Obama outlines plans for race against McCain (Keating Five)

Yahoo News ^ | 11 May 08 | CHARLES BABINGTON and SARA KUGLER

[Mr Rogers]

Barely mentioning Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama said he was open to campaigning with McCain in "town hall" events. But he also warned that controversial issues such as McCain's ties to the Keating Five savings and loan scandal are fair game, and he called McCain's proposal for a temporary halt in the federal gasoline tax a pander and a gimmick...

Obama was asked Saturday if the fall campaign might touch on the 1987 Keating Five scandal, in which the Senate Ethics Committee said McCain used "poor judgment" for allegedly pressing regulators to go easy on the owner of a failed Arizona savings and loan who was also a campaign contributor.

Obama said there is no doubt the Keating Five case is "germane to the presidency."

"I can't quarrel with the American people wanting to know more about that," he said.

[Mr Rogers]

It came via Yahoo, and I think Yahoo reuses their links - so in time, the article changes with the same link.

Sorry, but I can’t figure out what stuff I can post or not post anymore. The old rules have gotten fairly complex.

[PhilDragoo]

[potlatch]

Lol, neat composite devolve!!

[potlatch]

LOL, we all just throw our graphics into a pot, stir it around and come up with all the culprits! Looks good.

[DoughtyOne]

Tell me what John McCain did for our MIA men in 1995. He joined John Kerry to do it, against the families of the MIA men and veteran groups.

Oh he’s a gem alright. Just win huh? He couldn’t even stand behind other POWs, because he wanted normalized relations for Vietnam NOW. (then)

I don’t trust this guy any farther than I can drop kick him.

[MARTIAL MONK]

Do you remember who was on that committee? I remember Nancy Kassenbaum, Hank Brown, Bob Kerrey, Harry Reid, Jesse Helms (that treasonous bustard) and Bob Smith before he ran for President and switched parties and switched parties and switched back and supported John Kerry and... They all signed off on the conclusions. Remember Bob Smith in the tunnels under Hanoi searching for an underground prison that wasn't there? They found no evedence of living POWS.

There really was a conspiracy. John Rambo told me.

[DoughtyOne]

The MIA families and the Vietnam Verterans were pretty savy about what the chances were of bring our men home. We’re not talking about a general blanket demand of all men. We’re talking about men who were known to be alive at some point. There were photos or some POWs came home who had seen them.

There are number of men who were never accounted for, who had been on the ground and healthy. If the men had died for some reason, the Vietnam government could have explained why. They didn’t bother.

Once we had given normalized relations to Vietnam, there was no impetus whatsoever for it to ever make a full accounting.

It wasn’t just that McCain and Kerry et al made the decision to normalize, it was McCain’s angry abusive treatment of those who opposed him that was sickening. There’s a video on You-Tube where he rails on this paid advocate for the families for seven minutes, not allowing her to respond to his statements at all. He was just a jackass to her. Once he was through with his little tirade, he hopped up and marched out of the room. The man is a social beast.

Thanks for your comments.

[MARTIAL MONK]

Well, isn't that special. It was the considered unanimous consesus of the committee that opening Viet Nam would do more to gain information about POW/MIA's than continuing to deal with a closed Communist government. Bob Kerry was a Vietnam vet. Hank Brown was a Vietnam vet. John McCain was a Vietnam vet. They knew what they were doing.

Extorting MIA families was the Nigerian hustle of the day. A little knowledge and a grainy picture or reports of a rumor were enough to convince families to fork over tens of thousands of dollars. The Rambo movies fed this false hope. The committee chased those rumors and found nothing. Zero. I remember the hearings. They were on C-span.

Now you want to shift the subject. John McCain was mean to one of the representatives. It's not easy telling someone that their guys didn't make it. They died. Disease, angry villagers, torture, executions, whatever. It's especially hard when they won't accept it twenty years after the fact.

But that's not your point, is it? You've got to find something. Man up. Don't vote for the guy. Find someone you can support. There's the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, the Falcon Party, the Frat Party. But win or lose don't expect to slime the Republican candidate this year and walk back in in 4 or 8 years and announce that you have this 3% candidate that passes all of your qualifications and you are here to save the Republicans. Won't work. Ever.

[Centurion2000]

But he also warned that controversial issues such as McCain's ties to the Keating Five savings and loan scandal are fair game

If Obama has to reach this far back to find dirt, he's in deep poop. Especially considering his racist wife is about to completely sink his campaign.

[DoughtyOne]

Well bud, you thought you were trashing me there, but I don't think all the MIA families are idiots like you seem to. And I'm sure as hell am not going to damn the veterans groups who agreed with them. You implied that some grainy picture or some wild stories were the basis for invalid reasons for the families and Vets to take the stances they did. So now the former POWs who saw men alive are now suspect? Is that your story? Opening up of Vietnam? LMAO, this was all about trade, not opening Vietnam up. And what possible leverage is left now that Vietnam has it's trade set up without providing information.

You probably think I'm out on a limb here, but frankly you're out there farther than I am. And BTW, McCain was an ass to this lady. There's no need for that.

The MIA families and Vets had some valid concerns, and I find it interesting to watch you trash every person who represented their interests as a shyster.

[keepitreal]

Obama said there is no doubt the Keating Five case is "germane to the presidency."

Then I guess Tony Rezko is also germane to the presidency.

[MARTIAL MONK]

The hearings were about trade and opening Vietnam up to the world, all the things that go with normalization. This was not the first POW committee, nor the second. It was either the third or forth. All of them reached the same conclusion: there was no evidence that POW's remained alive and in captivity.

Rumsfeld testified. Cheney testified. The POW families were being used as pawns for unscrupulous profiteers and politicians. Others, in good faith, were clinging to that last thread of hope. The committee (and that doesn't mean just McCain or Kerry) chased thousands of leads and came up with nothing. Nothing. They were allowed unprecidented access by the Vietnamese, hence Smith crawling around in tunnels under some museum looking for an underground prison. It is understandable that the families could not accept reality but at some point someone had to tell them that it just wasn't going to happen.

The hearings were open and contentious. Ross Perot got involved by accusing the committee of ignoring some evidence. They called his bluff by inviting him to testify and present anything that he had. They would follow any solid leads. He had nothing.

If the committee could have produced even one captive GI, they would have been heros. If there was anything at all, they would have stopped the world to get our guys back. There wasn't. It was a bitter cup but they drank of it. Jesse Helms, Hank Brown, Bob Kerrey, John McCain, the whole committee in its unanimity.

The fact that none of these guys survived probably covers some gruesome tales that will never be told. Some were probably tortured to death, others executed. Stories worse than captivity. That is the story of mankind. The world moves on.

[DoughtyOne]

It is amazing to me that a guy who calls himself a Conservative (and perhaps I’m being too generous here) wanted normalized relations with Vietnam above all else. What was the damn rush fella? We lost over 60,000 men and had hundreds of thousands wounded in that fight. The Vietnamese government that executed hundreds of thousands of it own people, was the one we cozied up with, not even twenty years after we left Vietnam. Excellent. Our hundreds of thousands of casualties were expended so we could turn our backs on those vets and cozy up with the very people we asked them to fight against. It boggles the mind what could have posessed our leaders to expend efforts on this cause so soon after the war.

You come here to slander the families and verterans groups as some sort of ‘Rambo Loving’ dilusional malcontents, and seem to expect me to glom on to that as insanely as you have. Not gonna happen.

If the families of the POWs and the veterans groups of the day were against it, I’m sure as hell not going to betray them by labeling them as you have.

There are no words to explain away this betrayal for many of us.

[DoughtyOne]

There was something eating away at me about your comments.  It finally dawned on me what it was.

Well, isn't that special. It was the considered unanimous consesus of the committee that opening Viet Nam would do more to gain information about POW/MIA's than continuing to deal with a closed Communist government. Bob Kerry was a Vietnam vet. Hank Brown was a Vietnam vet. John McCain was a Vietnam vet. They knew what they were doing.

Oh they did did they?  Have we had a full accounting to this day?  Evidently so, because you are convinced there is no issue here.  Well, there was and there still is.  These bastards to a man are condemned moreso by each and every passing day by the fact that men sighted in Vietnam alive, have not been accounted for.  There isn't any impetus, no driving force, nothing to compel Vietnam to anti up.  They got what they, the Senate and you wanted.  It's over.

Extorting MIA families was the Nigerian hustle of the day. A little knowledge and a grainy picture or reports of a rumor were enough to convince families to fork over tens of thousands of dollars. The Rambo movies fed this false hope. The committee chased those rumors and found nothing. Zero. I remember the hearings. They were on C-span.

This is one of the most assinine comments I have heard on the topic.  We aren't talking about grainy pictures and you know damn well we aren't.  We aren't talking about Rambo here either.  That's your bull-shit slander of the vets and families.  In that pointy little head of yours, it was a Nigerian hustle for veterans to testify to what they had seen, POWs alive in Vietnam.  We're talking about men who had been sighted in Vietman alive and reasonably well after their capture.  And you continue to dismiss them as unworthy of futher interest.  Instead you move to the Senate committee and some field trips, as if that laid to rest every MIA case.  It didn't.  If there weren't still men who had been seen alive, who hadn't been accounted for, the MIA families and vets wouldn't have been able to object.  Well, they did.

You also tried to infer that Vietnam did everything it could to account for our lost men.  Why Bob Smith went to a basement...  sheesh what unparalleled ignorance.  Whether you like it or not, or wheather some committee in Washington likes it or not, men seen alive in Vietnam were not accounted for.  That's the end of the arguement.  They haven't been accounted for to this day.  We still have MIA flags being flown over the capitals of many states in our nation.  Do you have any idea why?  Evidently not.

Have the Vietnamese people who were responsible for these prisoners been prosecuted for war crimes?  Have Vietnamese officials been held to account?  No, we just caved on principle and fixed it so Vietnam could get normalized relations.

Disgusting and shameful...

[MARTIAL MONK]

The Select Committee was designed to culminate the efforts of the Reagan and Bush administration's efforts in resolving the POW/MIA issue. It was ironic that as Reagan and Bush I poured resources and effort into finding the truth about the fate of our missing that distrust had grown about those efforts.

The hearings were unusually open and had unprescedented access to previously classified documents. Robert Gates (then at the CIA) threw his weight behind the process, Rumsfeld and Cheney and Kissinger testified. Any cover-up or conspiracy would have had to involve five Presidents including Reagan) and literally tens of thousands of knowledgeable federal employees. The DIA and the DOD gave full cooperation.

Nations move in their own self-interest. Vietnam plus twenty years had seen the world change. The Soviet Union was in ruins and China nascent. The bill for normalization passed the Senate 88 to 12. Except for a couple flakes like Bob Smith do you know why the twelve voted the way they did?

Catfish.

[DoughtyOne]

Are all the MIAs seen alive and well in Vietnam accounted for?

The answer is no and all else is simply noise to please yourself.

I’m not buying what your selling.

It might interest you to know that the U.S. Senate voted 97 to 3 to confirm Ruth Bader Ginsberg. If you’re claiming it’s a find upstanding body, and I should respect it’s decisions, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

We couldn’t even get an impeachment trail out of that Senate. It’s rotten to the core.

[MARTIAL MONK]

Read my tagline. The POP will come when some some of the more delusional pull their heads out of their nether regions. Read the Report of the Select Committee, it it readily available online. I just skimmed the contents and it was pretty much as I remembered. Add Chuck Robb to the Vietnam vets on that committee.

The committee members, including John McCain, would have loved nothing better than to have found and brought home one or ten or a hundred of our missing. They had the resources of the State Department, the Defense Department, the CIA and the DIA at their disposal as well as their own and yet they could find no evidence of living POW's. This wasn't John McCain, it was the entire committee and finally, the entire Senate.

The POW issue as a scam for money making was well known and it wasn't just the families and the Veteran organizations who were taken. It was so pervasive that it became a focus of the Committee. There conclusion was that there was lots of money going to the fundraisers and very little going to the actual benefit of finding POW's or benefiting their families. If you dropped a twenty or a hundred into a POW "charity", chances are you bought a new boat for a fundraiser.

In case you have forgotten, we lost that war. We don't get to prosecute for war crimes or anything else. There were without doubt countless barbarities and atrocities that will have to wait for eternal justice.

Like Bob Kerrey said, "No one wanted to be on that Committee". It was a thankless task and, regardless of the outcome, the conclusions were going to be disputed. Tem members did the best that they could and came to an open, honest and reasonable conclusion. For the booger-eaters of the lunatic fringe to attack John McCain for having served in that contentious environment is delusional.

Delusional and insane.

[MARTIAL MONK]

Again, read the report. The committee was put in a position of moving beyond certainties into probabilities. They openly acknowledge that fact. If someone was seen on the ground and then disappeared with no trace and no subsequent reporting, they were in all probability dead. They could have been killed at the time of capture or shortly thereafter or they could have been murdered later. The plain truth is that there was no definative proof of any living POW's in captivity twenty years after the war.

When Bill Clinton ran for President he made clear what type of Supreme Court Justice that he would appoint. He won and that is the consequence of an election.

[DoughtyOne]

Read my tagline. The POP will come when some some of the more delusional pull their heads out of their nether regions. Read the Report of the Select Committee, it it readily available online. I just skimmed the contents and it was pretty much as I remembered. Add Chuck Robb to the Vietnam vets on that committee.  Thanks for the suggestion.  I wouldn't mind reading it.  It's not going to change my mind, because people known to be alive on the ground in Vietnam in good health, were never accounted for.

All the efforts in the world couldn't find the known missing POWs that had been seen alive.  I don't fault the committee for not finding them.  I fault the committee for abandoning them.  Without a physical body dead or alive, and without a full accounting for the POW known to have been alive one of two things should have taken place.

Vietnam should have been demanded to produce bodies or an accounting, or they should have been taken to a war crimes tribunal and forced to make some accounting, or face war crimes charges.  Our illustrious leaders instead opted for the dreaded nomalized relations, a fate worse than death.  It would be funny if this weren't so serious and disgusting.

The committee members, including John McCain, would have loved nothing better than to have found and brought home one or ten or a hundred of our missing. They had the resources of the State Department, the Defense Department, the CIA and the DIA at their disposal as well as their own and yet they could find no evidence of living POW's. This wasn't John McCain, it was the entire committee and finally, the entire Senate.  For the hard of listening, I'm going to say this again.  MEN KNOWN TO BE ALIVE ON THE GROUND IN VIETNAM WERE NEVER ACCOUNTED FOR.  Is that clear enough, or do I need to repeat it another fifty times?  BTW, the supposed MIA sheisters were not the ones who made the observation.  Our POWs did.

Just because the government made a concerted effort to find these men and get a full accounting, it doesn't mean that Vietnam should be off the hook.  We know the men were alive, so provide an accounting for them or face war crimes related charges.  What's so difficult to understand about that?  Do you think for one minute we wouldn't be dragged into a war crimes tribunal if prisoners we had in custody were never heard from again?  Why is Vietnam a special case?

The POW issue as a scam for money making was well known and it wasn't just the families and the Veteran organizations who were taken.  I'll bet you think this is new ground right?  You've said this in just about every post you have made to me on this thread.  I have ignored you, because I am not arguing in defense of the scamers.  I am arging in defense of the families whose relatives had been seen alive on the ground in Vietnam.  You don't seem to be able to differentiate between the two.  You do know the difference between a scamer and a veteran who has testified to something he has witnessed right?

It was so pervasive that it became a focus of the Committee.  That's nice... totally irrelevant, but nice.

There conclusion was that there was lots of money going to the fundraisers and very little going to the actual benefit of finding POW's or benefiting their families. If you dropped a twenty or a hundred into a POW "charity", chances are you bought a new boat for a fundraiser.  That makes for a very nice story.  Yawn.  You still haven't addressed the actual sightings, and why those folks were not accounted for when they never showed up.  Do you have an answer to this, or are you going to continue to ignore the subject like the Senate committee did?

In case you have forgotten, we lost that war. We don't get to prosecute for war crimes or anything else. There were without doubt countless barbarities and atrocities that will have to wait for eternal justice.  Isn't that convenient.  What do you mean we don't get to prosectue for war crimes?  If war crimes were committed, we certainly can raise the issue.  What convinces you otherwised?

Like Bob Kerrey said, "No one wanted to be on that Committee". It was a thankless task and, regardless of the outcome, the conclusions were going to be disputed. Tem members did the best that they could and came to an open, honest and reasonable conclusion. For the booger-eaters of the lunatic fringe to attack John McCain for having served in that contentious environment is delusional.  Delusional and insane.  Yep, atta boy.  Anyone who wants a full accounting for the men seen alive in Vietnam in reasoned health, but were never returned home or accounted for, are booger eaters, lunatic fringe, delusional or just insane.

LOL, thanks for the comments.  Hey, why don't you post another reply to me placing all the blame for this on scamers, instead of Vietnam, and ignore the live POW sightings once again.

[DoughtyOne]

Again, read the report. The committee was put in a position of moving beyond certainties into probabilities.  Who put the committee in that position?  Did the MIA families?  No.  The Senate put it's committee in that postion., by demanding a resolution to the MIA issue so normalize relations could be implemented.  There was no bonified reason to push through normalized relations with little Vietnam.

They openly acknowledge that fact. If someone was seen on the ground and then disappeared with no trace and no subsequent reporting, they were in all probability dead. They could have been killed at the time of capture or shortly thereafter or they could have been murdered later. The plain truth is that there was no definative proof of any living POW's in captivity twenty years after the war.  I haven't made the case that there was on living POW on the ground in 1995.  I did make the case that if a person was known to have been in North Vietnamese custody, and wasn't returned to the U.S., or wasn't accounted for by the government of Vietnam, then action should have been taken at some point to call the leadership of Vietnam to account before a world body.  A war crimes tribunal should have been commissioned, the leadership of Vietnam should have been demanded to appear, and if they didn't, the nation should have been put under economic embargo until it took the issue serious.

When Bill Clinton ran for President he made clear what type of Supreme Court Justice that he would appoint. He won and that is the consequence of an election.  So you're another person who doesn't know squat about the U.S. Constitution.  Great.