| In 2000, George Bush came into office under the vague notion that he wasn't very different than Al Gore. The country was fairly prosperous and it would stay that way, with a few domestic tweaks. We were wrong about Bush and his character. I keep hearing from liberals that what matters is beating Clinton and/or Obama, and that McCain just isn't that bad.
It sounds eerily like 2000 and our impressions of Bush. And it's not true, as Sam Stein notes.
For the third time in two days, the Arizona Republican has pushed the definitively false statement that the terrorist group Al-Qaeda was getting assistance from Iran, even though he was publicly ridiculed for the same false assertion on Tuesday.
This time, in a statement from his campaign honoring the fifth year anniversary of the war, McCain wrote:
"Today in Iraq, America and our allies stand on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism. The security gains over the past year have been dramatic and undeniable. Al Qaeda and Shia extremists -- with support from external powers such as Iran -- are on the run but not defeated."
On Tuesday, the senator, appearing in Israel, made a nearly identical assertion that al-Qaeda was leaving Iraq to retool and regroup in Iran.
It was, he said, "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate."
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, who was accompanying McCain on the trip, was forced to lean over and whisper in McCain's ear that it was Shiite extremists, not Sunni al-Qaeda, that was going to predominantly Shiite Iran.
It's common knowledge in the Senate that, aside from work he's done in the Armed Services Committee, McCain doesn't know anything about anything. He's basically an ignorant old man that understands the military and nothing else, including diplomacy, economics, or any other aspect of national security. He is announcing that he wants to stay 100 years in Iraq, and his cabinet choices will reveal that he is intent on a war with Iran.
A lot of savvy unaligned progressives who aren't backing either nominee are beginning to get really scared about McCain's capacity to get into office as a moderate. I don't mean to pull the panic button, because he is a weak nominee. He can't raise money and he's old and cranky, and he'll be facing an energized progressive movement. But this guy is an extremist and it's about time people focus a little less on Clinton-Obama and more on McCain.
Frankly, there's little most of us can do about the primary contest, so it's better to focus downticket and on McCain anyway. |
