I can’t wait for four more years of Bush:
Sen. John McCain has attacked Sen. Barack Obama for not traveling to Iraq to see the “facts on the ground.” But a recent statement by McCain about troop levels has his opponents raising questions about his own knowledge.
In comments to reporters on Thursday, McCain asserted that “I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it’s succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet and it’s long and it’s hard and it’s tough and there will be setbacks.”
In fact, as the Obama campaign was quick to point out, the troop level in Iraq is at about 155,000 right now, well above the 130,000 that would mark a return to pre-surge levels.
So other than some tepid criticisms of the worst President ever, McCain has pretty much been wrong about everything for the last eight years. Why again do I have to keep pretending that he is “strong” on national defense?
*** Update ***
Check out this limp response from the kids at the Weekly Standard:
Does the Obama campaign really want to go there?
Team McCain just held a media conference call with the campaign’s foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann and Senator Jon Kyl, who conclude that no, Obama doesn’t want to go there. “It’s instructive that the Obama campaign, rather than deal with that real issue and Obama’s lack of experience, is trying to nitpick the verb or the tense of the verb about the surge troops being home,” said Kyl. Obama hasn’t been to Iraq since January 2006, and McCain has been five times since then.
Maybe he needs to make all those trips because he is a slow learner? I mean, five trips, and he still doesn’t know wtf he is talking about. So, yeah. Obama does want to “go there,” wingnuts.
The Moar You Know
Because is he far more in the pocket of the big defense contractors than his opponent.
cleek
cause he is the very model of a modern Maverick War Hero™ !
Soylent Green
Because he once personally dropped bombs on a country that did nothing to us.
r€nato
You guys, if you haven’t had enough already of the, “WW2 Vets Who Liberated Happy Fun Nazi Labor Camps Are Sheehanite Pussies” tale…
you’ve got to go over to Sadly, No!
Just trust me on this one.
laneman
John.
For your heart, please, stop reading this shite. Every time you post one of these ‘tidbits of joy,’ a kitten or a puppy get run over by a steamroller.
Think of the next stage – ponies will get squashed.
r€nato
Yeah, because a politician sure can learn a lot of valuable information about conditions on the ground in Iraq by being led around on a dog-and-pony show with Cobra helicopters and scores of heavily-armored soldiers for protection.
Does McCain really want to go there? Have they forgotten that video footage exists of his laughable, heavily-protected excursion into an Iraqi market?
zzyzx
Also John, you have to go to Talk Left. They’re having a lawyer fight there with BTD saying, “They didn’t like my arguments so they’re doomed,” and Jeralyn saying, “Silly BTD, who needs arguments when you have Hillary?”
jake
Fixed.
Dennis - SGMM
Yeah, because for sure he wouldn’t be surrounded by Bush-boot-licking brass and selected GI’s.
Incertus
I almost feel sorry for McCain. It’s like no one has ever challenged him on his bullshit before and he doesn’t quite know how to react.
By the way, in this construction, almost = don’t.
Wilfred
And it’s a run on sentence. My neighborhood is quiet, and it’s not long or hard or tough.
I think McCain has been listening to “We’re Holding Out for a Hero”, either that or somebody told him the old stand-up joke.
cleek
that’s awesome.
conservative furry. there just can’t be many of them around.
rob!
…this is exactly why they’re gonna lose to Obama on this. this is all a bluff, and they expect Obama to back down, but he’s not going to.
he’s not afraid of McCain on National Security. they still don’t get that.
DrDave
Obama should go there to bring the troops luggage. Luggage to pack up their shit to come home.
Our continued involvement in Iraq
1. Is costly in terms of both lives and dollars
2. Diminishes our security at home and abroad
3. Has no end in sight, especially if McCain is our next president.
The Iraqis need to decide whether they want to have a country or if they want an ongoing civil war. Our presence there prevents them from having to face the hard choices they, and only they, have to make. Obama could spend the next six months touring Iraq and these circumstances would be the same.
Obama has it exactly right. We need to begin an orderly transition. If the Iraqis step up and begin to make real political progress, we can leave a couple of brigades there (as we have in the Balkans) to help with training and logistical support. If it deteriorates into a full-blown civil war, we leave at a more rapid pace and let them enjoy the freedom George Bush gave them.
Joshua Norton
No, but there’s enough
Joshua Norton
One more time.
There’s enough
Dennis - SGMM
Sadr City is quiet all right. Tom Engelhardt reports that 200 Hellfire missiles were fired into Baghdad, most of them into densely populated Sadr City, in the month of May. During the previous three months only six of the missiles had been fired into Baghdad. Nothing like killing men, women and children with high explosives to quiet down a neighborhood.
cleek
why, that’s no worse than Philadelphia! stupid ungrateful Iraqis.
Richardson
McCain saw the real Iraq on his Baghdad market stroll when he shopped for rugs with Mike Pence. Granted, McCain was accompanied by an entire division, a half dozen attack helicopters, and snipers on every rooftop. But what Iraqi isn’t afforded these creature comforts?
D-Chance.
Horrible, just horrible.
“On balance, we are doing pretty well,” he said, ticking down a list of accomplishments: “Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally — and here I’m going to use the word ‘ideologically’ — as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam,” he said.
The sense of shifting tides in the terrorism fight is shared by a number of terrorism experts, though some caution that it is too early to tell whether the gains are permanent. Some credit Hayden and other U.S. intelligence leaders for going on the offensive against al-Qaeda in the area along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where the tempo of Predator strikes has dramatically increased from previous years. But analysts say the United States has caught some breaks in the past year, benefiting from improved conditions in Iraq, as well as strategic blunders by al-Qaeda that have cut into its support base.
Tim F.
That’s great, D. Imagine how long ago we would have wrapped up that fight if we hadn’t diverted our forces to Iraq.
Incertus
They don’t get it because they don’t get that they were wrong when it came to Iraq, and Obama was right, and said so even when it wasn’t popular to do that. I’d really love to see Obama get in McCain’s grill with that during the debates, though I doubt it will happen.
Dave
Yup. Visiting the war zone, getting near the front lines, THAT is the only way to get a real sense of what is going on. That’s why we lost WW2. That pussy FDR only got as close as Cairo in 1943. Hell, he wasn’t even a POW.
Dr. Squid
Howard Dean got crucified for getting troop levels wrong by the same people who are covering for McCain. And Dean got it wrong by less.
Dave
D – any commentary on those terrorist bombings in North Africa that have accelerated in the past couple of years? Or are we just ignoring that because it doesn’t fit the narrative?
dj spellchecka
from think progree to the carpetbaggerreport to you, my friends
Last night, CNN’s Baghdad correspondent, Michael Ware had this to say about “touring” iraq:
“Senator McCain has been here, what, more than half a dozen times,” Ware said. “And we’ve seen him get assessments of Iraq terribly wrong. So I wouldn’t be hanging my hat on the fact that your opponent has only been here once.
“And let’s not forget what do American officials get to see? Well, they get to see the rooftops of a lot of Iraqi houses as they chopper over them or across vast expanses of desert. They get to see rooms in the inside of U.S. bases in the Green Zone, both of which are divorced from reality. And they’ll get inundated with military briefings.
“Now, in these briefings, in the past, officials have been told the insurgency was in its death throes, there was no civil war, that Iranian influence wasn’t that big a problem, that Al Qaeda had been defeated. I mean, you really aren’t going to get much of a real picture. It’s almost by definition impossible.
“And General Petraeus, the commander in the war here, doesn’t pull any punches. So you almost could gain as much from having a private chat with him when he was last on Capitol Hill.”
in addition, steve benen describes the quiet in iraq:
Right around the same time McCain was boasting of the “quiet” in Mosul, “Another suicide bomber driving a police vehicle struck Iraqi commandos earlier Thursday in Mosul, killing three of them and wounding nine other people, according to battalion commander Capt. Aziz Latif. The victims were from a unit sent from the southern city of Kut to participate in the Mosul crackdown, Latif said.”
And then shortly after that, just outside Mosul, “A suicide bomber killed 14 police recruits and two policemen in northern Iraq on Thursday, police and military sources said. An attacker wearing a military uniform detonated an explosive vest near a police recruiting centre where about 200 applicants queued at Sinjar, near Mosul, police said. Ten police recruits and five police officers were wounded, police and military sources said. Sunni insurgents have carried out frequent attacks on police recruits, killing hundreds.”
four more years
Jon H
In this coahnah: A bloated semi-retarded conservative furry!
In the other coahnah: The Greatest Generation
RSA
Nice! On balance, my life is going pretty well, too: I’ve nearly got that great job I’ve always wanted, I’m nearly to the point where my romantic life is going to take off, and I think I’m very close to winning the lottery! I can’t see any significant setbacks in my future!
Dennis - SGMM
Me too! I’m halfway to having a twelve inch dick.
cleek
another few years of stretching, and you’ll be there!
PaminBB
“Team McCain”, indeed. Are these people still in high school, with Johnny Mac starring as the BMOC?
Blackacre
I wish Obama would say, “I’m going to Iraq to see all those troops who graciously donated to my campaign. Obviously, many of them agree with me on how to proceed in Iraq.”
Dennis - SGMM
“Team America” was taken.
Wilfred
Hang in there! It will be long and hard and tough, but there will be setbacks.
Neal
P O T motherfuckin’ D.
joe
Hell, yes, he does! He’s winning there.
This is what is going to bring down the Republicans this year, and John McCain in particular; they still think it’s 1984. They still think that, of course they are going to win any foreign policy or military debate; they’re the Repbulicans, after all. Heck, all they have to do is make some lound noises, and the Democrats will retreat.
Well, not this time, bub. If John McCain wants to win the debate over the war, I suggest he start trying, because flinging out these cheap shots isn’t getting the job done.
John McCain thinks he can beat a guy from the South Side of Chicago in a security-policy version of “the dozens.” I don’t think that’s a very good assessment of the situation.
Koz
I dunno, I think it’s more and more likely we’re going to see President McCain come next January.
From the dynamic we’ve got now, where McCain is a small favorite, there’s two more things going in his favor.
1. Obama has yet to come up with any real nuts-and-bolts justification for his candidacy.
2. McCain actually benefits from weakness of the GOP. The stock market (and the economy in general) will go in the tank if the D’s control both houses of Congress and the White House. Considering that they’ll get the first two automatically, McCain will pick up some upscale voters who would otherwise like to vote for Obama.
The Other Steve
200 * $70,000/each = $14 million
Your tax dollars at work.
Grumpy Code Monkey
From national defense to the economy:
McThuselah’s economic advisor is Phil Fucking Gramm.
How ’bout four more years of war, plus giving corporations virtual licenses to steal? It’s like everything McThuselah does screams “dear God, don’t vote for me.”
Zifnab
Oh no he di-int! I will totally roll up with tha’ shit in yo crib, biyotch! McCain gonna take yo honky ass down town and roll you aroun’ then throw you in da poun’, dog.
*finger snaps*
/snark
I’m not mocking anyone in particular on this. I just find it hilarious that McCain’s big media play is to resort to a game of “oh yeah, well… YOU don’t know what’s going on in Iraq either, so HA!”
Thelonius
Joshua, that picture makes me want to gouge my eyes out with a rusty spoon.
The Other Steve
I always wondered what happened to the bottom 10% of my graduating class.
Just Some Fuckhead
Yikes, I wasn’t expecting company!
The Moar You Know
OMFG. r€nato ain ‘t kidding. You have to go there. It’s “dildos and wetsuits” good.
Zifnab
Lolgasim.
When you’ve lost the furries…
I’m betting he’s not a big Rush Limbaugh fan.
Seriously, this guy is the ideological equivalent of the homeless.
ThymeZone
{ chimes }
Attention BJ shoppers: Please welcome DougJ’s Handle Number 1000! Please see the kiosk in the Spoof aisle and give this new handle your congratulations!
{ chimes }
Overring on 7 please. Overring on 7.
ThymeZone
So, McCain tries out his strategy. Be Snarky Mister Magoo on defense, continue to pimp the Iraq war, and let the ratfuckers try to destroy his opponent from behind.
Right now I have him at a solid 40% of the popular vote in November. But with a little effort, he can get it to 35% and I can win my bet.
Napoleon
Are you insane?
joe
McCain, a small favorite? Uh, that’s not what the polling, the party ID, or the elections markets are saying.
2. McCain actually benefits from weakness of the GOP. The stock market (and the economy in general) will go in the tank if the D’s control both houses of Congress and the White House. Considering that they’ll get the first two automatically, McCain will pick up some upscale voters who would otherwise like to vote for Obama.
That’s not going to help John McCain a great deal in 2008.
jibeaux
This is funny even though I am far too naive, and not about to go searching at work, as to what a “furry” is. Is this a fetish for people in Disney costumes? Whatever, I’m not judging and if there’s no actual animals involved, well, um, whatever, but I must say, there are people with *imaginations* out there. I’d be a rich woman if I had that kind of imagination. We would all have jet packs as we were promised if I had that kind of imagination.
Blue Raven
I had to make sure whether I knew the guy. Thankfully, I don’t. But dollars to donuts, if that mental lightweight has a LiveJournal, I’ll recognize names on his friends list.
Yes, this means that BJ has its own resident commenter who has identified as a furry. Some would argue I’m not one anymore, since I bailed on the fandom right around the time the Internet side of it took over. But I was one once and sometimes still like the non-porno and the rare good porno that’s in it (Omaha the Cat Dancer – gotta respect).
Blue Raven
Sort of and not even close at the same time. It started out as a moniker for people who dig funny animal/anthropomorphic animal art with a subset who preferred it to be pornographic. Vanity Fair did no favors to conversations with those of us whose affiliation with that group predated their article by claiming “furry” was the proper name for people who fetishize mascot suits.
The Moar You Know
Save that he won the primary against an insanely determined opponent (who had all the advantages going in) and is going to mop the floor with your doddering, unfocused, hopelessly lost sacrificial lamb of a candidate in November.
Enjoy defeat!
jibeaux
Oh, and I meant to tell you guys because previously on this blog I was naive as to a Rabbit. A Rabbit something or other. Shoot, can’t remember. It was a vibrator.
So in front of me in the carpool lane at the elementary school has a bumper sticker for a tattoo parlor and a license plate wraparound thingy…I don’t know what they’re called, the plastic part…that says “My other ride is a rabbit [whatever].” Now that’s a rock and roll Mom.
4tehlulz
I can’t get to Sadly, No!. Is it getting DoS’d by furries?
rob!
yes, up is down, down is up! McCain is young and vigorous, Bush is awesome, giving all the money to rich people makes poor people better off, and all teh gays live on Mars! WELCOME TO BIZARRO WORLD!
libarbarian
I think he’s making a mistake.
He should agree to go but only after the primary’s are over. But hell, I already covered this in another thread.
libarbarian
primary’s = primaries.
I am so smart. S. M. R. T.
jibeaux
Oh my. I am a fan of lolcats. I do not comment on those sites as I do not speak the language. Surely the definition is not so liberal as to encompass me?
Dreggas
have to wonder if McShitstain and Kyl were planning for their defense in the land scam they had going in AZ.
jibeaux
A Rabbit Pearl. That was it.
I hope it doesn’t actually resemble a rabbit.
I am trying to burnish my not-a-furry cred, evidently.
Blue Raven
No, I’d say not. Now, if you have strong bias for cartoons featuring critters like the Warner Bros characters and/or prefer SF featuring races like the Kzinti, you may fit the definition.
4tehlulz
HAHA OH WOW! YIFF IN HELL CIGARSKUNK!
RSA
Given that anyone who’s not a nut has bolted the Republican party, I’d say that’s sufficient justification for any Democratic candidacy.
Blue Raven
Only the part that remains outside the woman’s body does.
jibeaux
I liked Animaniacs, I don’t know what the Kzinti are, and I’m going to stop thinking about what the Rabbit Pearl might look like right NOW. I used to have a real rabbit, and we did not have that sort of relationship.
Blue Raven
Just remember that it’s a Japanese invention. It’s artistically done. And you do not have to fetishize bunnies to own one. The rest will wait until you get home and can do a web search from somewhere that won’t wonder why you’re looking at Adam and Eve in your cubicle.
Dreggas
Then there was the “Beaver Tree” the err…shaft was ribbed like bark and on one end was a little beaver figure and…well…you get the idea.
JoshA
“is trying to nitpick the verb or the tense of the verb about the surge troops being home.”
So the fact that McCain does not know what has and has not actually happened should not concern us. Good to know.
Bubblegum Tate
Does anybody else remember that incident a little while back where one of the “military analyst” Pentagon flacks on Fox News admitted on the air that politicians who go to Iraq “see what the Pentagon wants them to see?”
So, aside from all the other reasons why this “he hasn’t been to Iraq!” shit is stupid, there’s the fact that going to Iraq is basically just an in-person Pentagon PR exercise.
bago
Two well placed rabbit ears.
Blue Raven
And one that, if memory serves, had a face in a parka on one end and a seal oriented the appropriate direction on the other. I won’t grace that face with the name Inuit.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Yeah, cigarskunk’s a furry, big fucking deal (and, really, no surprise at all). We’re getting distracted by sideshow shit. Again. McThuselah has Phil Fucking Gramm advising him on economic issues. Whether Obama’s great-uncle helped liberate Buchenwald or not and whether the people calling Obama a liar over it are perverts or not won’t have much of an effect on the average American come November.
Phil Fucking Gramm as McThuselah’s Treasury secretary will. A huge effect. A hugely negative effect.
Koz
“McCain, a small favorite? Uh, that’s not what the polling, the party ID, or the elections markets are saying.”
To be honest, I hadn’t been following TradeSports that closely, but you are correct. Obama is favored there, 60-40. Otoh, the contract that the US will be in recession by year end ’08 (right underneath) is valued at 31, so maybe you can take comfort in that as well.
I was relying on projection from Robert Novak, and it took a while but I found a link for it:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26723.
Koz
“Phil Fucking Gramm as McThuselah’s Treasury secretary will. A huge effect. A hugely negative effect.”
I’m not following you here, why are people going to vote against Phil Gramm.
Dennis - SGMM
You just want to make us edit our pie scripts – don’t you?
Thers
Remember in June of 2003 when Howard Dean couldn’t tell Tim Russert exactly how many troops were in Iraq, and Russert, Kit Seelye, and Howie Kurtz all announced that if you want to be president you have to know that stuff cold, and if you don’t you may not be “presidential material”?
Good times…
Mike G
McThuselah: “We have drawn down to pre-surge levels.”
WTF is “nitpicking the verb or tense of the verb” about this? It’s an unambiguous statement, and factually dead wrong.
KRK
C’mon, people. McCain was back in 2013-land when he made that statement. No mistake at all. Typical Obama campaign over-reaction with their anti-time travel biases.
AnotherBruce
It’s instructive that the Obama campaign, rather than deal with that real issue and Obama’s lack of experience, is trying to nitpick the verb or the tense of the verb about the surge troops being home,”
Yeah, it’s like, say you just spent all week painting my house and I say to you, “I owe you $2000.00.”
You should know that what I really said was “I owe you $2000.00 four months from now.”
See how easy it is to make that mistake?
TenguPhule
A few more defeats like this and Al Queda will be dictating terms in the bombed out remains of the Whitehouse.
Jack H.
Has anyone noticed that when McCain gets angry his left eye starts twitching like Chief Inspector Dreyfus from the Pink Panther movies? Obama sure seems to get under his skin. Should make for highly entertaining debates.
Nancy Irving
I don’t get the claim that it’s only a nitpick about a “verb tense.”
What are the McCain people claiming? That he meant to say “We WILL HAVE drawn down the troops to pre-surge levels AT SOME UNDETERMINED TIME IN THE FUTURE”?
Really?
JGabriel
Grumpy Code Monkey:
No, no, no. You’re missing the true dimensions of the tragedy here.
What kind of twisted God pours both a furry and a bigot into the same soul? That’s just cruel.
Or, as Zifnab notes above: “Seriously, this guy is the ideological equivalent of the homeless.”
Such pathos.
.
Grumpy Code Monkey
Here’s why:
Catsy
I don’t get the “verb tense” approach either. I mean, this is serious “the definition of is”-level stuff here. What on earth are they trying to say that he said? The next time they try this spin, some bright reporter who graduated high school should read back McCain’s full quote and ask them to describe exactly what verb tense was in question and how it should be read. Make them squirm and dig deeper.
Koz
http://seekingalpha.com/article/78562-has-speculation-affected-oil-demand
GCM,
This “oil price is all about speculation” is a red herring. Even if it’s true, it doesn’t matter. The way to bust a speculative bubble is for the musical chairs game to stop and whoever didn’t get to sell out of their futures has to take physical delivery of a commodity that’s worth much less than he paid for it. That hasn’t happened yet.
Doug Wieboldt
John, I think you’re right. You don’t seem to be able to stop foaming at the mouth over HRC. I don’t understand why, since she will be an asset to the party come the general election. Let’s face it, Obama will lose in many states, un less there is an HRC for motivation, and the idea of a HRC Attorney General will pick up a lot of attention in enough 50/50 states to put Obama over the top.
An HRC AG will keep the thuglicans off balance for at least a year to two. McSame doesn’t stand a chance against Obama with HRC as a major campaigner! Lighten up, and give her a chance to separate herself from her people, some of whom are really not acting in her or the party’s interest!
Hope is what we all have right now, but we can take that all the way to the top, Clinton and/or Obama!