch holes in that wall of smoke to let some air in, God Bless him!
Without the war … and Mac’s status as POW hero/sufferer … what else does the GOP have to run on? More tax breaks for corporations? Wes said what better than half the nation is thinking; now that Obama has distanced from the remarks [and coming on the day when he's made a major address on patriotism,] I hope it doesn’t turn out that the General threw himself on his sword for the party good.
The MSM is still starry-eyed over Mac — go figure! Today CNN had short clips of Obama’s speech … but right now they’re playing long portions of a McCain meet-up with Vets. The stories of how he actually TREATS Vets, and their families, should make it onto cable news as well.
We need a lot less Rambo and a good deal more reason — as the last article by Sy Hersch makes very evident. Not good, kids … keep Light on this. You’ll also find a Frank Rich piece tucked in here, talking about the perceived wisdom of a possible terrorism attack.
And here’s a splendid Youtube to start your week [stay with it til the very end.]
Jude
Clark: McCain A Hero, But Lacks Command Experience
Huffington Post
June 30, 2008
WASHINGTON — Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate now supporting Barack Obama, said Sunday John McCain’s military service does not automatically qualify him to be commander in chief.
Underscoring during a national television appearance a position he has been expressing for several weeks, Clark said performing heroic military service is not a substitute for gaining command experience.
“In the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “It’s a matter of gauging your opponents and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war.
“He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee and he has traveled all over the world, but he hasn’t held executive responsibility,” Clark said.
“That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded - that wasn’t a wartime squadron.”
Moderator Bob Schieffer, who raised the issue by citing similar remarks Clark has made previously, noted that Obama hadn’t had those experiences nor had he ridden in a fighter plane and been shot down. “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,” Clark replied.
In a March conference call with reporters while he was still backing Hillary Rodham Clinton, Clark said: “Everybody admires John McCain’s service as a fighter pilot, his courage as a prisoner of war. There’s no issue there. He’s a great man and an honorable man. But having served as a fighter pilot - and I know my experience as a company commander in Vietnam - that doesn’t prepare you to be commander in chief in terms of dealing with the national strategic issues that are involved. It may give you a feeling for what the troops are going through in the process, but it doesn’t give you the experience first hand of the national strategic issues.”
He reiterated that position last week in an article on The Huffington Post Web site.
“If Barack Obama’s campaign wants to question John McCain’s military service, that’s their right,” McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said after Clark’s appearance Sunday. “But let’s please drop the pretense that Barack Obama stands for a new type of politics. The reality is he’s proving to be a typical politician who is willing to say anything to get elected, including allowing his campaign surrogates to demean and attack John McCain’s military service record.” ++
McCain ‘Proud’ of Service, Calls Wes Clark Comment ‘Unnecessary’
FOXNews.com
Monday, June 30, 2008
John McCain on Monday said he is proud of his military service and said recent critical comments by Barack Obama supporter Wes Clark were “unnecessary,” as Obama repudiated political attacks on military service and criticized a MoveOn.org newspaper ad that riled lawmakers last year.
A day earlier, Clark — a former NATO commander under President Clinton who now advises Obama — dismissed the value of McCain’s military record as a qualification for the presidency saying, “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”
Since Sunday, Clark’s remarks had spurred a flurry of counterpunches between campaign surrogates, but McCain’s appearance Monday was his first time to speak publicly about Clark’s words.
“That kind of thing is unnecessary. I am proud of my record of service, and I have plenty of friends and leaders who will attest to that,” McCain said, adding those sorts of attacks don’t “reduce the price of a gallon of gas by one penny” or help struggling Americans keep their jobs or homes.
McCain was speaking to reporters in Harrisburg, Pa., where he had toured Turbine Airfoil Design plant to bolster his economic message.
But almost simultaneously during a speech on patriotism in Independence, Mo., Obama told an audience that McCain’s patriotism was clear, and alluded to Clark’s comments by calling for a cease to politically motivated attacks on military service.
“For those like John McCain who have endured physical torment in service to our country — no further proof of such sacrifice is necessary. And let me also add that no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign, and that goes for supporters on both sides,” Obama said.
And if the reference was not clear enough, Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton issued a separate statement regarding Clark’s comments.
“As he’s said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain’s service, and of course he rejects yesterday’s statement by General Clark,” Burton said.
In his speech, Obama also appeared to refer to a strongly worded — and highly criticized advertisement placed last year in The New York Times by the liberal advocacy group MoveOn. The advertisement, placed on the day Multinational Forces-Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus delivered a pivotal report to Congress, was titled: “General Betray Us?”
Obama said divisions from the 1950s and ’60s persist, and “All too often, our politics still seems trapped in these old, threadbare arguments, a fact most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq, when those who opposed administration policy were tagged by some as unpatriotic, and a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.
“Given the enormous challenges that lie before us, we can no longer afford these sorts of divisions.”
In a Sept. 20 vote, the Senate passed a resolution “to specifically repudiate the unwarranted personal attack on General Petraeus by the liberal activist group Moveon.org.”
McCain has criticized Obama for not supporting the amendment. McCain voted for the amendment, while Obama did not vote. The amendment passed the Senate 72-25.
Click here to see how your senator voted on the resolution.
In his chat with reporters, McCain demurred when he was given the chance to question, or put down questions about Obama’s patriotism.
When a reporter asked the Arizona Republican, “do you question at all his patriotism,” McCain said:
“I think that Senator Obama is a great American success story. I think his family is. I think he’s someone who is admired and respected throughout this country and the world. I think our differences are how we intend to move forward in conducting the affairs of this country. We have very different views, and very different positions.”
McCain continued :”I think all Americans are proud of Senator Obama and what he’s been able to accomplish — he and his entire family. … And I think it’s living proof of some of the great, greatness of America.”
McCain also reiterated a point that he made at a fundraiser on Saturday, that Obama can’t be trusted.
“I certainly don’t think he can be trusted in the case of a very, very important factor in the conduct of our campaigns. He said, he repeated in writing and verbally that he would take public financing in the general election if I did…” And obviously, he reversed his position on that issue,” McCain said.
Obama’s campaign contends Obama never committed to maintain public financing, but rather committed only to talking to McCain’s campaign about taking public financing. McCain disputes the Obama campaign took that step either.
In the Sunday interview, Clark also said he didn’t believe McCain’s military service — including his capture and imprisonment in Vietnam, qualified him to be president.
“He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility,” Clark said.
When asked by host Bob Schieffer how he came to describe McCain as “untested and untried,” Clark said it was “because in the matters of national security policy-making, it’s a matter of understanding risk. It’s a matter of gauging your opponents and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions,” adding, “He hasn’t made the calls.” ++
McCain ‘Truth Squad’ hits back at Clark, Obama
Jason Tuohey, BostonGlobe
June 30, 2008
John McCain is a fighter — at least when it comes to defending his military record.
Today, a “Truth Squad” for the presumptive Republican nominee forcefully rejected General Wesley Clark’s comments that McCain lacks foreign policy experience, and suggested Barack Obama do the same.
Led by John Warner, a Virginia Republican who serves with McCain on the Senate Armed Services Committee, the squad blasted Clark and sought to reenforce the military reputation of McCain, a former Vietnam POW who once headed the largest Navy aviation squadron.
“It is inconceivable that anyone would take a shot at Senator McCain’s military experience,” said Lt. Commander Carl Smith, who served with McCain in the Navy. “General Clark is way off base on this one.”
Warner called Clark’s comments “unworthy.”
Clark, a Democrat and supporter of Barack Obama, said in an interview with Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation Sunday “in the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk, it’s a matter of gauging your opponents and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions.”
When Schieffer countered with McCain’s wartime experience, Clark responded “Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” Read the full transcript here.
McCain’s campaign also rushed to link Barack Obama to the controversy, portraying the presumptive Democratic nominee as alternately inexperienced and straying from his pledge of fighting an open, positive race.
McCain spokesman Brian Rodgers said Obama’s “words don’t really match up with the way he is running the campaign.”
Obama’s campaign responded swiftly with a rejection of Clark’s comments.
“As he’s said many times before, Senator Obama honors and respects Senator McCain’s service, and of course he rejects yesterday’s statement by General Clark,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
UPDATE: McCain, speaking to reporters in Harrisburg, Pa., today, addressed Clark’s comments:
“I’m proud of my record of service, and I have plenty of friends and leaders who will attest to that. The important thing is that if that’s the kind of campaign that Senator Obama and his surrogates and his supporters want to wage, I understand that, but it doesn’t reduce the price of a gallon of gas by one penny.” ++
If Terrorists Rock the Vote in 2008
Frank Rich, The New York Times
6/29/08
DON’T fault Charles Black, the John McCain adviser, for publicly stating his honest belief that a domestic terrorist attack would be “a big advantage” for their campaign and that Benazir Bhutto’s assassination had “helped” Mr. McCain win the New Hampshire primary. His real sin is that he didn’t come completely clean on his strategic thinking.
In private, he is surely gaming this out further, George Carlin-style. What would be the optimum timing, from the campaign’s perspective, for this terrorist attack — before or after the convention? Would the attack be most useful if it took place in a red state, blue state or swing state? How much would it “help” if the next assassinated foreign leader had a higher name recognition in American households than Benazir Bhutto?
Unlike Hillary Clinton’s rumination about the Bobby Kennedy assassination or Barack Obama’s soliloquy about voters clinging to guns and faith, Mr. Black’s remarks were not an improvisational mishap. He gave his quotes on the record to Fortune magazine. He did so without thinking twice because he was merely saying what much of Washington believes. Terrorism is the one major issue where Mr. McCain soundly vanquishes his Democratic opponent in the polls. Since 2002, it’s been a Beltway axiom akin to E=mc2 that Bomb in American City=G.O.P. Landslide.
That equation was the creation of Karl Rove. Among the only durable legacies of the Bush presidency are the twin fears that Mr. Rove relentlessly pushed on his client’s behalf: fear of terrorism and fear of gays. But these pillars are disintegrating too. They’re propped up mainly by political operatives like Mr. Black and their journalistic camp followers — the last Washington insiders who are still in Mr. Rove’s sway and are still refighting the last political war.
That the old Rove mojo still commands any respect is rather amazing given how blindsided he was by 2006. Two weeks before that year’s midterms, he condescendingly lectured an NPR interviewer about how he devoured “68 polls a week” — not a mere 67, mind you — and predicted unequivocally that Election Day would yield “a Republican Senate and a Republican House.” These nights you can still find Mr. Rove hawking his numbers as he peddles similar G.O.P. happy talk to credulous bloviators at Fox News.
But let’s put ourselves in Mr. Black’s shoes and try out the Rove playbook at home — though not in front of the children — by thinking the unthinkable. If a terrorist bomb did detonate in an American city before Election Day, would that automatically be to the Republican ticket’s benefit?
Not necessarily. Some might instead ask why the Bush White House didn’t replace Michael Chertoff as secretary of homeland security after a House report condemned his bungling of Katrina. The man didn’t know what was happening in the New Orleans Convention Center even when it was broadcast on national television.
Next, voters might take a hard look at the antiterrorism warriors of the McCain campaign (and of a potential McCain administration). This is the band of advisers and surrogates that surfaced to attack Mr. Obama two weeks ago for being “naïve” and “delusional” and guilty of a “Sept. 10th mind-set” after he had the gall to agree with the Supreme Court decision on Gitmo detainees. The McCain team’s track record is hardly sterling. It might make America more vulnerable to terrorist attack, not less, were it in power.
Take — please! — the McCain foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann. He was the executive director of the so-called Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, formed in 2002 (with Mr. McCain on board) to gin up the war that diverted American resources from fighting those who attacked us on 9/11 to invading a nation that did not. Thanks to that strategic blunder, a 2008 Qaeda attack could well originate from Pakistan or Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden’s progeny, liberated by our liberation of Iraq, have been regrouping ever since. On Friday the Pentagon declared that the Taliban has once more “coalesced into a resilient insurgency.” Attacks in eastern Afghanistan are up 40 percent from this time last year, according to the American commander of NATO forces in the region.
Another dubious McCain terror expert is the former C.I.A. director James Woolsey. He (like Charles Black) was a cheerleader for Ahmad Chalabi, the exiled Iraqi leader who helped promote phony Iraqi W.M.D. intelligence in 2002 and who is persona non grata to American officials in Iraq today because of his ties to Iran. Mr. Woolsey, who accuses Mr. Obama of harboring “extremely dangerous” views on terrorism, has demonstrated his own expertise by supporting crackpot theories linking Iraq to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and 1993 World Trade Center bombing. On 9/11 and 9/12 he circulated on the three major networks to float the idea that Saddam rather than bin Laden might have ordered the attacks.
Then there is the McCain camp’s star fearmonger, Rudy Giuliani, who has lately taken to railing about Mr. Obama’s supposed failure to learn the lessons of the first twin towers bombing. The lesson America’s Mayor took away from that 1993 attack was to insist that New York City’s emergency command center be located in the World Trade Center. No less an authority than John Lehman, a 9/11 commission member who also serves on the McCain team, has mocked New York’s pre-9/11 emergency plans as “not worthy of the Boy Scouts.”
If there’s another 9/11, it’s hard to argue that this gang could have prevented it. At least Mr. Obama, however limited his experience, has called for America to act on actionable terrorist intelligence in Pakistan if Pervez Musharraf won’t. Mr. McCain angrily disagreed with that idea. The relatively passive Pakistan policy he offers instead could well come back to haunt him if a new 9/11 is launched from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Should there be no new terrorist attack, the McCain camp’s efforts to play the old Rove 9/11 fear card may quickly become as laughable as the Giuliani presidential campaign. These days Americans are more frightened of losing their jobs, homes and savings.
But you can’t blame the McCain campaign for clinging to terrorism as a political crutch. The other Rove fear card is even more tattered. In the wake of Larry Craig and Mark Foley, it’s a double-edged sword for the G.O.P. to trot out gay blades cavorting in pride parades in homosexual-panic ads.
Some on the right still hold out hope otherwise. After the California Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage, The Weekly Standard suggested that a brewing backlash could put that state’s “electoral votes in play.” But few others believe so, including the state’s Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has vowed to enforce the law and opposes a ballot initiative to overturn it. Even Bill O’Reilly recently chastised a family-values advocate for mounting politically ineffectual arguments against same-sex marriage.
Mr. McCain is trying to swing both ways. While he no longer refers to the aging old-guard cranks of the religious right as “agents of intolerance,” his actions, starting with his tardy disowning of the endorsement he sought from the intolerant Rev. John Hagee, sometimes speak as loudly as his past words.
The Ohio operative behind that state’s 2004 anti-same-sex marriage campaign was so alienated by Mr. McCain’s emissaries this year that he told The Los Angeles Times, “He doesn’t want to associate with us, and we don’t want to associate with him.” Mr. McCain instead associated himself with Ellen DeGeneres. He visited her talk show to extend his good wishes for her forthcoming California nuptials while seeming almost chagrined to admit his opposition to same-sex marriage, a stand he shares with Mr. Obama. Since then, Mr. McCain has met with the gay Log Cabin Republicans.
He and Mr. Obama also share the antipathy of James Dobson, the Focus on the Family fulminator so avidly courted by the Bush White House. Perhaps best remembered for linking the cartoon character SquareBob SpongePants to a “pro-homosexual video,” Mr. Dobson last week used the word “fruitcake” in a rant against Mr. Obama. He has been nearly as dyspeptic, if not quite as “fruit”-fixated, about Mr. McCain.
Mr. Dobson’s embarrassing lashing out is the last gasp of an era. His dying breed of family-values scold is giving way to a new and independent generation of evangelical leaders (and voters) who don’t march to the partisan beat of Mr. Rove or his one-time ally, the disgraced Ralph Reed. Perhaps in belated recognition of this reality, Mr. Rove has been busy lately developing a new fear card for 2008 — fear of the Obamas.
Its racial undertones are naked enough. Earlier this year, Mr. Rove wrote that Mr. Obama was “often lazy,” and that his “trash talking” during a debate was “an unattractive carry-over from his days playing pickup basketball at Harvard.” Last week Mr. Rove caricatured him as the elitist “guy at the country club with the beautiful date.” Provocative as it is to inject Mr. Obama into a setting historically associated with white Republicans, the invocation of that “beautiful date” is even more so. Where’s his beautiful wife? Mr. Rove’s suggestion that Mr. Obama might be a sexual freelancer, as an astute post at the Web site Talking Points Memo noted, could conjure up for a certain audience the image of “a white woman on his arm.”
But here, too, Mr. Rove reeks of the past. Should Mr. Black and Mr. McCain follow this ugly lead, I bet it will help them even less than the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. ++
Seymour Hersh Exposes New US Covert Operations In Iran (VIDEO)
Seymour M. Hersh, New Yorker
June 29, 2008
Seymour Hersh reports on how the Bush Administration has stepped up covert operations against Iran:
Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.
Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.
Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees –the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.
Read Hersh’s full report here.
Watch Hersh discuss his article on CNN below [open link]: ++
“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007
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