SwampCast Extra: Throwing McCain a Curve on the Straight Talk Express

A core group of reporters has been with him long enough that we could start a band or a book club

Or a cult.

Seriously, who cares?

I'm sure the 5million displaced Iraqis living in syria, iran, jordan etcetc are SO pleased to hear the feeble hawk McCameNconquered opine US troops will occupy Iraq 100 years.

Can they start that back around 1907?

Commenters: Did Time force-feed us ads, or can I watch this?

i kept thinking he was going to grab your leg

Why didn't you ask him something like "If the Iraqi Parliament meets tomorrow, and issues a proclamation demanding the withdrawal of all US troops in 60 days, would you demand that Bush get the troops out in 60 days, and filibuster any additional funding for troops in Iraq?"

....and if he hedged and said "I don't do hypotheticals" you would come back with -- I'm not asking a hypothetical -- I am asking about your commitment to Iraqi self-determination. Are you committed enough to Iraqi self-determination to demand a troop withdrawal on a timetable set by the Iraqi parliament?" Or try "Last year, a majority of the Iraqi parliament signed a petition demanding a US withdrawal, and demanding a binding vote in Parliament. At that time, you said that the US could ignore the wishes of the Iraqi parliament as long as the occupation was okay with the Maliki Government. Is it your position that the representatives elected to the Iraqi parliament by the Iraqi people have no say in their government? And if elected President, is that how you will treat laws passed by Congress that you disagreed with?"

See, I guess what I'm REALLY saying is that its not the least bit difficult to come up with good, hard-hitting questions if you do some research. And its especially not hard, I would imagine, to come up with good, hard-hitting questions if you have already heard the guy repeatedly blow off the kinds of questions that a reporter from a high school paper would ask.

stuart... you can watch it.... but I suggest a few valium (or scotches, if that's your thing...but don't mix!) before doing so.

Hey, thanks for the tip and the advice!

AMC: I'm really pleased that I can go ahead and view this thing--I'm always interested in how your vlogs are working out. Thanks for posting this.

"Pearl Harbor, the Korean War and the invasion of Kuwait actually happened, while the reasons given for invading Iraq were false. Do you think this is why most Americans and Iraqis want us out of Iraq?"

Yeah. That was pretty hard...

Maybe try a different book club. Perhaps one that has readings on Stockholm Syndrome?

Are all reporters so historically and geographically challenged as to not know why Kuwait might enjoy a strong US presence?

Sure, the US should stay in countries, occupying them for as long as necessary if there really are national security considerations.

In none of the case McCain referred to--Korea, Japan, Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia--are they any national security considerations. Nor in Germany.

Ron Paul's right. Bring them all home.

More importantly, Ron Paul's arguments are not being permitted into the room.

The US is outspending the rest of the world on defense expenditures. The US faces the least dangerous, least threatening security situation in its history.

There is no reason to occupy countries that are close allies. No reason to occupy countries that don't pose a threat. No reason to maintain a standing army in a world where there is no enemy.

The Wall fell nearly 20 years ago. The communist threat ended a decade before that. Nothing has replaced that (exaggerated) threat.

The US won the Cold War. It's past time to stand down, and way past time to manufacture threats to justify ripping off the American taxpayer year after year.

I would like to ask Saint McCain some questions based on the following quotations from him:

From 2002 concerning Iraq:

I believe success will be fairly easy.

I believe we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time.

We're not going to get into house-to-house fighting in Baghdad

From 2003:

We will win this conflict. We will win it easily.

From 2006:

I knew it was probably going to be long and tough and hard. And those who voted for it and thought that somehow it was going to be some kind of an easy task, then I'm sorry they were mistaken. Maybe they didn't know what they were voting for?

From 2007

The American people were led to believe this would be some kind of day at the beach which many of us, uh, fully understood from the very beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking.

Now for the questions:

Were you lying in 2002 and 2003 or were you lying in 2006, 2007 and now?

If you were not lying in 2002 and 2003 why do you call yourself a foreign policy expert?

Giving the flip flops you have had on Iraq do you think you have the right to viciously assault Milt Romney for the same thing?

How long do you think all your buddies in the MSM, who sit at your feet and marvel at how cool you are, will give you a free pass?

"There is no reason to occupy countries that are close allies. No reason to occupy countries that don't pose a threat. No reason to maintain a standing army in a world where there is no enemy."

The military is used to protect corporate interests. Our bases are in the same places that our corporations are. When they talk about national interests they are really talking about corporate interests.

Economic Power = Political Power

2008 will be the grand bogus media year that someone that "has covered the Bush 43 White House and Congress since the DeLay era" is given equal footing with actual voters and candidates in the marketplace of meaningful ideas (or the search for meaningful ideas).

The blog hog cadre of communist leaning dolts feigning as "reporters" for Time (same lefty rag that put Putin on the annual cover boy issue instead of Dave Petraeus) simply seals the case, against 24 Hour press narcissism, overreaching, live group buzzard yapping, and rank collectivist stupidity.

CNN party hats for Hillary rule!

A total dodge on his part. I think I understand the point of the question:

The US has more than just the satisfaction of the Iraqi government to be concerned with if we decide to leave troops in Iraq for a permanent stay. Our presence in Iraq and our handling of the situation there has just irritated Iraqis, it has irritated the larger Arab / Muslim community and us the target of and Iraq the theater of conflict for a small but very highly motivated group of Islamic extremists.

Given that, even if we negotiate an agreement with the Iraqis to stay a very long time, what impact will a permanent US presence in Iraq have on the larger region? If entering Iraq has fueled extremism and made the US a more prominent target for extremists than ever before, how likely is it that a permanent presense there will improve things?

We now know that AMC has a better grasp of the situation in Iraq than John McCain. Thank you, AMC. If only AMC had been tortured in North Vietnam, we could take her seriously as a presidential candidate.

AMC should have asked John McCain how long we should have stayed in Vietnam. The McCain candidacy is really about Vietnam, and denial of that disaster. Iraq is merely an echo of the hubris of Vietnam, and McCain is still full of it.

Update #2: It's "Ramesh."

Thanks for this post and clip, Ana, it's kinda neat.

The comparison to South Korea and Kuwait is completely insane. How many Americans were killed in the insurgencies there 6 years after the initial invasion/arrival? To say nothing of the point about resentment that you and Ramesh make.

Hello, Ana, commenters-

I have a McCain-focused site...

Very informative video and a chance to see Senator McCain at his best - informally discussing the issues on the back of the Straight Talk Express...

Note: the constant zeroing-in on McCain's hand, I speculate, was to call the viewer's attention to the bracelet he has been wearing, in tribute to a soldier, since he was asked to do so at a town hall meeting...

Thoughts?

Forgot to add the link -

http://blog.electionnighthq.com/2008/01/07/video-amc-vs-mccain-ana-marie-cox-aka-the-wonkette-has-a-friendly-debate-w-mccain-on-the-ste-bus/

I think you had a good exchange, and I thought McCain made his point pretty clear. You were asking about what McCain meant when he had made earlier remarks - and he answered that.
As far as it being inflammatory, it would be more inflammatory to tell the Iraqis that America will be willing to abandon them to Al-Qaeda. McCain isn't under the illusion that the war on terror is just a bumper sticker. I didn't agree with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, but looking forward McCain's strategy is the one that is actually making progress toward peace and stability.

Wow.

AMC:
McCain's either not having an honest discussion with you, or he's a stubborn fool.

What you're trying to get him to answer is fundamentally a cost vs benefit question, something that voters get to know in a democracy. He's unwilling to say that there's a judgment call involved at all. He basically insists "You can't put a price on National Security!". Even if we assume for the sake of argument that the occupation of Iraq is somehow related to the defense of the United States, shouldn't we apply the same logic to how much we're spending? Why not spend all the income of every American on the occupation--after all, it's silly to even talk about cost when National Security is involved. The problem is that you're talking about cost, and he's talking about time.

In a bizarrely obtuse way, John McCain is right: the mere passage of time on a calendar shouldn't be a factor in our decision making, because on its own, it's an arbitrary measure of nothing except the passing seasons and birthdays. What he refuses to do is make the connection between the amount of time we occupy the country and what the cost is in lives and borrowed dollars. He's right in as much as the question shouldn't be "how long are we going to be there", but the question should be "how many lives and how many billions of borrowed dollars are we going to expend?" When John McCain says "time isn't a factor", he means "an unlimited amount of lives and borrowed dollars", and that's crazy simply because we have neither.

It seems to me that he wants to get you talking about a deadline, instead of a budget. It's a rather easy rhetorical trick to pull off if the questioner isn't allowed enough talking time to compel him to be honest enough to connect months occupying with real blood and treasure spent. That's what he's determined to do, very disingenuously, it seems to me.

This is why the Democrats have failed so miserably over the past two years. They have, whether deliberately or through incompetence, made the gross rhetorical and political error of basing their position on "including timelines in the budget", instead of "you're asking for a future tax increase of a thousand dollars per household and a thousand more kids to die this year--we believe that less in the way of death and taxes is always better for Americans". If they had made the case to the country that the Republicans had as much time as X dollars and Y casualties would buy them, and then made the Administration spell out what X and Y were, then the country would never have let this go forward. Instead, it became about Friedman Units. Every six months the Administration publicly asked for a little more time, and the Democrats failed or didn't want to tell the public that the Administration was asking for more and more astronomical figures of money and tens of thousands of casualties to be payed for by ordinary Americans. I honestly don't know why this happened. I had hoped that a thorough investigation by a properly skeptical post-WMD press determined to make up for helping to sell the war might have shed some light on what's going on in Washington for the past year.

I don't know why the Democrats didn't make the obvious connection between time and money--after all, they could have just said something everyone knows is true, i.e. "time is money". I have theories about why, but I don't know for certain. I do know that they had the same type of debate that you had with McCain here, in which an "arbitrary deadline" was contrasted with "National Security", and naturally the people's safety won out over the dubious value of having set an alarm to go off. Next time maybe he'll take a drink of water, and you'll be able to ask him "well, in Iraq terms, if we stayed there as long as we've been in Korea, we will have spent [insert more money than China even has to lend to us] and lost perhaps as many as 15 thousand dead and 100 thousand wounded kids, is that what you're in favor of? No? Then do you dispute the costs, or do you just think we'll only realistically be there in engaged in combat for the next decade?"

AMC: Does the guy take a breath in between sentences?