McCain: Waterboarding didn't get bin Laden

And he’s on our side!

Speak for yourself

Sometimes he embarrasses me! He claims to be oh so smart! That is why he lost the 2008 election.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2715290/posts

Not much more that I can do but laugh... And the big bad accusation against conservatives is we are single issue voters.... The loons just can’t help themselves.

The MSM has found their man for all the interviews on this issue. Makes me sick

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2714744/posts

Got so caught up in laughing I copied the wrong link. Duh on me.

So Johnny Boy thinks that enhanced interrogation methods don’t work, that Obama not releasing the photos of OBL is a wise move, and that giving OBL a religious funeral ceremony was just a swell idea. JM is POS of the lowest order.

I'm just as disgusted with Sarah Palin for endorsing this slug in the AZ GOP primary, and campaigning for him.

And he’s on our side!

I am a conservative. McCain is most definitely not on my side.

I guess John missed Leon Penetta stating the opposite last night on National Television. Does he know more than Leon Panetta, one of the heads of the operation?

"I'm just as disgusted with Sarah Palin for endorsing this slug in the AZ GOP primary, and campaigning for him."

I'm forever thankful that John McCain picked Gov. Palin as the Vice Presidential candidate. I don't know if she'll jump in this one but i've got a feeling she'll be around in 2016 as well ;o)

McCain is one of the reasons Urkel is now our president. If Dole had somehow run we may have had a chance. ;)

The moron was demanding Gitmo be closed and insisting these murderous scum deserved Geneva protections for years now.

He’s a sick opportunist with an IQ of room temperature.

Am sick and tired of him and his natterings.

The effort to recall him was well underway when we were attacked on 9/11.

From the moment he was elected to public office he has been a traitor to our country and to his fellow prisoners of war.

He tried to convince Kerry to choose him as veep and that is something I will never forget.

He opposed the tax cuts proposed by President Bush.

Too many betrayals to enumerate.

McPain has been so conditioned & damaged by the 'advanced techniques' that the Russians & Viet-Congs did to him that he will forever be against ANYTHING to get useful intel out of captured prisoners.
Therefore I say that he is totally unqualified & unfit to be in ANY sort of public office or any capacity to be making govt policy or decisions.

Shut the Hell up, John.

Sometime ago I posted the following which I think provides a background for understanding John McCain. I think the analysis has stood the test of time but it is important to understand that it was not conceived of as an apology for John McCain or as an indictment. I set it out as my view of the man, one that makes me comfortable in thinking that I understand him. That does not mean I endorse his political views at all. To the contrary, I think we could learn a lesson from John McCain and apply it to the likes of Donald Trump. It is dangerous for conservatives to support a man who does not subscribe to a rounded conservative philosophy. I do not think, and this analysis explains why, that John McCain is motivated by any such philosophy. He is motivated by his highly developed inward, one might almost say "egotistical," ad hoc morality. I believe Donald Trump is motivated by his ego and has no profound moral standard to which he adheres but rather he has a highly perfected means of rationalization which endorses whatever his ego wants.

Here is a 2-year-old reply:

Understanding John McCain

McCain's Vietnam experience was so shattering that he sees the world through a new lens, the experience so profound that he has emerged from it with a lifelong commitment to country. This gives credibility to McCain's claim that he is a maverick, beholden not to party but to principle and country.

At the end of his acceptance speech, McCain recited how he came to be utterly broken but then restored, even redeemed with a new commitment to service to others when a fellow prisoner urged him by prison telegraph not to quit and die but instead to carry on the fight out of respect for his comrades who even then were carrying on the fight for him.

Psychologists and scholars of religious experience, especially Christian scholars, have long been aware of the empowering release generated by total surrender of the will. One can describe this in psychological language, or in Biblical language, or even in evangelical idiom.

Whatever language one uses to describe these epiphanies there is no question that very often they are real and long lasting. Psychologists often explain the phenomenon by reference to the ego. An Old Testament scholar might think in terms of the first and second Commandments and the muscular faith which follows adherence to them. Christians speak of dying to the self, picking up the cross and following the Savior to become a new man-to be born again. Perhaps the most famous example is recounted in the Book of Acts which tells that Saul of Tarsus was physically knocked off his horse by the Holy Spirit. Saul experiences an epiphany, Saul becomes Paul, and is transformed from a murderous persecutor of Christians to a fully committed martyr who becomes the great evangelist of the early church, indomitable in spirit, inflexible in commitment, and-like the other disciples- utterly fearless. Significantly, Paul, the newbie Christian, does not shrink later from taking on Peter the acknowledged leader of the disciples "to his face" to dispute matters of doctrine. [The application to the career of John McCain is obvious]

In contemporary history we have the example of George Bush and his transforming encounter with Reverend Billy Graham. Indeed, we have the Reverend Billy Graham's own epiphany in the forest. We have the numberless examples recited daily in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is from the success of this group that countless so-called "12 step" groups have been formed to apply successfully the same empowering message of surrender. [I refer to the reader to my about page in the account of such an experience by Nathan Bedford Forest]

The important thing to understand about these epiphanies is that when they are genuine they are often life-long and tremendously empowering. Lives really are transformed forever. Criminals go straight, alcoholics stay sober, and the miserable are made happy. In fact, these newly born spirits enjoy their new condition so much that they seek ways to prolong the joy they have obtained in their moment of sweet release. Almost universally, these people find that service to others is the surest way to prolong that wonderful feeling of well-being.

Isolated, sick, starved and beaten beyond human endurance, John McCain ultimately broke and signed a confession which he mistakenly assumed amounted to a betrayal of his country. Who was this wretched man who lay so anguished in that cell? In his memoir and in his speech, McCain described himself as a kind of a hotshot jet jock, a screwup, a discipline problem in school, and an accomplished accumulator of demerits as a midshipman. Evidently, he was also an enthusiastic swordsman. In short, he was an arrogant SOB. Now, in that cell, he had fallen far. The classic description of the crushing of the ego. At this pivotal moment came the means of his redemption via the prison telegraph: Service to others out of love of country. In his speech McCain declared:

"And I wasn't my own man anymore, I was my country's"

And now we know the rest of the story. This is not to say that John McCain was instantly sanctified in all respects, far from it. He still had to swim his way out of a giant mental, moral and spiritual hangover from his ordeal. His screwing around would cost him his marriage before he could swim to shore. Even today, the old self bursts out in temper. But when one lays this template over the rest of John McCain’s career, one should have little difficulty accepting the story as being essentially true (I for one believe it) and to accept it as a convincing explanation of his career and his conception of his role as president.

Before considering the implications of all of this for conservatives, it is instructive to consider what it means to liberals. [And to compare it to Barak Obama's story]

In a word: "nothing." Liberals do not see it because they cannot see it. They simply do not get it. The whole idea of gaining empowerment through surrendering is as psychologically repugnant to liberals as is the idea of accepting a higher authority in their lives. Consider the Democrat party to be a gigantic creaking contrivance to legitimatize liberals in their insatiable quest to feed their egos. The job of this machine is to provide rationalizations. The obvious examples are sex without consequences and abortion without guilt. These examples demonstrate that the rationalization machine can be quite deadly as it kills 3 to 4 million babies a year. The pernicious doctrines emanating from The Frankfurt School such as moral relativism, feminism, and critical theory find application not just in cultural issues like abortion which kill babies but across the board, touching all government policy and every aspect of our lives.

To repeat, the whole purpose of this Democrat apparatus is to turn thinking on its head and provide a language to liberals so they can continue to play God (especially with other people's lives). Liberals will never about-face and cast away everything that feeds their ego addictions. That is why we hear them using English words but it comes out as a different language.

What about the implications for us conservatives of John McCain's epiphany?

Well that of course depends on how John McCain defines putting country first. It's quite clear that he is not replaced his giant ego trip with a classic Reaganesque conservative philosophy. The danger for conservatives is that John McCain has no identifiable framework, no principled political philosophy upon which to identify the nation's interest.

The great danger to us conservatives, and of course to the nation as a whole, is that John McCain operates ad hoc.

This is what George Will has been alluding to in his column in which he expressed his dismay that McCain has called for the firing of SEC Chairman Cox, "It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed"

We know what Barak Obama's vision for America is, it is written down, not in his own autobiographies, but in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. We know also that John McCain has been intensely energized with a vision for America. We're just not quite sure what it is that informs that vision.

McCain is so bad, I wonder how anyone voted for him in the primaries.

“McCain is so bad, I wonder how anyone voted for him in the primaries.”

Millions of demoRat astroturfers, liberal GOPers, and “independents” got the man the liberal media wanted them to get.

He has been propping Obama up since his reelection. Disgusting.

Rep. Peter King said says otherwise, on Fox

link with video

McCain is on a real mission to validate the left. He’s a commie. Interesting to see he is completely out of the closet on his views in the ‘twilight’ of his career.