McCain Plagiarized Foreign Affairs Speech

ThinkProgress:

UPDATE: This piece was retracted by Think Progress.

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) gave a foreign policy speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. He stated:

I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed.

Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly.

These lines are not McCain's own. As TP reader 5th Estate discovered, they were in fact taken largely from a 1996 speech by ret. Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer. Below is a comparison of McCain's address yesterday with Ziemer's in 1996...

Read the whole story: ThinkProgress

Comments

[Whinger]

That, coming from John McCain has disengenuous stamped all over it.

[riverhorse]

McCain and Obama might make a good pair. neither one can speak without taking the words from someone else.

[Bagger]

Hold your fire! I think Hillary is under sniper attack from the Bosnians! She says she's going to be okay. It was a close call.

[IslandGyal]

It's a pity, since he will be the president of the U.S. come November, because these folks in the Democratic Party have no b*lls.

[IslandGyal]

Somebody is going to be fired! We know old man Mc Bush didn't write his own speech, c'mon.

[cinnysmom]

well here we go again: plagiarism-gate!!! Round 2 or 3 I can't keep up anymore

[iPolitics]

and MSNBC spends all day slamming Obama on Wright while CNN and even Fox News focus on the economy and Iraq. MSNBC has been knee-cap. wimps.

[HippieChick]

I, too, have noticed that MSNBC has been conducting an all-day-all-Rev Wright broadcast today, and have sent more than one email to msnbc.comsnbc.com to protest. They even interrupted Obama's ecomony speech to spew their Wright diatribe this morning! MSNBC seems to have an idea that including Tucker Carlson's biased commentary is also a valid addition to their programming. Their agenda is showing!

[VOTER]

True. Lately sending email complaints to MSNBC is like taking a daily vitamin- NECESSARY-

7 days a week.

[GBecker]

Wasn't this also a speech (or at least the better part of it) he gave in '01?

Obama '08!

[JUSTME]

My friends, I've noticed that McCain, much like Bush, can't talk unless someone's written something down for him to read. Then he just drones on and on.

[TheMisanthrope]

I can't stand McCain, but at least he doesn't need his speeches written out phonetically! It's really no fair to compare anyone to Moron-Boy.

[HippieChick]

"can't talk unless someone's written something down for him to read"

Or unless someone is standing behind him to correct the errors in his words.

[DGregory]

hot damn..... does Ziemer work on his campaign