Novak suspects that McCain veep tip was a ruse

1 comment July 22nd, 2008

On each of the last two nights, I’ve REPORTED here on speculation that John McCain will name his running mate sometime this week.

The latter of those conjectures came from conservative columnist Robert Novak, who now SAYS he might have been used by the McCain camp to divert public attention from Barack Obama’s travels abroad.

Poor guy’s getting really desperate

16 comments July 22nd, 2008

UPDATE: In addition to the misstatements by John McCain that are the focus of the post below, he also made a first-class gaffe that is creating quite a stir tonight.

The problem is that McCain, during an interview with Katie Couric on CBS, DISPLAYED an astonishing misunderstanding of the sequence of events in Iraq with respect to the recent Surge and the so-called Anbar Awakening.

McCain says the Surge begat the Awakening. In reality, the Awakening predated the Surge.

We’re likely to hear lots more about this over the next few days.

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John McCain, having found himself boxed in by the rush of recent events and the inconsistency of his past rhetoric, is wildly flailing about, leveling scurrilous and patently false charges against Barack Obama.

Today, McCain said Obama wants America to lose the war in Iraq, which amounts to saying that the many troops and veterans who support Obama are either stupid or also want to lose the war.

Some vets are FIGHTING BACK against such slanderous crap.

McCain also said today that Obama has done ”a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed” by denying the valor and success of their efforts in the field.

That is patently false. As we see HERE, Obama has repeatedly hailed the efforts of the troops and has praised them at virtually every turn.

McCain, whose own honorable service in the military is acknowledged by virtually all Americans, is dishonoring himself by impugning the patriotism of his rival for the presidency and, by implication, the supporters of that rival.

Report from a childhood friend

9 comments July 22nd, 2008

For no other reason than that he was a neighbor of mine when we were growing up in Freeport, Dan Balz (above) of the Washington Post takes the Applesauce spotlight this morning for a REPORT on his travels abroad with Barack Obama.

(Actually, there’s another reason: Dan’s pretty good at what he does.)

(I should also tell you that Dan and I weren’t the only kids in our neighborhood who became journalists. There were two others, and we all lived only a few houses from one another. It must have been something in the water.)

( It should come as no surprise that my career turned out to be the least distinguished of the four, though I am the oldest of the bunch.)

Here’s McCain piece The NYT rejected

3 comments July 22nd, 2008

The New York Times has REJECTED — wrongly so, I believe — an op-ed column from John McCain that responds to a piece by Barack Obama published by the Times last week.

Any newspaper has the right, of course, to decide what it will publish and what it won’t. And most papers frequently reject unsolicited columns.

But, as I see it, McCain’s submission, no matter that it’s mostly a rehash of his campaign rhetoric, merits publication as submitted, given the senator’s status as a presumptive presidential nominee.

Here’s what McCain wrote:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse.”

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

Senator Obama is also misleading on the Iraqi military’s readiness. The Iraqi Army will be equipped and trained by the middle of next year, but this does not, as Senator Obama suggests, mean that they will then be ready to secure their country without a good deal of help. The Iraqi Air Force, for one, still lags behind, and no modern army can operate without air cover. The Iraqis are also still learning how to conduct planning, logistics, command and control, communications, and other complicated functions needed to support frontline troops.

No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges. A partial withdrawal has already occurred with the departure of five “surge” brigades, and more withdrawals can take place as the security situation improves. As we draw down in Iraq, we can beef up our presence on other battlefields, such as Afghanistan, without fear of leaving a failed state behind. I have said that I expect to welcome home most of our troops from Iraq by the end of my first term in office, in 2013.

But I have also said that any draw-downs must be based on a realistic assessment of conditions on the ground, not on an artificial timetable crafted for domestic political reasons. This is the crux of my disagreement with Senator Obama.

Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his “plan for Iraq.” Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say. During the course of eight visits to Iraq, I have heard many times from our troops what Major General Jeffrey Hammond, commander of coalition forces in Baghdad, recently said: that leaving based on a timetable would be “very dangerous.”

The danger is that extremists supported by Al Qaeda and Iran could stage a comeback, as they have in the past when we’ve had too few troops in Iraq. Senator Obama seems to have learned nothing from recent history. I find it ironic that he is emulating the worst mistake of the Bush administration by waving the “Mission Accomplished” banner prematurely.

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war—only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president. Instead I will continue implementing a proven counterinsurgency strategy not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan with the goal of creating stable, secure, self-sustaining democratic allies.

Ever the bold competitor, he grimaces as he ponders this difficult flip, sports fans!

Add comment July 22nd, 2008

At a town hall meeting in Michigan over the weekend, a self-described Catholic pro-lifer asked John McCain if he could be counted upon to “fight for the rights of the unborn,” including with regard to “the unproven science of embryonic stem cell research.”

Replied McCain: “Yes, you can.”

In 2000, McCain expressed opposition to federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, but he flipped on that issue three years ago after discussing it with Nancy Reagan.

And again last year, McCain said: “I support federal funding.”

Now, he appears ready to FLIP BACK again to where he stood eight years ago.

The man has awesome political dexterity, you have to admit.