Posted on 02/19/2007 12:17:06 PM PST by FairOpinion
Senator John McCain said Monday the war in Iraq has been mismanaged for years.
He said Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (news - bio) will be remembered as one of the worst to ever hold the job.
He said the United States is paying a heavy price for the mismanagement.
He said Rumsfeld never put enough troops on the ground to succeed in Iraq.
Former Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating and former Texas Senator Phil Gramm were at his side.
Both endorsed McCain over the weekend.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews4.com ...
That's an understatement. You should read my emails I am getting from arround the State -- they are sizzling and it is not a nice sizzle. Frank Keating's name is MUD! Keating wants to come back to OK to run for Senator in 2010 if Coburn doesn't run again. A lot of us will work 24/7 to make sure he is defeated.
Sen Inhofe is not a McCain fan -- in 2000 he came out for Bush in the primary against McCain and I doubt he likes him anymore today -- in fact my guess is he likes him less.
Keating just saved me money! He is speaking at the banquet the night before the Convention and I am not going. I was debating but now that he supports McCain -- no thank you.
I didn't realize so many people didn't like Keating but I wasn't in the State when he first ran. A whole list thinks he should stay permanently in D.C. after not being much help to Largent in 2002 that gave us a Dem as he was mad because Largent wouldn't step aside in the House earlier so Keating's wife could run. She ran and got clobbered. His brother ran for Treasurer and lost in the primary. His son ran and lost in a run-off as was pointed out to me. Found out more in the last 24 hours about Keating then I ever knew before and it is not good.
Then I find out that Mary Fallin our Lt Governor now Congresswoman worked behind the scenes to get everything to NYC after 9-11.
See #69
McCain came out of that Vietnamese prison, got elected to the Senate gravy train and has stayed there ever since. He has done nothing to help this country, nothing to distinguish himself. He has merely secured his grip on his cushy job and taken every advantage he could. He could not have been a Secretary of Defense or anything else. He is what he could be - a nebbish.
Yup, I can't even think of voting for him now. Really this 'performance' was beneath cowardly.
This is outburst is a perfect example of why McCain (A) Ran his 2000 primary campaign into the ground. (B) Will run his 2008 primary campaign into the ground.
The guy is just not stable. That said, I wouldn't mind having him be POTUS the day after the next 9-11. He might really go bonkers and let it rip at the Islamo-Nazis. Maybe the GOP can just lock him in a glass case in the bottom of the Pentagon and break him out when they need a Dr. Strangelove moment.
Did I say that? Why the insults?
And McPain thinks that the base of the GOP will just flock to him for this kind of media pandering????
Words have consequences and motives and with a person as smart as McPain we know that he knows his motives behind his words are not unrelated to the consequences that his words will obtain.
So, will his words engender greater public support for our efforts in Iraq today, or for the troops carrying out that effort? They will not and McPain knows it.
Will his words embolden the opponents of the war that they were right all along in opposing it? (They will say: "You see, as we said all along, and even now as McPain admits, that Rumsfield misled us from the beginning") They will and McPain knows it.
From the consequences his motives are clear.
His primary constituency, the media, must start choosing between McPain, their darling, anti-Bush gadfly, or McPain the potential GOP opponent of their real darlings, the Dims. They have already started to chose the later. McPain senses it and so he has sent them another friendly, anti-Bush signal, hoping to draw them back to him.
That is good for us, the GOP, because McPain cannot campaign for the GOP vote and the media vote at the same time. He must, and he will, put-off one or the other with almost everything he says.
As to his latest comments themselves:
When one hears one critic of the war say that there "was not enough troops" at some particular time in the war, one has to wonder if the desired number of U.S. troops that such a critic says should have been in Iraq was equal to the number of troops that other critics say would have presented such an "overwhelming presence" of "the occupation" that the Baathists and Al Queda would have succeeded, politically in derailing the Iraqis from voting.
"The overwhelming, civil oppression" from the called for additional troops, could have, and I believe would have been presented, possibly with success, by every brand of opponent to a democratic Iraq as evidence to oppose U.S. efforts at democratically creating a new government. "How can we elect our own government under such an oppressive occupation."
Every critic of the conduct of the war ignores two things. First, they ignore the fact that the opposition from Saddam, the Baathists independently, the Sunni and the Shia sectarian militias and Al Queda was, and was going to be a dedicated opposition, collectively and independently, NO MATTER WHAT THE U.S. DID, period. Second, they either ignore, or pretend to ignore, that ALL opponents of the U.S. in Iraq, were, at all times, capable of adjusting the form, manner and substance of that opposition, to try to meet their own goals, no matter what tactics we employed.
We may have been able to make things appear "more secure" in less time. With that goal taking precedence over political developments, the efforts spent achieving it and the efforts maintaining it may also have required us to use those same "security concerns" as the reason why there might not have yet today been a new Iraqi constitution. The opponents in Iraq, less able to be violent, could have easily re-framed their opposition as completely political and "nationalist", using the overwhelming U.S. presence as the evidence and the reason to not co-operate with the political process. Absent their violence, that the Iraqi people rejected in their votes, the various groups of opponents may have been able to produce a united "anti-occupation" political front.
It is completely likely, in Iraq, that we could not have avoided both the charge of creating a new, occupied American colony, that was completely secure, and an Iraqi democracy, struggling though it is.
I believe McPain knows this and does not give a damn.
It is re-writing of history to believe that, if things had been "different" our opponents in Iraq would have simply given up their opposition instead of adapting and adjusting to it. The critics like to complain about one set of consequences while ignoring that all possible courses had their own sets of consequences.
"Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) has signed on to back Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, providing another significant conservative endorsement for a candidate once estranged from the right wing of his party."
What is the matter with Thune?!
Someone needs to send this article and thread to Thune, who went on to say how much McC supports the Wot and the President's policy in Iraq.
(see post 109 -- Thune support McC)
They were needed. Because they didn't come in from the north, the northern nuts were disrupted rather than separated out and killed. As it was their going all the way around allowed them to be used to fake out the Iraqi Army and to gain a tactical surprise.
You know...McCain also called the Swift Boat Vets LIARS...and he hadn't read their book or even talked to them!!
No. Rather it's that McCain doesn't think that we're smart enough to make the connection between Rumsfeld and the President.
Regards,
TS
He just no sooner complimented social Conservatives by stating Roe V. Wade should be overturned then goes and hits a low blow on Rummy.
Very well said and worth repeating.
I can't understand how anyone can claim that there were never enough troops in theater when we took Baghdad in about two weeks. Clinton cut our military by 40%. Rummy and Tommy Franks did an outstanding job with what was left.
Here's the key...and the answer is "political opposition".
Stupid "professional courtesy"?
Regards, Ivan
I am thinking that McCain probably helped Thune when, during his first year in the Senate...he went up against Pres. Bush and Rummy over the BRAC changes.
Those changes would have closed a military base in his state..and he was fighting to keep it.
I wouldn't doubt that McCain stood with him...and is calling in his chit.
1) We should recognize that.
2) We should also recognize that being taken prisoner is not an accomplishment.
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