Tag Archives: John McCain

International news

McCain knows — and hates — torture

In the name of all that is sane and sensible, if only the rest of America would listen to John McCain when he talks about torture.

The Arizona Republican knows what torture is and what it does. He speaks from intense and deeply moving personal experience.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/09/john-mccain-says-cia-tort_n_6295986.html

And that is why he needs to be heeded when he condemns the practice of torturing suspected al-Qaeda terrorists, as detailed in a Senate Intelligence Committee summary report.

McCain is the only member of the U.S. Senate who’s been tortured by the enemy with whom we were at war. He spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. So when this man speaks of torture, he knows of which he speaks.

At issue is whether the techniques employed on those suspected terrorists produced “actionable intelligence” in the war against international terrorism. McCain believes such interrogation techniques drive captives to say anything to avoid being tortured.

“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence,” McCain said in a speech on the Senate floor. “I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering.

“Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights, which are protected by international conventions the U.S. not only joined, but for the most part authored,” McCain said.

The Republican has been fairly surly and gruff in his criticism of President Obama, who beat him in the 2008 race for the presidency. But the president vowed to erase these interrogation techniques from our country’s policy manual. To that end, McCain has endorsed his former foe’s initiative.

The torture tactics used on the terror suspects well could have been counterproductive as we’ve continued to search for and eliminate terrorist leaders.

What’s more, as McCain has noted, they run counter to the belief that “even captured enemies” must be protected from barbaric treatment.

International news

Torture report to cause some grief

A controversial report is due out Tuesday. It’s going to raise some hackles here and likely over there — meaning the Middle East.

It’s going to detail how the U.S. government used “enhanced interrogation” techniques on terror suspects immediately after the 9/11 attacks. It’s also likely to report that military officials gained little, if any, actionable intelligence from the techniques that included sleep deprivation and waterboarding.

How will the Middle East react? Probably badly, some folks fear.

Well, let them gnash their teeth.

I’ll await the release of the report before commenting in too much detail on it.

However, I do want to refer to comments made by a U.S. senator who knows a thing or two about torture.

Republican John McCain was held captive in North Vietnam for more than five years during the Vietnam War. The enemy subjected him to unimaginable pain through torture.

McCain once said the United States shouldn’t torture captives. He knows of what he speaks. He also believes the U.S. employed torture techniques on al-Qaeda terror suspects.

He condemned the action.

The world awaits this CIA report.

 

national news, political news, State news

Cruz becomes movement leader

It used to be said in Washington that the “most dangerous place in the world” was the space between U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm and a television camera.

Gramm has left public life and the owner of that title now happens to be another fiery Texas Republican, freshman Sen. Ted Cruz.

According to the San Antonio Express-News headline atop a blog post, the young senator has a movement that carries his name. Call it “Cruz conservatives.”

http://blog.mysanantonio.com/texas-politics/2014/12/cruz-conservatives-abandon-gop-leaders-on-anti-obama-vote/

His ability to muscle his way past more senior Senate Republicans to the center of the political stage in less than two years is utterly astounding. The Cruz Missile exploded on the scene with his GOP primary upset in 2012 of Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, after which it became a foregone conclusion he’d be elected to the Senate from such a heavily Republican state.

These days, if you want some “good copy,” turn to Ted; the glib gab machine is loaded with it. If you want to know what the TEA party wing of the GOP is thinking, ask the junior senator from Texas.

Whatever became of the GOP’s senior pols, such as Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Chuck Grassley of Iowa? Sure, the party has its share of media hounds, such as Sen. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Marco Rubio of Florida (I’ll throw Rubio into that mix, even though he’s been in the Senate only two years longer than Cruz).

To be fair, the Senate Democrats have their share of TV hogs. Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Claire McCaskill of Missouri come immediately to mind.

No one else — in either party — can match Ted the Canadian’s panache.

It used to be said that it took at least half of their first six-year term for senators to figure out the ropes, to earn their spurs and to find their way to the men’s room.

Not so with Ted. The young man is a force of nature — which makes me, at least, want to head to the storm shelter.

 

military news, national news, political news

Hagel was 'up to the job'

Chuck Hagel’s departure today as secretary of defense has the look of a forced resignation.

It now appears, at least to me, that Hagel was the one who forced the issue. That’s too bad. The Pentagon and the Obama administration have lost a good man who knows and understands the needs of the men and women who do all the heavy lifting … in the field.

How Obama and Chuck Hagel reached the end of the line

President Obama talked today about how then-Sen. Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, took the young Sen. Obama under his wing and showed him the ropes in a body prone to cliques. He heaped praise on the defense boss and wished him well, which is what one would expect.

Now comes word that Hagel tried to crack the president’s tight inner circle, but couldn’t get in. He had difficulty making his defense policy opinions heard by the commander in chief and those who form that tight-knit circle around him.

If Sen. Hagel was such a trusted ally to the man who would be president, how is it that he was left on the outside looking in when key policy decisions and critical shifts in defense policy were occurring?

Sen. John McCain, one of Hagel’s best friends in the Senate, is set to lead the Senate Armed Services Committee next January. He will chair the panel that will decide whether to confirm the next defense boss. I hope McCain can set aside his personal animus toward Obama — who beat him in the 2008 presidential election — and conduct a thorough but fair hearing of the next nominee.

One of the questions that needs answering, though, is whether the new person will have the access to the commander in chief he or she will need to operate at maximum efficiency. The nominee won’t know that with certainty. The president will and he should make that clear when he announces his next defense secretary nominee.

 

national news

No regrets over Obama votes

The question came to me from a social media acquaintance.

He asked: “… just for the record are you sorry you voted for this incompetent community organizer?”

My answer to him: No.

I now shall elaborate.

The “incompetent community organizer,” of course, is Barack Obama, 44th president of the United States, who’s finding himself engaged in yet another struggle of wills with the folks in Congress who would oppose virtually anything he proposed at any level.

I’ve voted in every presidential election since 1972 and have never regretted a single vote I’ve cast for the candidate of my choice — win or lose.

Why should I regret my votes for Barack Obama in 2008 and again in 2012?

For starters, the 2008 campaign amid the worst economic crisis to hit the United States since the Great Depression. It occurred on George W. Bush’s watch and Sen. Obama pledged to take swift action to stop the free fall in our job rolls, our retirement account, the stock market, the housing market, the banking industry and the automobile industry. I trusted him then to do all of the above.

You know what? He delivered. The economic stimulus package, which the GOP opposed, contributed to improving the economic condition at many levels.

I did not hear Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, offer a solid solution to what was ailing our economy. And when he stopped campaigning to return to Washington when the stock market all but imploded, well, that told me — and apparently millions of other Americans — that Sen. McCain didn’t have a clue what to do.

Four years later, the economy had improved significantly, but Republicans kept insisting it was in the tank. The numbers told a different story.

Let’s not forget: Millions of Americans now have health insurance who didn’t have it before.

Yes, the country faced foreign policy crises on Obama’s watch. But as the 2012 campaign developed and the GOP nominated Mitt Romney to run against the president, it became clear — at least to me — that the Republicans didn’t have any clear answers on how to deal with those crises short of going back to war.

I had grown tired of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Iraq War is over. The Afghanistan War is about to end. Yes, the Islamic State has risen in Iraq and Syria. However, is it the president’s fault entirely that we’re fighting another bloodthirsty terrorist organization? Hardly. We all knew the “Global War on Terror” well could be a war without end.

So, I voted once again for Barack Obama.

He’s now facing yet another challenge from the “loyal opposition,” which frankly doesn’t appear to be all that loyal.

History is going to judge the community organizer a lot more kindly than his critics are doing so today.

Therefore, I stand by my support of Barack Obama.

 

national news, political news

McCain might run again … for the Senate

John McCain confounds me .

The Arizona Republican is at once an admirable man, a genuine war hero, an annoying gadfly, a petulant loser and a real-life expert on foreign policy.

The senator, who’s 78, says he might run for a sixth term in 2016 but observers say he’s going to get a serious tea party challenge if he suits up for another senatorial campaign. He got a stout challenge in 2010, but thrashed former U.S. Rep. J.D. Hayworth by 25 percentage points.

McCain gets ready for race of his life

I think he ought to run at least once more if he’s up to it.

McCain’s biography is well-known. He was a Navy aviator, shot down over Hanoi during the Vietnam War and held captive for more than five years. He suffered terrible torture at the hands of his captors.

His career in public office has been marked by amazing ups and downs.

McCain has run twice for president, nominated by the GOP in 2008, when he lost to Barack Obama.

He’s been a friend of the “liberal” media, which has ticked off conservatives to no end. He’s no liberal, however. He’s voted consistently with the right wing of his party throughout his lengthy career.

Yet … when he carps about President Obama’s decisions he sounds like a sore loser.

Still, he maintains friendships with colleagues on the other side, particularly those with whom he shares combat experience. He has defended the character of his friends John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, both of whom now serve in the president’s Cabinet.

Indeed, my favorite McCain moment might be the time he scolded Senate newcomer Ted Cruz, R-Texas, when Cruz questioned Hagel’s patriotism when Hagel was being examined by the Senate to be defense secretary.

McCain is one of those senators I’d like to meet one day. It won’t happen. If I had the chance I’d likely ask him: Senator, do you confound and confuse some of us intentionally, or is that just a byproduct of a complex personality?

Uncategorized

'Residual force' in Iraq? No thanks

At the risk of sounding as if I’m blaming George W. Bush for today’s difficulties in Iraq, I want to offer this notion of how we got to this point.

President Bush took us to war in Iraq in March 2003 intending to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein and install a government friendly to this country. He succeeded in the first part and succeed partly in the second.

What never has been accomplished is ensuring that the new government and its military infrastructure can defend itself against evil forces.

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-and-jay-carney-have-a-heated-showdown-on-isis-2014-9

We’re now dealing with a government that is trying to fend off the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Remember that this is the government we wanted in power. President Bush left office in January 2009 and President Barack Obama has taken up the fight.

All this blustering and posturing about who’s responsible for the chaos in Iraq seems to ignore what we did more than a decade ago to bring this about.

Sen. John McCain and former White House spokesman Jay Carney went toe to toe on CNN, arguing over whether Obama’s latest strategy against ISIL is sufficient. McCain keeps arguing about whether the president should have kept a “residual force” in Iraq to prevent ISIL’s surge. Residual force? How many men and women should constitute such a force?

McCain knows full well that American public opinion remains in no mood to keep American forces planted squarely in harm’s way if the Iraqi government is incapable of defending itself, which has been the goal of two U.S. administrations.

Barack Obama has announced his strategy in destroying ISIL. He wants to use air power and wants to enlist regional allies to provide intelligence, technical support and arms to assist “moderate” opposition forces in Iraq and Syria.

This idea of returning to a combat role in Iraq is a non-starter. We are learning the hard way that building a democratic society from scratch is virtually impossible — especially when the people who you intend to run that society have zero knowledge of what democracy looks like.

That’s what we got when we invaded Iraq.

national news, political news

Hillary vs. Mitt in 2016 … seriously?

This just in: A new Iowa poll says Mitt Romney is miles ahead in a poll of 2016 Republican caucus participants.

Run, Mitt, run.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/08/mitt-romney-2016-election-iowa-poll-110392.html?hp=r2

The 2012 Republican presidential nominee has dropped a hint or two that might be thinking about a third run for the presidency in 2016. He lost the GOP nomination to John McCain in 2008, then got thumped — surprisingly, in the eyes of many — two years ago when President Obama thumped with a decisive Electoral College victory.

“Circumstances could change,” Mitt said recently when asked about a possible run once again for the White House.

What might those circumstances be? Only he and, I presume, his wife Ann, know the answer. OK, throw in his five sons; they’ll know when something is up.

Frankly, I’d like to see Mitt go again. I am curious to see if the Olympic organizer/business mogul/former Massachusetts governor has learned from the mistakes that might have cost him the White House in 2012. Will he steer clear of “47 percent” comments? Will he refrain from saying that “corporations are people, too, my friend”? Will he forgo making $10,000 wager offers on a debate stage with other Republican rivals?

He might also be a bit more specific than he’s been about how he’d handle these international crises differently than the man who beat him in 2012.

For my money, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton remains the candidate to beat in 2016, even though she’s looking less inevitable than she was looking about six months ago.

Mitt, though, could give her a tussle.

You go, Mitt.

Uncategorized

Did condemned man die from 'torture'?

John McCain knows torture when he sees it.

The Republican U.S. senator from Arizona was victimized by it as a prisoner of war in Vietnam for more than five years. So when the 2008 GOP presidential nominee says an Arizona inmate was tortured before he was executed this week, I tend to listen.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/25/justice/arizona-execution-controversy/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

I’ll declare here that I oppose capital punishment, largely because keeping someone alive to think about the crime he or she committed is punishment enough — in my book.

Well, this week Joseph Wood became the latest condemned man to die in what amounts to a botched or nearly botched execution. He gasped, moaned, snorted and writhed on the gurney for nearly two hours before succumbing to the drugs pumped into his body. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, another Republican, has ordered a complete review to determine what went wrong; the state attorney general has halted future executions until the review is complete.

Wood wasn’t a good guy. He committed a terrible and violent crime that put him on death row. Hardliners out there say they feel not a shred of remorse over what happened to him on the death chamber gurney. He still got off easy compared to the pain he inflicted on his victims, they will say.

Still, the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits “cruel and unusual punishments.” States that used to hang, shoot, electrocute or gas inmates to death have gone to lethal injection as a form of supposedly “human” execution. Well, James Wood didn’t die humanely. Neither did the Oklahoma inmate who was executed in a hideously botched process in which the lethal drug was injected into tissue, rather than into his bloodstream.

What are states to do? Texas, which had gone on a death row killing spree in recent years, has somehow slowed the pace of executions. We still kill inmates more regularly than other states. We’ve had none of the instances lately of the kind of torture that John McCain described in the Wood case.

“The lethal injection needs to be an indeed lethal injection and not the bollocks-upped situation that just prevailed. That’s torture,” Sen. McCain told Politico on Thursday.

Yes, the state should review its capital punishment procedures. However, if states cannot guarantee prevention of the type of agony suffered by a condemned inmate, perhaps there ought to be some serious debate about ending the procedure altogether.

Let these inmates rot in prison for the rest of their natural lives.

Uncategorized

Vets health reform stalled by … yep, politics

If you’ll recall when the veterans health care scandal rocked the nation, you’ll also recall high-minded statements by politicians proclaiming veterans’ health care to be their top priority.

By golly, they wouldn’t let politics stand in the way of improving the delivery of health care to veterans.

Fast forward to today. Politics is standing in the way. This is outrageous in the extreme.

http://thehill.com/policy/defense/213222-talks-on-veterans-bill-in-full-meltdown

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has co-authored a bill along with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., that would enable veterans to get non-VA health care if the nearest Veterans Administration health facility is more than 40 miles away.

It’s hit a roadblock. Where? In the House of Representatives, where penny-pinching Republicans control the place. They are bickering with Democrats over how to pay for this bill.

There now seems a realistic chance that Congress is going to adjourn for its lengthy summer recess without approving this needed reform.

The veterans health care scandal rocked the nation to its core. Remember that? Remember when we got all twisted up over news of veterans dying in Phoenix, Ariz., because the agency couldn’t deliver health services in a timely fashion? How about the news that the VA was cooking patient logs to cover the backsides of administrators? Didn’t that news send pols and pundits and orbit?

Those lofty declarations of wanting to improve health delivery to vets have given way to the usual partisan bickering, backstabbing and bloviating.

Sanders wants to negotiate a deal with the House. House leaders are critical of Senate Democrats for boycotting meetings to discuss possible changes.

Congress’s approval ratings are low enough as it is. The politicians who serve in both congressional chambers know the consequence of those poll numbers. They could cost them their jobs this fall. And for what? Because they cannot settle on legislation that four months ago everyone said had to get done … no matter what.

Get it done, ladies and gentlemen of Capitol Hill.