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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: McCain's Brain Is Plainly On The Wane Last week we finally got a clue as to why John McCain has been slavishly supporting the Bush administration policy on Iraq for all these years: He doesn't have a clue what it is. That became obvious during a press conference in Jordan Tues day. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, who had just come from Iraq, stated that "Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and is receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran." This prompted his fellow senator and fellow neoconservative Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to whisper something in his ear. McCain promptly corrected himself. But the damage was done, forcing him to issue this elaboration later in the week. "I corrected my comment immediately. To think that I would have some lack of knowledge about Sunni and Shiite after my eighth visit and my deep involvement in this issue is a bit ludicrous." Ludicrous? No, It's true. What McCain's critics failed to note was that this gaffe fit within a pattern of gaffes that show not just a lack of knowledge but astounding ignorance. Consider this comment a few weeks earlier about al Qaeda's prospects in Iraq in the event of an American withdrawal: "My friends, if we left, they wouldn't be establishing a base," McCain said. "They'd be taking a country." No, they wouldn't. The Sunni radical group al Qaeda is a minority within a minority in Shi'a-dominated Iraq. The real threat is from such radical groups as the Iranian- based Dawa Party and from that other Iranian-born group that until recently called itself the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq. But we don't have to worry about Dawa and SCIRI taking over after we leave. They already run Iraq. The real tragedy of the Iraq War is that Iraq is now firmly in the hands of Iranian-allied Shi'a groups and will remain so no matter what we do. Unless, of course, we "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran," as McCain put it in that joking allu sion to the'60s song "Barbara Ann" not so long ago. Despite hav ing thoroughly screwed up the Iraq War, the neoconservatives still want to push on to Iran and even tually Syria, though none of the above represents any threat to America. How did such a soft-headed politician win the nomination of a party that prides itself on its hard- headedness? As a conservative, I blame the self-proclaimed "alternative media" of talk radio and the Internet. Old-time conservatives such as Pat Buchanan and the late William F. Buckley recognized the radicalism of the neocon vision from the beginning. But the former sports announcers and washed-up lawyers of the alternative media simply lack the intelligence to assess the situation. An excellent example came when McCain called talk-radio show host Hugh Hewitt from Jor dan before the infamous press conference. "As you know, there are al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they're moving back into Iraq," McCain told the reformed ambulance-chaser. He then went on to say, "I think that Iran maintains its ambitions in the region. I think that if we leave Iraq, the Iranians will then extend that influence." Wait a minute, senator. The other day you said al Qaeda is going to take over Iraq. Now you're saying the Iranians are going to take over. Which is it? That's what any intelligent conservative would have asked. Hewitt instead turned the conversation to the happy prospect of bombing Iran. But if President McCain were to bomb Iran on Jan. 21 of next year, is there anyone out there who believes he would know what to do on Jan. 22? This sort of thing makes me nostalgic for the good old days of the Cold War. Back then, the commies were kind enough to pronounce themselves as such. The Marxists who tried to take over Spain in the civil war of the 1930s had the same goals and the same language as the Marxists who tried to take over Central America in the civil wars of the 1980s. The communists rarely switched allegiances, one of the few exceptions being the movement of various ex-Marxists to the philosophy we call neocon servatism. That left men like George W. Bush and McCain to try to sort out the Mideast by the rules of the Cold War. In the Mideast, however, our ally yesterday is our enemy today, and vice versa. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were on the sides we supported in the wars of the 1980s. Meanwhile our current Dawa allies in Iraq were busy truck-bombing our Kuwait embassy in 1983. It would take someone a lot smarter than McCain to deal with this. Last week he made the mistake of letting us in on that secret.
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#1. To: Brian S (#0)
Sing the title to the tune of "The Rain in Spain".
FROM: Wikipedia "Mac" or "Mc" means "son of"; many names also begin with this. McCain's name is plainly Son of Cain Same melody as above ... [It should be noted that Cain was the 1st murderer].
And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen. And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived. ... Lysander Spooner
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