Another War Hero...

[Boogyman]

Here's another decorated veteran who is now speaking out, A Republican this time.

Funny how combat veterans from both parties are blaming the Bush administration for the mess in Iraq... NOT the press, NOT the protestors, NOT the democrats, NOT the liberals.... the BUSH ADMINISTRATION.

McCain faults Bush administration on Iraq

Americans led to believe war would be a ‘day at the beach,’ senator says

Updated: 1 hour, 40 minutes ago:

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Republican Sen. John McCain, a staunch defender of the Iraq war, on Tuesday faulted the Bush administration for misleading Americans into believing the conflict would be “some kind of day at the beach.”

The potential 2008 presidential candidate, who a day earlier had rejected calls for withdrawing U.S. forces, said the administration had failed to make clear the challenges facing the military.

“I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was underestimating the size of the task and the sacrifices that would be required,” McCain said. “Stuff happens, mission accomplished, last throes, a few dead-enders. I’m just more familiar with those statements than anyone else because it grieves me so much that we had not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be.”

Those phrases are closely associated with top members of the Bush administration, including the president.

Bush stood below a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished” on May 1, 2003 after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime. The war has continued since then, with the death of more than 2,600 members of the U.S. military. Vice President Dick Cheney said last year that the Iraqi insurgency was “in its final throes.”

The Arizona senator said that talk “has contributed enormously to the frustration that Americans feel today because they were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach, which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking.”

McCain was campaigning for Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, who faces a tough fight in his re-election bid against Democratic challenger Rep. Sherrod Brown. Ohio was decisive in the 2004 presidential election, ensuring Bush’s win, and is certain to be critical in 2008.

Democrats call for phased withdrawal
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, said Tuesday that the best way to encourage Iraqis to get their political house in order is to begin a phased withdrawal from Iraq by the end of this year. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said the longer the U.S. stays the course in Iraq, “the weaker we’re going to be in the war on terrorism.”

Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he was glad to hear McCain has realized “we need more than tough talk” on Iraq.

“It’s time we win the war on terror,” said Reid. “To do that we must change the course in Iraq.”

On Monday, McCain said at an appearance in suburban Cleveland that if U.S. troops announce a specific date to leave Iraq, insurgents will bide their time until they have an opportunity to act without interference.

“The chaos that would ensue would have direct implications for our national security,” McCain said.

DeWine said Congress would not have had the chance to authorize the war if the intelligence on Iraq’s military capability and intentions were accurate.

“It would never have come up for a vote so it would have been an entirely different situation,” he said.

© 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14475828/

[freesw]

I'm not as enthusiastic nowadays about McCain as I was in 2000, but I do think he would be a strong, highly credible Republican candidate in 2008.

To this day I'm incapable of entirely forgiving the Bush machine for swift-boating him in 2000 (the Bush machine swift-boated before swift-boating became the name for what they do). Not only was it grossly unethical, it was catastrophic for the country, because McCain, being far more qualified than Bush, would not have made nearly the number of gross blunders that the Bush administration has. Bush has been an utter disaster for America.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/082306K.shtml
...
So, in fall 2004, with Bush fighting for his political life in a tight race against Democrat John Kerry, bin Laden took the risk of breaking nearly a year of silence to release a videotape denouncing Bush on the Friday before the U.S. election.

Bush's supporters immediately spun bin Laden's tirade into his "endorsement" of Kerry and pollsters recorded a jump of several percentage points for Bush, from nearly a dead heat to a five- or six-point lead. Four days later, Bush hung on to win a second term by an official margin of less than three percentage points. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Bush-Bin Laden Symbiosis."]

The intervention by bin Laden - essentially urging Americans to reject Bush - had the predictable effect of driving voters to the President. After the videotape appeared, senior CIA analysts concluded that ensuring a second term for Bush was precisely what bin Laden intended.

"Bin Laden certainly did a nice favor today for the President," said deputy CIA director John McLaughlin in opening a meeting to review secret "strategic analysis" after the videotape had dominated the day's news, according to Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine, which draws heavily from CIA insiders.

Suskind wrote that CIA analysts had spent years "parsing each expressed word of the al-Qaeda leader and his deputy, [Ayman] Zawahiri. What they'd learned over nearly a decade is that bin Laden speaks only for strategic reasons. ... Today's conclusion: bin Laden's message was clearly designed to assist the President's reelection."

Jami Miscik, CIA deputy associate director for intelligence, expressed the consensus view that bin Laden recognized how Bush's heavy-handed policies - such as the Guantanamo prison camp, the Abu Ghraib scandal and the war in Iraq - were serving al-Qaeda's strategic goals for recruiting a new generation of jihadists.

"Certainly," Miscik said, "he would want Bush to keep doing what he's doing for a few more years."

As their internal assessment sank in, the CIA analysts were troubled by the implications of their own conclusions. "An ocean of hard truths before them - such as what did it say about U.S. policies that bin Laden would want Bush reelected - remained untouched," Suskind wrote.

Even Bush recognized that his struggling campaign had been helped by bin Laden. "I thought it was going to help," Bush said in a post-election interview about the videotape. "I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the President, something must be right with Bush."

Bin Laden, a well-educated Saudi and a keen observer of U.S. politics, appears to have recognized the same point in cleverly tipping the election to Bush.
...

[Hoodoo]

Yep. Pity Bush didn't follow the Somalia invasion as a rock solid plan and exemplarly path to Military success.

[Boogyman]

Yep. Pity Bush didn't follow the Somalia invasion as a rock solid plan and exemplarly path to Military success.

What could Somalia possibly have to do with Iraq?

Don't tell me you actually think pointing out past decisions by past presidents is some sort of valid defense of the Bush administration's lies and stupidity.

That's a tired old line that's been tried many times before and doesn't carry a lick of weight. Just saying, "Yeah? Well, Clinton did this, did that, blah blah blah doesn't mean a damn thing.

This is now.

[freesw]

Uh, the topic was McCain and Bush, not Clinton and Bush, but be that as it may, I seem to recall that a far worse catastrophe occurred during a similar mission to do good under Reagan - you do remember the Marine barracks in Lebanon - are you going to condemn Reagan too?

It disgusts me to even have to bring it up, but well, it also disgusts me to see all the pointless Clinton-bashing and I'm not going to sit by and say nothing. Clinton had his problems, that's for sure, but he was a far better president, with a much more competent administration, than the one that occupies the office at the moment.

Not that that's saying much...

[tri70]

Oh now, Clinton only wanted to fight people of the US gun owners and Waco!:lol:

[freesw]

Let's not forget that Ruby Ridge occurred during the administration of Clinton's predecessor, and the planning for Waco also began during Bush Sr's administration. The point being that the culture that led to these atrocities was already well in place before Clinton even took office. The initial raid occurred one month after Clinton took office!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_Davidian

This is not to excuse him or Janet Reno, just to say that you really need to point the finger at the militarization of the federal policing agencies in general that have occurred over a long period of time if you want to truly be objective about this and related incidents.

[Hoodoo]

Ok boogey, so maybe Bush should have followed the Viet Nam plan. Oh, but that disaster was Nixon's fault, eh?

[Hoodoo]

The similiarity is that both were unmitigated disasters as was Viet Nam. The criticism that the Current administration has not properly pursued this conflict is correct. Thing is that this is not the first conflict that hasn't been properly handled.Even some of the operations conducted during WW11 were disastrous. From all the whining, one would think this was the first time the US had failed to correctly manage a War. Bush's greatest failures were to fail to recognize the potential of the insurgency and the failure to provide enough troops to occupy the Country-yeah, thats dumb.

[freesw]

During WWII, and the Civil War, which you didn't mention but which had its share of disasters as well, military leaders adapted. During the Vietnam War, however, political leaders based too many military decisions on political considerations. Now, this is inherent when democracies go to war, but in that case, Nixon, rather than changing course after witnessing the failures during LBJ's administration, exacerbated them by expanding the war; he made a bad situation worse, and our troops and Vietnamese continued to die for another 5-7 years. Nixon said during the 1968 campaign that anyone that couldn't end the war during 4 years did not deserve re-election, yet he was re-elected in a landslide in 1972. Though Nixon was far more intelligent, there are many similarities between Nixon and Bush, paranoia and secrecy being the paramount ones. On the one hand, Bush has declared a war that by its very nature cannot ever be won, because it continues to create new enemies, and on the other, he stubbornly refused and refuses to this day to sack Rumsfeld, who is in large part responsible for the huge errors in judgement you mentioned.

As I've posted over and over again, the rush to war in Iraq was the worst foreign policy decision in US history, a trillion dollar blunder that will end up costing untold lives, misery, and engender decades of international hatred and loathing of the US. This is not business as usual, something has gone terribly wrong and it needs to be corrected. Bush and Cheney should both be impeached.

[deguello]

Mccain is a self defeating proposition:an idiot with ambition. He thinks that eviscerating the first amendment, andm unfairlyattacking Bush will win him liberal media support . This is alfred e newman politics;the minute the dems nominate a viable candidate, they'll turn on him and rip him to shreds. This is obvious,but Mccain is too blinded by ambition to see it. Maybe he's brain-damaged from too many communist beatings, as Col. Hackworth said. Deguello

[deguello]

I thought the buck stopped at the White house! Clinton, who hated gun ,owners continued the Bush policies, and turned the atf terrorists on the dravidians with relish. Have you forgottn how Clinton demonized gun owners during the asault weapons hoopla? Not content with trashing the 2nd amendment, Clinto unleashed irs goons on conservative publications, and even individuals(Bill O'reilly)harassing them with expensive audits. Bush is no bargain, bot Clinton was a cryptoStalinist,complete his own madam Ceacescu (Hillary).

[Holliday]

:lol::lol: Hearing you guys back up Clinton on a gun forum really makes me belive you stumbled in here on accident. Democratic underground is that way ------>


wolves in sheeps skin.

[freesw]

:lol::lol: Hearing you guys back up Clinton on a gun forum really makes me belive you stumbled in here on accident.

In addition to the so-called "AW"B, I also opposed Clinton for Plan Columbia, his position regarding abortion, and other issues. But I'm not a single issue voter. Fact is, Bush has been far worse than Clinton was, and I'm absolutely convinced that Gore would have been a much more effective president post-9/11 than Bush has been.

If you want to be a single-issue voter, that's your prerogative; just acknowledge that's what you're doing, please. Many are, and though I find it irrational, it's your right.

[freesw]

Mccain is a self defeating proposition:an idiot with ambition. He thinks that eviscerating the first amendment

You mean campaign finance reform? Tell me, Deguello, how it is that corporations, which are not citizens, ever became "entitled" to first amendment rights in the first place? And how it is that donations of money can be construed as free speech? Quite a series of stretches there...

And you want to talk about betrayal, you need look no further than the Bush campaign's slimy swift-boating of McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries.

Clinto unleashed irs goons on conservative publications, and even individuals(Bill O'reilly)harassing them with expensive audits.

Clinton was a piker.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/09/27/MN181034.DTL
No-fly blacklist snares political activists
- Alan Gathright, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, September 27, 2002

A federal "No Fly" list, intended to keep terrorists from boarding planes, is snaring peace activists at San Francisco International and other U. S. airports, triggering complaints that civil liberties are being trampled.

And while several federal agencies acknowledge that they contribute names to the congressionally mandated list, none of them, when contacted by The Chronicle, could or would say which agency is responsible for managing the list.

One detainment forced a group of 20 Wisconsin anti-war activists to miss their flight, delaying their trip to meet with congressional representatives by a day. That case and others are raising questions about the criteria federal authorities use to place people on the list -- and whether people who exercise their constitutional right to dissent are being lumped together with terrorists.

"What's scariest to me is that there could be this gross interruption of civil rights and nobody is really in charge," said Sarah Backus, an organizer of the Wisconsin group. "That's really 1984-ish."

Federal law enforcement officials deny targeting dissidents. They suggested that the activists were stopped not because their names are on the list, but because their names resemble those of suspected criminals or terrorists.

Congress mandated the list as part of last year's Aviation and Transportation Security Act, after two Sept. 11 hijackers on a federal "watch list" used their real names to board the jetliner that crashed into the Pentagon. The alerts about the two men, however, were not relayed to the airlines.

The detaining of activists has stirred concern among members of Congress and civil liberties advocates. They want to know what safeguards exist to prevent innocent people from being branded "a threat to civil aviation or national security."

NO ACCOUNTABILITY

And they are troubled by the bureaucratic nightmare that people stumble into as they go from one government agency to another in a maddening search to find out who is the official keeper of the no-fly list.

"The problem is that this list has no public accountability: People don't know why their names are put on or how to get their names off," said Jayashri Srikantiah, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California. "We have heard complaints from people who triggered the list a first time and then were cleared by security to fly. But when they fly again, their name is triggered again."

Several federal agencies -- including the CIA, FBI, INS and State Department -- contribute names to the list. But no one at those agencies could say who is responsible for managing the list or who can remove names of people who have been cleared by authorities.

Transportation Security Administration spokesman David Steigman initially said his agency did not have a no-fly list, but after conferring with colleagues, modified his response: His agency does not contribute to the no- fly list, he said, but simply relays names collected by other federal agencies to airlines and airports. "We are just a funnel," he said, estimating that fewer than 1,000 names are on the list.

"TSA has access to it. We do not maintain it." He couldn't say who does. Steigman added he cannot state the criteria for placing someone on the list, because it's "special security information not releasable (to the public)."

However, FBI spokesman Bill Carter said the Transportation Security Administration oversees the no-fly list: "You're asking me about something TSA manages. You'd have to ask TSA their criteria as far as allowing individuals on an airplane or not." In addition to their alarm that no agency seems to be in charge of the list, critics are worried by the many agencies and airlines that can access it.

"The fact that so many people potentially have access to the list," ACLU lawyer Srikantiah said, "creates a large potential for abuse."

At least two dozen activists who have been stopped -- none have been arrested -- say they support sensible steps to bolster aviation security. But they criticize the no-fly list as being, at worst, a Big Brother campaign to muzzle dissent and, at best, a bureaucratic exercise that distracts airport security from looking for real bad guys.

"I think it's a combination of an attempt to silence dissent by scaring people and probably a lot of bumbling and inept implementation of some bad security protocols," said Rebecca Gordon, 50, a veteran San Francisco human rights activist and co-founder of War Times, a San Francisco publication distributed nationally and on the Internet.

Gordon and fellow War Times co-founder Jan Adams, 55, were briefly detained and questioned by police at San Francisco International Airport Aug. 7 after checking in at the American Trans Air counter for a flight to Boston. While they were eventually allowed to fly, their boarding passes were marked with a red "S" -- for "search" -- which subjected them to more scrutiny at SFO and during a layover in Chicago.

Before Adams' return flight from Boston's Logan International, she was trailed to the gate by a police officer and an airline official and searched yet again.

While Gordon, Adams and several of the detained activists acknowledged minor past arrests or citations for participating in nonviolent sit-in or other trespassing protests, FBI spokesman Carter said individuals would have to be "involved in criminal activity" -- not just civil disobedience -- to be banned from U.S. airlines.

DEFINING AN ACTIVIST

But, Carter added, "When you say 'activists,' what type of activity are they involved in? Are they involved in criminal activity to disrupt a particular meeting? . . . Do you plan on blowing up a building? Do you plan on breaking windows or throwing rocks? Some people consider that civil disobedience, some people consider that criminal activity."

Critics question whether Sister Virgine Lawinger, a 74-year-old Catholic nun, is the kind of "air pirate" lawmakers had in mind when they passed the law. Lawinger, one of the Wisconsin activists stopped at the Milwaukee airport on April 19, said she didn't get upset when two sheriff's deputies escorted her for questioning.

"We didn't initially say too much about the detainment, because we do respect the need to be careful (about airline security)," the nun recounted. "They just said your name is flagged and we have to clear it. And from that moment on no one ever gave me any clarification of what that meant and why. I guess that was our frustration."

Five months later, the 20 members of Peace Action Wisconsin still haven't been told why they were detained. Even local sheriff's deputies and airline officials admitted confusion about why the group was stopped, when only one member's name resembled one on the no-fly list.
...

In November, Nancy Oden, a Green Party USA official in Maine, wound up being a suspect passenger and was barred from flying out of the Bangor airport to Chicago, where she planned to attend a Green Party meeting and make a presentation about "pesticides as weapons of war."

Oden said a National Guardsman grabbed her arm when she tried to help a security screener searching her bags with a stuck zipper. The middle-aged woman, who said she was conservatively dressed and wore no anti-war buttons, said the guardsman seemed to know her activist background.

"He started spouting this pro-war nonsense: 'Don't you understand that we have to get them before they get us? Don't you understand what happened on Sept. 11?"

Airport officials said at the time that Oden was barred from boarding because she was uncooperative with security procedures, which she denies. Instead, Oden pointed out that the American Airlines ticket clerk -- who marked her boarding pass with an "S" -- had acknowledged she wasn't picked by random.

"You were going to be searched no matter what. Your name was checked on the list," he said, according to Oden.

"The only reason I could come up with is that the FBI is reactivating their old anti-war activists' files," said Oden, who protested the Vietnam War as a young office worker in Washington, D.C. "It is intimidation. It's just like years ago when the FBI built a file about me and they called my landlord and my co-workers. . . . They did that with everyone in the anti-war movement."

[cowboy117]

In addition to the so-called "AW"B, I also opposed Clinton for Plan Columbia, his position regarding abortion, and other issues. But I'm not a single issue voter. Fact is, Bush has been far worse than Clinton was, and I'm absolutely convinced that Gore would have been a much more effective president post-9/11 than Bush has been.

If you want to be a single-issue voter, that's your prerogative; just acknowledge that's what you're doing, please. Many are, and though I find it irrational, it's your right.If you think Gore would have been a good president,let me give you a quote from Seinfeld:"Jerry to George":There have been great advances in the field of mental health lately!":rolleyes:

[josh]

Im sorry to insult some of you, but anyone heralding John Mccains politics is severly misguided or to eager to cling to anyone who disagrees with GW.