McCain shows his 'foreign expertise' in Jordan
 

By Cameron W. Barr and Michael D. Shear
AMMAN, Jordan -- Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "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." A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

The mistake threatened to undermine McCain's argument that his decades of foreign policy experience make him the natural choice to lead a country at war with terrorists. In recent days, McCain has repeatedly said his intimate knowledge of foreign policy makes him the best equipped to answer a phone ringing in the White House late at night.

McCain was in Jordan leading a week-long congressional delegation and has stressed that the trip was not political, despite the decision to hold a fundraiser in London later this week.

But advisers said a side benefit from the trip would be the image of McCain standing next to world leaders and showing his expertise on issues of war and terrorism.

The U.S. has long asserted that elements of the Iranian security forces have been training and supplying weapons to Iraq's Shiite militias. Iran is an overwhelmingly Shiite country whose government has applauded the emergence of a Shiite-led government in Iraq but has denied supporting Shiite militias inside Iraq.



http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-t..._jordan_1.html


Well, there is your foreign experience for you.

At one time he called Asians gooks, now he doesn't know who is funding whom...smh.

Pat Robertson's visions may come true yet.



So....who do you want answering that phone at 3am?

I post a legit news report and all you can come up with is a blog?


gosh you are lame.

I certainly don't want Barack Obama answering that phone.

Sorry, but if you can't acknowledge where the threats to America originate, then I certainly don't trust you to protect us.

Shiner...I respect that opinion....I also feel like I dont want me leader going somewhere and misquoting wrong information especially when they are AT thier doorstep selling themselves.



Kinda like we 'knew' where the WMDs were

Then I guess you can disqualify anyone involved in American, British, Australian or Israeli intelligence from candidacy.

Yup...'fraid so


"Intelligence"...an oxymoron at times....

To go back:

British intelligence plagiarized a 3 years old doctoral thesis as their case for war.

Australian intelligence presented exactly the same case as the Americans, they have no intelligence presence whatsoever inside Iraq

American intelligence was at best speculative, but Rumsfeld and Cheney decided to silence those who question the assessment for the war.

Overall, it was a major intelligence failure which has never been truly investigated.

the video BTW

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

Ok, I'm also not a McCain voter, but I'll say this, dude's old. I actually don't question his foreign policy or military expertise, but, he's old. And the mind may be going, so he may misspeak. Happens to old people. Just sayin'.

Yeah, McCain probably had a slip of the tongue. Happen to everybody. Happen to me a lot.

The author of this blog actually said:
It is one thing to say you disagree with someone but another to say that someone who was at the top of his law school class at one of the best law schools in the country and has went on to excel in politics "is a total and complete idiot." When someone says something like that (or links to a blog with implied approval) I think less of them and everything I see them write. PhiGam... a little less linking and a little more thinking for yourself would be appreciated, for a change.

nittany....let's give him the benefit of that doubt aabout the old thing, still,would someone want to have to worry about a slip like that with an important ally or an enemy we are trying to make into an ally?

Oh, I'm not defending or endorsing him, I'm just saying, dude's old. And to be fair, we've had 8 years of someone who can barely form a coherent sentence and has made more gaffes than the Keystone Cops, so I actually believe that even as old and possibly-headed-toward-feeblemindedness as he is, McCain would still be an improvement over what we have been living with.

that scares me...

Actually, it isn't McCain that scares me, it's the lack of change that would come with him to D.C. If the GOP keeps the White House, there won't be much of a shake-up and that town NEEDS a shake-up. Sure, some of the WH personnel will shift around, but a lot of the cronies who are snuggled deep in the hearts of the bureaucratic agencies will stay put and the lobbyists who have had their run of things will keep it in high gear. It's like people who think term limits will make a difference in Congress. It would move the elected faces around, but the staffs would stay put, and ask anyone in D.C. who really pulls the strings in that town and they'll tell you it's the staffers.

As I was told by a gentleman working for one of the other candidates:
With McCain you will get a smarter, angrier Bush.

This. Yes. (adding in all the same people and crap and whatnot)

McCain is ideologically different than Bush. Here's my opinion:

The ever-changing Republican party can be broken down into Neo-conservatives (Bush Jr., Cheney, Some would say JFK), Small government conservatives (Paul), Maverick conservatives (McCain, Specter), religious conservatives (Huckabee, Falwell), and traditional conservatives (Bush Sr., Powell). There is a lot of overflow here but I did my best to put famous conservatives in the category which they fit best.

The Maverick conservatives are often viewed as angry because they constantly lobby against pork barrel spending and campaign finance. It is very hard for them to stay elected unless they are involved in highly publicized national reform policy because they are unable to reward their states with specific projects and funding. The downside is that they are forced to be "media whores." McCain will call for a line item veto if elected and I think that the conservative supreme court would give it to him. McCain's biggest issue as a senator was cutting pork. I personally support the line item veto for whomever gets elected, even if it is Obama.

That's only a step up and rarely do people think 'smartly' when they are angry...

All three countries held investigations and blamed widespread intelligence failure. Most everything else is speculation and often tainted by personalities of questionable credibility.

I don't want a shakeup that involves less autonomy, larger government, a weaker stance on terror, and Tribe-like SCOTUS justices. Sorry.

A slip of the tongue is one thing, but I'm not so sure that's what this was. If he doesn't understand the difference between the two Muslim sects or the "organizations" that support them (Al-Q vs. general insurgents), that's a problem. And after reading the comments in full and in context, it doesn't really seem like it was just a slip of the tongue, but a fundamental misunderstanding of what's happening.

On a separate note, I agree with the "dude's old" comments. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but by the time he would take office, he'd be older than Reagan was. I think McCain's running mate will become very important to his candidacy, and that we'll start to hear a lot more about his age as the selection of that running mate approaches.

I know that sounds attractive, but legislatively and in practice, it would be a big, huge mistake and an enormous surrendering of check-and-balance in the functioning of our government.

I disagree. This power would be held in check by the public and the media. It may not be checks and balances in the constitutional sense but I think it would be effective.

Because the last 8 years have given us such shining examples of greater individual freedoms, a retraction in the size of the government, unmitigated success in targeting and really "defeating" terrorism (like that's possible... we still can't find bin laden for god's sake)?? And I have no comment on the SCOTUS because it's too split and they handed Bush his first term and I'm still not over it.

Do I hint sarcasm? I agree completely though, Bush is the complete opposite of what a conservative should be.

I'm sorry, but that's naive. The lobbyists and the party heavy weights with the most access to the president and his staff (or even just a future president with a personal agenda he wants to enact) could potentially abuse the living crap out of this power. Deals would be cut so quietly and so far behind so many thick, soundproof doors the public and the media would have no idea what's going on (until it's too late potentially and then what's the recourse?).

Who, me? :D

The recourse would be to take line item veto power away. The bottom line is that we need to drastically reduce government spending and the line item veto is a great way to do that. The only other ways to eliminate pork would be to elect honest politicians or become politically conscious as a nation, neither of those will ever happen though.

Lobby reform? Campaign finance reform? There are other places to look besides the executive branch to change how legislation is crafted, funded and passed in this country. And how much damage could be done before the line item could be taken back away? And how much pressure would be put on the members of the president's party in the Congress (by the party, by the president, by the special interests) to NOT to take it away? That would be a very hard bell to un-ring.

Do tell, what the hell does the next President have to do with Bush? Are you conceding the point that Obama will give us all of those things? If so, fine, and then we can get into whether my voting for GWB is hypocritical or not.

So I guess you'd be ok if the liberal half of SCOTUS had attempted to give the election to Gore? By the way, guess who represented Gore in his first trip to the Court? Lawrence Tribe.

Opinion
McCain: A History of Being Wrong About Al Qaeda, Iraq and Iran


Adam Blickstein Thu Mar 20, 2:58 PM ET

John McCain on several occasions recently has asserted that Iran and Al Qaeda are working together, including last month in Houston, Texas. The facts are much more complicated. McCain's assertions directly contradict General Petraeus who stated just yesterday that Al Qaeda weapons and suicide bombers actually come primarily through Syria.

McCain made the same mistake in 2002, before the Iraq War, when he claimed that Iraq would be part of a "weapons assembly line for al-Qaeda's network." In reality the 9/11 Commission and a recent Pentagon report found no operational relationship.

McCain, too often mistaken for a purported national security expert, conflates and confuses various regional players -- the same kind of dangerous oversimplification that pushed us into war five years ago.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/200...4_200803201358



I'm still wondering how people figure that this is the best possibly experienced nominee if there is and has been, in this writer's opinion, constant confusion about who is the enemy?

I will really cringe if he ever lets slip... "Well they all look alike..."

Sorry, missed this retort.

My post was in response to your post in which you disagreed with my notion of D.C. being in desperate need of a shake-up. Your post implied that a shake-up (that by my intimation would need a party change) would result in a loss of autonomy, a growth in the size of government, an inability to defeat terrorism and a tribe-like supreme court, which I chose not to comment on. So my response was a suggestion back to you that keeping the GOP in place would not necessarily prevent those things from happening, just like electing the GOP 4 and 8 years ago didn't prevent those things from happening.

And my comment about the SCOTUS was just that I haven't gotten over that they gave Bush the presidency to begin with. I didn't try to pick a fight over them, that's just my personal feelings about it. And the SCOTUS wouldn't have had to "give" the presidency to Gore, the majority of American voters had already done that.

Your response had to do with Bush, who will not be running again in 2008.

Bush won in 2000. It is time to let it go. I'd much prefer the election to be decided by SCOTUS than the notably biased FL Supreme Court. There is even significant evidence that Bush would have won had the recount not been stopped.

He did?

Bush won like I used a cheat to beat Super Mario Brothers, won.

Coming from an unabashed liberal, I can't tell you how much legitimacy this holds for me.

I have this image of you pouting and stomping your feet when you say that too.....hehehehe.

Be realistic. I'm a Republican. We don't pout. Leave the pouting and protesting to you guys. I'll be busy killing polluting and exploiting the poor out of anger.

you are going to hell.


Oh...wait...you are a Republican. That's a local trip for you...