McCain Feels a Draft in New Mexico
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Categories: Action Alerts, Foreign Policy, National Security, Peace and Armed Conflict, Ranting and Venting, News, Opinion, Front Page
Categories: Action Alerts, Foreign Policy, National Security, Peace and Armed Conflict, Ranting and Venting, News, Opinion, Front Page
Do you feel a draft? Apparently John McCain does.
While at one of his pseudo town hall meetings in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the presumptive Republican nominee let it slip that he would support a return to a military draft. McCain was responding to a question from the mother of a wounded soldier.
While referencing McCain's oft repeated pledge to follow Usama Bin Laden "to the gates of hell" the woman raised several issues. She reportedly reminded McCain of serious failures in caring for wounded veterans and the deplorable state of U.S. military readiness.
Stating "if we don't reenact the draft I don't think we'll have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell", the concerned mother - and the applauding audience - waited for McCain's response. In a style typical of a man who speaks before he thinks, McCain responded "Let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said"
Did McCain know what he was saying when he said it? Long a critic of returning to a military draft, did McCain just not listen? Or did he just commit political suicide? Either way his response is truly stunning.
Any objective observer of John McCain knows that he has converted the vaunted "Straight Talk Express" of 2000 into the Double Talk Express of 2008. Flip flopping like a red herring out of water McCain has changed his mind on several key policy points, from opposing a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to opposing - then embracing - the failed Bush tax cuts. Could this be the fish that finally derails his campaign?
The War on Iraq was a direct result of the failed Neoconservative strategy of preemptive war. Throwing up one boogie man after another, America has been kept in an ungodly state of perpetual war for the last 8 years. Combined with the outsourced war on the cheap strategy of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the result has been a U.S. military stretched to the point of breaking.
Enter John McCain with a strategy of occupation with no end in sight and things look grim indeed. Perhaps the questioner was right. Just how does McCain intend to realize his twisted vision of war without end? Where will the he find the troops needed for four, eight or - as McCain so plainly stated - one hundred years of war?
The War on Iraq has brought untold misery, death and grief to military families. As the rest of the country worries about the recession, military families have borne the burden of this endless war. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been needlessly slaughtered and millions have been left homeless. Does McCain, after declaring victory in 2003, now feel a need to share the misery?
Only McCain knows. Look for his handlers to backtrack on this flippant response to a concerned mother. If we are to take him at his word - as he insists we should - does John McCain intend, as President, to bring back a military draft? The last thing Camp McCain wants is the suggestion that their candidate favors the forced conscription of young Americans.
But there lies the rub for Camp McCain.
How do they begin to explain away his strident agreement with the notion that a return to a military draft is the only way to get Bin Laden? Perhaps it was just a lack of judgment or worse, McCain really feels that a draft would be a good idea. Camp McCain and their candidate are now painted into a corner from which there may be no escape.
Copyright 2008 Michael O'Brien All Rights Reserved
While at one of his pseudo town hall meetings in Las Cruces, New Mexico, the presumptive Republican nominee let it slip that he would support a return to a military draft. McCain was responding to a question from the mother of a wounded soldier.
While referencing McCain's oft repeated pledge to follow Usama Bin Laden "to the gates of hell" the woman raised several issues. She reportedly reminded McCain of serious failures in caring for wounded veterans and the deplorable state of U.S. military readiness.
Stating "if we don't reenact the draft I don't think we'll have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell", the concerned mother - and the applauding audience - waited for McCain's response. In a style typical of a man who speaks before he thinks, McCain responded "Let me say that I don't disagree with anything you said"
Did McCain know what he was saying when he said it? Long a critic of returning to a military draft, did McCain just not listen? Or did he just commit political suicide? Either way his response is truly stunning.
Any objective observer of John McCain knows that he has converted the vaunted "Straight Talk Express" of 2000 into the Double Talk Express of 2008. Flip flopping like a red herring out of water McCain has changed his mind on several key policy points, from opposing a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to opposing - then embracing - the failed Bush tax cuts. Could this be the fish that finally derails his campaign?
The War on Iraq was a direct result of the failed Neoconservative strategy of preemptive war. Throwing up one boogie man after another, America has been kept in an ungodly state of perpetual war for the last 8 years. Combined with the outsourced war on the cheap strategy of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the result has been a U.S. military stretched to the point of breaking.
Enter John McCain with a strategy of occupation with no end in sight and things look grim indeed. Perhaps the questioner was right. Just how does McCain intend to realize his twisted vision of war without end? Where will the he find the troops needed for four, eight or - as McCain so plainly stated - one hundred years of war?
The War on Iraq has brought untold misery, death and grief to military families. As the rest of the country worries about the recession, military families have borne the burden of this endless war. Hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been needlessly slaughtered and millions have been left homeless. Does McCain, after declaring victory in 2003, now feel a need to share the misery?
Only McCain knows. Look for his handlers to backtrack on this flippant response to a concerned mother. If we are to take him at his word - as he insists we should - does John McCain intend, as President, to bring back a military draft? The last thing Camp McCain wants is the suggestion that their candidate favors the forced conscription of young Americans.
But there lies the rub for Camp McCain.
How do they begin to explain away his strident agreement with the notion that a return to a military draft is the only way to get Bin Laden? Perhaps it was just a lack of judgment or worse, McCain really feels that a draft would be a good idea. Camp McCain and their candidate are now painted into a corner from which there may be no escape.
Copyright 2008 Michael O'Brien All Rights Reserved
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And the thought of drafting Paris Hilton, Britney and the Bush twins would put Republican panties in a bunch.