For years I have observed without reservation that Mcain and Bush and their cronies act out their representations with absolute audacity. Bush is totally insensitive to loss of face and loss of life.
Whatever happens after our troopers come home “NOW” WILL SURELY HAPPEN IN 2012 - Is there a living human being “anywhwere” that can stop this foolishness ?

What did this photo op cost the US tax payer? Tough, I know, but about how much? One million? 20? 100? More?? Anyone care about a little trillion $ IOU signed W?

RE: #62583 by Ernest Canning

Thank you for the information!

Peace,
Bob Bennett
Lick Skillet, AL

McCain cannot win, there is not a Republician that can win the next election, they might just as well forget running, forget having a convention because they cannot win the next presidental election, unless they do like they did the last time and steal the election, then the revolution will take to the street, maybe Bush will declare Martial law and suspend the elections, also there will be a revolution in the streets and anyone who can walk and talk will be there, I will be there and I am not as young as I used to be.

Madder than a wet hen from Vancouver Washington

McClain is a stupid fellow . His comments are vacuous.

Re comment #62388 by Robert Bennett.  While Truthdig and the BBC are valid sources of information, if you are sincerely interested in what a really informative, speak-truth-to-power news program looks like, try Democracy Now! which can be accessed at Democracy Now.org.

Sadly, I think your observations about Mr. McCain being sincere are uninformed.  If it is sincerity you desire, go to Kucinich.us.  Unlike the rest of the field in both parties, Kucinich cannot be bought.  He is not a corporatist like the rest.  He is the “only” candidate who represents the middle and working classes, the only candidate who has a detailed and well-thought out exit strategy for Iraq, who favors single payer healthcare that would eliminate obscene insurer profits that make up 31% of healthcare costs while bringing this nation’s healthcare system in line with that of every other industrialized nation; who is working to break the control of the media conglomerates on what we see, hear and read and who advocates an end to NAFTA and the WTO—devices used by corporate America to outsource America’s manufacturing base in search of cheap foreign labor as what is left of American labor is being Wal-Mart-ized.

If you are amongst America’s wealthiest 1% you will do well with any of them—McCain, Clinton, Obama—all are two sides of the same corporate coin.  If it is a restoration of the egalitarian ethos embodied in the unfulfilled promise of our nation’s founding documents you seek, there is a candidate—only one—to select.  It’s a no-brainer.  Kucinich!

Pitty us, (US) (USA) if this (another) fool is elected president.

How stupid does he think we are?
Ok, we now know how stupid he is!
Did I hear him compare IRAQ to KOREA? 75 to 100 years of occupation dead ahead for IRAQ?

Is this a bigger moron than the other two?  If he had two brains he’d be just twice as damn dumb, just like George.
My dear Lord, where do these people come from?  I’m starting to agree, our education system is failing us big time and it didn’t just start yesterday. You look at our three branches of government, the people filling those seats, and you just have to shake your head.

George, Dick, John, members of Congress, members of the House, Was Goober Pyle your valedictorian?

Our Government is being outsmarted by illegal immigrants.

We would be smart to look to India, China or Mexico for more intelligent people who would be willing to come here on a K-1 visa and give us some much needed leadership.

I fear and I pray for our children, and I apologize to our Forefathers and to our children for being an American adult citizen who along with others have allowed our government and our country to come to this sorry state.

“On this trip, as they climbed back into the armored Humvee that had safely carried them all to the marketplace, none of the jolly politicians mentioned the rise in killings across Iraq during the past month”, however one man, alone, spoke up. His acerbic comments rattled McCain and McCain made a hasty retreat. That man was an Australian, who is may be the only true reporter in Baghdad. Mike Ware is his name and he reports on CNN. He disputes, with proof, every feel-good remark from McCain. What McCain saw and reported was pure Bullshit. Now what happened later in the parley at the White House is again suspicion of deceit and duress. And McCain folded like an accordion.

Thankfully, most people(the ones who can spell their own names)now realize that these posturing frauds are like sleeping dogs, and let them lie,and lie, and lie… .No real harm unless you believe ‘em.

McCain and Senator Warner exited a white house meeting in Dec 05. McCain was as white as a ghost and his complexion has yet to recover any color. What did Hadley, Bush, and Rove say to McCain that shook him so visibly? Warner and McCain were pushing a bill to stop or limit torture by various US assets…so, what happened in that meeting? Was McCain threatened with a version of ‘swiftboating’? Did the Vietnamese government turn over incriminating files on some of the POWs for help with admission to the WTO?
We will probably never know what changed McCain but he is now worthless as presidential material and of little use as a Senator. I believe that he is following a scriptin order to keep secret some potentially damaging background material about himself turn up in the press. The material doesnt have to be true but rumor or accusation will ruin a career. There is a word for this, extortion, and we know that many in this administration are quick to use it for their political ends.

Mcain run for the presidency is over.
following in the footsteps of the decider is a losing proposition. He needs to come home and bring the troops with him.

mc

I’ve come to distrust CNN.  They made over 250 million dollars last year, and this is reflected in the garish ads and multiple popups at CNN.com.  All they care about is money.

I get my news from TruthDig and The BBC.

My mind is still open about John McCain’s statements, but the only way we will hear the truth from CNN is if it’s profitable for them to tell it.

Shortly after I noticed this story, I noticed another one.

Baghdad relaxed the city wide curfew to 10pm.  I would think they would have to feel fairly confident about security to allow people on the streets after dark.

I am also mindful of the fact that Senator McCain is a politician, and politicians are not known as repositories of truth.  But while I often disagree with Senator McCain, I find him to be more sincere than most.

So, at least for now, I’m siding with him.

Peace,
Bob Bennett
Lick Skillet, AL

What a dumb stunt this was. I’m kind of glad McCain did this, though, because it pretty much assures we won’t have his warhawk Bush-Lite fat butt sitting in the Oval Office. Fold your tent, John, the show is OVER!

How do half these idiots get into the Senate anyway? That’s right…they buy their offices from Diebold with Republican money.

YAY fellow humanitarians who support the Millennium Devlopment Goals!!  =D

Anywyas, Democrats and Congress need to find a viable way to leave Iraq without it being in ruins. Simply leaving without planning would be a disaster, another Afghanistan. I certainly hope that the Dems will be responsible in redirecting funding…and I don’t mean into their own congressional districts. The US needs to join together with the rest of the world leaders in figuring out a multilateral way of ending terrorism and Mid-East tensions.

One of the biggest ways is to end global poverty. Our leaders need to not abandon Iraq, but support its growth and the growth of other undeveloped countries by funding the UN Millennium Development Goals. According to the Borgen Project, just 0.16 of out federal budget is spent on poverty reduction while $340 billion has been spent on the war. We need to redirect our funds to programs that will work to combat the conditions that enable extremism to exist.

This guy’s done.

Pilot of the BS express.

A good example of the need for elective office term limits.

The fact is, Bush can still “win” this war.  All he has to do (and is already doing) is carpet bomb the hell out of the whole country and reduce it to a pile of rubble.  Bush, Cheney, and McCain, will then trumpet their “victory”.  Then the few Iraqis left alive can “celebrate” freedom, democracy, and the right to work in the oil fields of American companies.

Only one solution as far as I can see.  Buy Halliburton stock and send more troops.

McCain is a person who believes we would have “won” the Vietnam War if only we would have sacrificed more American troops, killed more Vietnamese and rained down more destruction on Vietnam.

Obviously, he feels the same way about the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Like the Bush-Cheney administration, he seems willing to “spin” and manipulate situations and truths to accomplish his goals.

Too bad. Many people used to think of him as an honorable man.

For more food for thought:

“Iraq War Psychology: Exploring hearts and minds of U.S. officials, press, profiteers”

February 15, 2007

http://www.populistamerica.com/iraq_war_psychology

-  -  -

“Intelligence, psychology and human heart: All are needed for success in war and peace”

March 31, 2007

http://www.populistamerica.com/intelligence_psychology_and_human_heart

We have been living with photo op governance for over six years now.  Safety in numbers doesn’t mean safe.  I understand there was not one Iraqi soldier involved in this walkabout. I suppose they are not trusted to stand up in these sorts of situations. This is very disheartening and frustrating.  I think whatever chance Sen. McCain had of a substantial run for the presidency just strolled into oblivion.  They must think we are all idiots.

The moment of our unprovoked attack on Iraq, we “lost” the “war”. Even if we could “win” the “war”, we don’t deserve to win it, whatever that means this week. When lies, treachery and criminal violations of international law were the modus operandi of this “war”, then there can be no honorable end, other than to admit our crimes and pay reparations to the surviving victims of our treacherous “war”. That won’t happen, so there will be no honorable end to this vile chapter in US history.

Senators McCain and (especially) Lindsey Graham, are torture enablers, so anything they say is a lie. They are dishonorable and evil, and will never work for the greater good, only what’s good for number one. They are certainly war profiteers and are so deeply corrupt that whatever they say should be ignored or just inverted if you want to know the truth. McCain, having been tortured himself, is a special case, having signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which authorizes unlimited torture…he is truly a vile imitation of a human being.

Both of these men, and just about every Senator and Congressperson (there might be one or two exceptions) in this vile legislature, of both parties, should be tried as war criminals. They wring their hands in front of the “liberal” media cameras about how many American’s have died, while ignoring the staggering numbers of innocent Iraqi’s who have been butchered in Bush’s “war”. Considering, as Tommy Franks once said, that we don’t do body counts, it’s clear that we don’t care how many innocent Iraqi men, women, children, babies and unborn babies have died as a result of our actions. So, I choose to believe the numbers presented by the Lancet organization, the high end being virtually a million dead. Even Amy Goodman on Democracy Now cites the mid-level figure of approximately 640,000…being apparently nervous about citing the high end of the estimate. Round up to a million, until the next report comes out, when we’ll certainly have surpassed that number by many hundreds of thousands.

Our “surgical” “war” methods have been very effective at eviscerating countless Iraqi children and their families. And, by removing Saddam, we removed a psychopathically ruthless governor that in hindsight is looking good compared to what we’ve replaced him with. We kicked the blocks out from under this society, and thus we are the guilty party in all the “sectarian” violence since. So, surge this, surge that, keep sending more troops in, keep lighting up children and their families at roadblocks…let the bloodbath continue. It’s certain to keep a big smile on the face of our emperor…the American Caligula, and his corporate enablers who are also certainly smiling, all the way to the banks they put their blood soaked profits into.

McCain declares that his stroll around the marketplace in Baghdad was safe and secure. I bet it was, Would that every Iraqi had his own private army. It doesn’t matter whether McCain is delusional or simply a liar, his misrepresentations will contribute to the unnecessary death and maiming of countless more Americans and Iraqis.

?Why does McCain continue to support our Cocain addled brain of a president?

As John McCain self-destructs in full public view, and the likes of Graham and Pence continue to shill doggedly for the puppeteers who also jerk George Bush around, their “target audience,” theamericanpeople, might be wise to look behind the smoke-screen of all this distraction for some hint of what it’s intended to camouflage.  With the Iranians declining finally to rise to the Brit’s bait (and switch?), some more blatant provocation may well be in-the-works right now.

The Democrats’ campaign to back the Bush/Cheney junta into a corner and render it more-or-less irrelevant for the next 21+ months probably looked good going in.  “Containment” worked well enough with the Soviets largely because Russians’ imperial ambitions have always been more for-show than otherwise….their military posture essentially defensive.  It is not a safe bet, however, that the current U.S regime and its sponsors are constrained in the least by any such internal reluctancies. 

All the signs to-date point instead to a go-for-broke mentality, at the core of the neoCONs’ piracy, that would be perfectly willing to destroy what its adherents prove unable to possess, rather than suffer the sure-to-be dire consequences, for theirelves, of their Project’s collapse.  It is certain the Chinese, Japanese, Europeans and others are weighing-in strongly (if for-the-moment not publicly) on what will have to be their own defensive reactions should the Anglo/American establishment be unable to arrest further outrages to “good order” by the rogue elements presently calling the shots, and hanging-on like grim death to “the nucular (sic)football”.

It’s becoming clear that more “conservative” members of the plutoligarchy are inclined to settle temporarily for already-consolidated gains in their sacred fortunes and the “higher power” that gives them.  These “old order” habitues would leave the next phases of the “....New American Century” and “Securing the Realm” for a little later on, when the anxious herds and flocks of domesticated two-leggeds milling around in the worldwide “market economy” have settled back into their customary entertainment-and-ideology-induced stupor.

So expect other mid-level managers, in the great global pyramid scheme, to be sacrificed in the tug-o’-war (between die-hard true-believers in the immediate necessity for a “new” world empire and vested interests satisfied, for-the-time-being, with the existing one) as they wage mock-battles for control of the helm of the U.S.S. Corsair-of-State.  John McCain is only the latest of many to get hit in the crossfire….victims, when it comes right down to it, of their own ignorant and misplaced ambitions.

There’s a good coyote story us Indians could tell you about all that.  It even has a “happy ending,” which is far from guaranteed in the allamerican epic rapidly approaching its sure to be thrilling climax and inevitable denoument.

HokaHey!

Being stationed in Baghdad, I’m still reeling in disbelief from the audacity.

I agree that there was no military solution to the “war on terrorism”. In order to eliminate terrorist threat, we need to address the conditions that are petri dishes for the formation of terrorists, militants, and genocidal maniacs. Poverty is one of the fundamental grounds from which breed these kinds of people. Were we to engage in humanitarian efforts, instead of war, we could actually make a difference in the people in these areas who decide how to view the Western world. According to the Borgen Project it would take 19 billion yearly to sustainably bring up from poverty those 800 million who go to bed hungry.

Perhaps its time we approach the fight against terrorism from a different angle. According to the Borgen Project, “poverty and oppression in
far away regions can greatly undermine security in the U.S.” We should focus more of our attention on meeting the Millennium Goals, which out-line a viable plan for eliminating global poverty. Instead of starting wars to combat the problem, we should try and eliminate the reasons for terrorist groups to form in the first place.

Didn’t we do this already? (Ear To The Ground - ‘Iqaqis Call Out McCain’ April 3, 2007)

Joe, come on. One minute you’ve got “Sen. Lindsey Graham, McCain sidekick and Republican of South Carolina, boasted of buying “five rugs for five bucks,” and the next “As for Pence, the only conceivable purpose of his latest trip was to pick up those rugs.” Also “a platoon of soldiers”?

The word around the campfire was that it was a company. It matters which because a platoon is a
subdivision of a company consisting of two or more squads typically commanded by a lieutenant.

In other words, there were actually more U.S. troops involved in this depraved bit of political opportunism. And this was John McCain-style opportunism. Namely, he didn’t just crush every conceivable ethical value under this wilful act of self-serving political expediency. With shocking and cold-blooded disregard he did so while making a prime target out of absolutely everyone involved. He also changed the military dynamic for all the other U.S. troops in Baghdad.

This is indeed McCainsian. Because it is one thing to sacrifice ethical principles, the typical form of opportunism, but McCain was plainly prepared to sacrifice lives—many of them non-combatants. But the real shocker here was that McCain was prepared to sacrifice U.S. troops if necessary in order to pull this off. Proving once and for all that he has no more honest regard for U.S. troops than his adored Bush administration.

Nice work Mr. McCain. You’ve managed to come up with something that makes the Michael Dukakis tank ride look like a stroke of genius.

Once again John McCain shows how the quest for power can blind those seeking it. Once a reasonably centered politician, Mr. McCain, in the hunt for power, has become just as oblivious and deceitful as this current administration. It is truly sad to see a politician that once had the capacity to unite voters become just another talking head espousing propaganda. This same man who was villified by the neo-cons and the Christian right in 2000 is now hyper-active among them. They haven’t changed, so obviously it’s him. But at least we don’t have much to worry about in McCain’s case, because he is fading away politically just as quickly as he is mentally. Good riddance.

How could McCain even think of participating in such a stupic stunt? Where has he been during this administration - except all over the place? Did he really think that he could get away with it - especially since the Bushies are no longer in charge?

And accompanied by Rep Pence? - since I lived in Indiana most of my life I can assure you that Pence isn’t worth a pence as a result of his role in this stunt - not that he had any value before then.

What happens to politicians living in Washington -is there a genetic mututaion or what that makes them think they are smart and everyone else is dumb!

McCain, his associates and his supporters are finding that they are on the wrong site of the perceptions and beliefs of most Americans at this point in time.

The manipulations and untruths that resulted in the US invasion and occupation of Iraq are being uncovered, reported and understood by Americans and people around the world.

People are realizing that not only are “terrorists” very dangerous, so are some of our politicians at home ... including some in very high places of power.

The article referenced below takes a look at this:

“Intelligence, psychology and human heart: All are needed for success in war and peace”

PopulistAmerica.com
Populist Party of America
March 31, 2007

http://www.populistamerica.com/intelligence_psychology_and_human_heart