LEFT OF DAYTON
McCain Strongly Rejected Long-Term Iraq Presence: “Bring Them All Home” [FLIP FLOP, FLIP FLOP...]
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Sam Stein
The Huffington Post
When it comes to getting U.S. troops out of Iraq, Sen. John McCain was for the idea before he was against it.
Three years before the Arizona Republican argued on the campaign trail that U.S. forces could be in Iraq for 100 years in the absence of violence, he decried the very concept of a long-term troop presence.
In fact, when asked specifically if he thought the U.S. military should set up shop in Iraq along the lines of what has been established in post-WWII Germany or Japan — something McCain has repeatedly advocated during the campaign — the senator offered nothing short of a categorical “no.”
- “I would hope that we could bring them all home,” he said on MSNBC. “I would hope that we would probably leave some military advisers, as we have in other countries, to help them with their training and equipment and that kind of stuff.”
- Host Chris Matthews pressed McCain on the issue “You’ve heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I’ve heard it from the hawks. They say, .keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7th Fleet in Asia. We have the German…the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?”
- McCain held fast, rejecting the very policy he urges today. “I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence,” he responded. “And I don’t pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be.”
The January 2005 comments, which have not surfaced previously during the presidential campaign, represent a stunning contrast to McCain’s current rhetoric.
They also run squarely against his image as having a steadfast, unwavering idea for U.S. policy in Iraq — and provide further evidence to those, including some prominent GOP foreign policy figures in the “realist” camp, who believe McCain is increasingly adopting policies shared by neoconservatives.
Finally, the comments undercut much of the criticism the senator has launched at his Democratic and even Republican opponents.
On the campaign trail, for example, McCain has accused Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton of a “failure of leadership” by advocating a policy of drawing down troops. But in the MSNBC interview, McCain was arguing that U.S. “visibility” was detrimental to the Iraq mission and that Iraqis were responding negatively to America’s presence – positions held by both Obama and Clinton.
Somewhere along the way, McCain’s position changed. Perhaps twice. As Think Progress reported, in August 2007, as the troops surge was underway, McCain told the Charlie Rose Show that the Korea model was “exactly” the right template for U.S. forces in Iraq. Only three months later, and on the same show, he completely reversed himself.
“Do you think that this – Korea, South Korea is an analogy of where Iraq might be,” Rose asked in November 2007.“Even if there are no casualties?” Rose chimed in.
“No,” said McCain. “But I can see an American presence for a while. But eventually I think because of the nature of the society in Iraq and the religious aspects of it that America eventually withdraws.”
Then, in the lead up to the New Hampshire primary, the senator famously said that he wouldn’t mind seeing the U.S. in Iraq for a hundred years, “as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.” And when his political opponents used that statement against him, McCain responded by saying he was drawing an analogy to the current military presence in Japan, Germany and South Korea.
And yet, when he was asked by Matthews in 2005, if he “would you be happy with [Iraq] being the home of a U.S. garrison” like Germany, McCain again said no.
The McCain campaign did not return a request for comment.
10 Things you should know about John McCain
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FROM MOVEON.ORG:
- John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has “evolved,” yet he’s continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1
- According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain “will make Cheney look like Gandhi.”2
- His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3
- McCain opposes a woman’s right to choose. He said, “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”4
- The Children’s Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children’s health care bill last year, then defended Bush’s veto of the bill.5
- He’s one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a “second job” and skip their vacations.6
- Many of McCain’s fellow Republican senators say he’s too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He’s erratic. He’s hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”7
- McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.8
- McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his “spiritual guide,” Rod Parsley, believes America’s founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a “false religion.” McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God’s punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church “the Antichrist” and a “false cult.”9
- He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.10
SOURCES: (more…)
VA Debated PR Plan on Vets’ Suicides/By Jason Leopold
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consortiumnews.com
VA Debated PR Plan on Vets’ Suicides
Senior officials at the Veterans Administration debated internally how to downplay evidence of a stunning number of suicides and suicide attempts among veterans who were treated or had sought help at VA hospitals around the country, according to newly disclosed internal VA e-mails.
On Feb. 13, 2008, Ira Katz, the VA’s mental health director, and Ev Chasen, the agency’s chief communications director, exchanged e-mails discussing P.R. strategy for handling this troubling news, according to evidence made public Monday in a federal court case in Northern California.
The exchange came in the context of how to handle inquiries from CBS News, which was reporting on the surge of suicides among U.S. veterans – reaching an average of 18 per day – with part of that rise attributed to soldiers returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (more…)
Unraveling Iraq:12 Answers to Questions No One Is Bothering to Ask about Iraq/By Tom Engelhardt
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12 Answers to Questions No One Is Bothering to Ask about Iraq
By Tom Engelhardt
Can there be any question that, since the invasion of 2003, Iraq has been unraveling? And here’s the curious thing: Despite a lack of decent information and analysis on crucial aspects of the Iraqi catastrophe, despite the way much of the Iraq story fell off newspaper front pages and out of the TV news in the last year, despite so many reports on the “success” of the President’s surge strategy, Americans sense this perfectly well. In the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, 56% of Americans “say the United States should withdraw its military forces to avoid further casualties” and this has, as the Post notes, been a majority position since January 2007, the month that the surge was first announced. Imagine what might happen if the American public knew more about the actual state of affairs in Iraq — and of thinking in Washington. So, here, in an attempt to unravel the situation in ever-unraveling Iraq are twelve answers to questions which should be asked far more often in this country:
1. Yes, the war has morphed into the U.S. military’s worst Iraq nightmare: Few now remember, but before George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, top administration and Pentagon officials had a single overriding nightmare — not chemical, but urban, warfare. Saddam Hussein, they feared, would lure American forces into “Fortress Baghdad,” as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld labeled it. There, they would find themselves fighting block by block, especially in the warren of streets that make up the Iraqi capital’s poorest districts. (more…)
NAMES OF PERSONS CONVICTED OF PROSTITUTION RELATED OFFENSES, DAYTON, OHIO /APRIL 2008
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The City of Dayton Public Affairs office has released the latest listing of persons convicted of Prostitution related offenses.
The list. can be viewed at http://prostitutionconvictionsdaytonohio.wordpress.com/
Record Stores Fight to Be Long-Playing
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NOW added to the endangered species list in New York City, along with independent booksellers and shoe repair: the neighborhood record store.
The hole-in-the-wall specialty shops that have long made Lower Manhattan a destination for a particular kind of shopper have never made a great deal of money. But in recent years they have been hit hard by the usual music-industry woes — piracy, downloading — as well as rising real estate prices, leading to the sad but familiar scene of the emptied store with a note taped to the door.
Some 3,100 record stores around the country have closed since 2003, according to the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, a market research firm. And that’s not just the big boxes like the 89 Tower Records outlets that closed at the end of 2006; nearly half were independent shops. In Manhattan and Brooklyn at least 80 stores have shut down in the last five years. (more…)
McCain Shows Us How to Kill an Army/By Sara Robinson
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McCain Shows Us How to Kill an Army
By Sara Robinson, TomPaine.com
Posted on April 17, 2008, Printed on April 17, 2008
John McCain, who from the early 1980s worked hard to establish himself as one of the Senate’s shining champions of Vietnam veterans’ issues, completed his betrayal of the Iraq-era troops today. Brandon Friedman of vetvoice.com has the details:
Yesterday VoteVets.org delivered a petition with 30,000 signatures to the office of Sen. John McCain. Through that petition, we asked him to support Sen. Jim Webb’s new GI Bill. And less than 24 hours later, we have an answer:
“Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill …”
The reason for McCain’s refusal to support the bill is about the most disturbing rationale one could imagine. … Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college.
Friedman observes that McCain’s no-college-for-grunts position essentially says to the troops: “Thanks for your service and your three combat tours in five years. Now get back to work.” (more…)
The Launch of J Street, the New Pro-Peace, Pro-Israel Lobby
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Thanx to Media Matters for this information:
Spencer Ackerman, writing for The Washington Independent, here, covers the launch of J Street, the new pro-peace, pro-Israel lobby and explains:
Two young, leading liberal Jews — the former Clinton administration domestic policy adviser Jeremy Ben-Ami and the former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy — [unveiled] the first-ever political action committee dedicated to promoting political candidates in the United States who support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Known as the J Street Project, the effort intends to raise millions of dollars even at this late date in the 2008 election cycle.
It has an even grander ambition: to reframe the terms of the debate over what it means for America to support Israel, and recast them in a progressive direction. Currently, support for Israel is often seen as backing Israeli militarism against its Arab adversaries; liberal Jews believe that the only lasting security for an Israeli democracy is through a negotiated peace. But “our side gets cowed into silence,” said Ben-Ami, a former policy director for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. “They’re afraid to say, ‘No, we are more pro-Israel than you, our path is better.” (more…)
Secretary of State Condi Rice Should Resign in Light of ABC News Torture Report
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The evidence chain linking the highest levels of the Bush administration to the use of
torture in Iraq & Afghanistan grows longer.
Please watch the video and join the petition campaign demanding the
resignation of Secretary of State Condi Rice for her role in approving torture.
Impeachment is in order for Bush & Cheney
Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto?By Linn Cohen-Cole
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Hillary, Will You Renounce Your Ties to Monsanto?
By Linn Cohen-Cole
Dear Hillary,
“Counterpunch” – – By polling logic, I should be your supporter — Democrat, woman, white, liberal. But this past summer I saw a News Hour show on farmers committing suicide in Maharastra, India, which affected me deeply. I started learning what was happening to farmers and to food and how the Clintons are connected.
The News Hour piece said Monsanto, a US agricultural corporation, hired Bollywood actors to sell illiterate farmers Bt (genetically engineered) cotton seeds, promising they’d get rich from big yields. The expensive seeds needed expensive fertilizer and pesticides (Monsanto’s) and irrigation. There is no irrigation there. Crops failed. Farmers had immense debt and couldn’t collect seeds to try again because Monsanto seeds are “patented” as “intellectual property”).
“Genetic Engineering is often justified as a human technology, one that feeds more people with better food. Nothing could be further from the truth. With very few exceptions, the whole point of genetic engineering is to increase sales of chemicals and bio-engineered products to dependent farmers.”
David Ehrenfield: Professor of Biology, Rutgers University.
Monsanto has a $10 million budget and 75 person staff to prosecute farmers. (more…)
