Did John McCain Just Say What I Think He Said About Iraq?
It's been over five years, 4000 dead U.S. troops and $600 billion since we invaded Iraq. But Sen. John McCain thinks it doesn't matter how long we end up staying in that war-ravaged country. The GOP's presumptive nominee appeared Wednesday morning on NBC's Today show in an interview with co-host Matt Lauer, who asked the Republican candidate about President Bush's troop surge last year which McCain has vehemently supported:
Lauer: If it's working, Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?
McCain: No, but that's not too important. What's important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea. Americans are in Japan. American troops are in Germany. That's all fine.
So the crusty old Senator from Arizona thinks it's "not too important" when, if ever, our troops return home, huh? That an overwhelming majority of Americans want an imminent end to the war apparently doesn't faze McCain. As he's said in the past, we could be in Iraq for another 100+ years and that would be just peachy with him.
McCain's new boneheaded remark ranks among the other colossal Bushevik blunders pertaining to Iraq such as "Mission Accomplished" and "We'll be greeted as liberators." It only serves to demonstrate just how out out of touch he is with mainstream America.
Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presumptive nominee, would be wise to aggressively hammer home this new example of McCain's consistently cavalier attitude towards the war and our foreign policy in general. It's just more of the same shoot first, ask questions later reckless cowboy mentality that has gotten us mired in the Iraq debacle in the first place. And we certainly don't need four more years of Bush 3 in the form of McCain.
Americans have a very clear choice this November. A vote for McCain is a vote for more war, more militarism, more death. And that's just Iraq. Imagine the surprises this war-monger has in store for us with Iran. As Yogi Berra said, it'll be "deja vu all over again."
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Yes he said that withdraw time is not too important because the most important thing is keeping the soldiers from lives from too much violence. I know this concept of saving lives instead of giving a time frame as to when you want to leave is a foreign concept to Obamafans, but that is what McCain said.
Troops don't mind deployment, they mind getting killed. But again Obamafans would not understand that. According to them every soldier in the US army wants to be home and collecting a paycheck and not serving their country in Iraq, Japan, Korea, Germany, Kuwait, Afghanistan. No they all want to come home because that is why they joined for. So they can be home with their moms.
The troops don't want to be home? I guess that's why they write letters to their spouses and kids--saying how much they miss them.
1: The troops don't have to be occupying another country to be serving their country.
2: They are currently (through no fault of their own) not serving their country--they are serving the corporate interests that put this administration and much of the government in office. $23 billion completely unaccounted for...not to mention the no bid contracts. May be "the worst case of war profiteering ever" according to an independent BBC investigation.
3: They do mind "getting killed". Correct. They are continuing to "get killed", as you put it. I think they also mind getting physically and psychologically damaged by the hundreds of thousands. It's war. No reasonable person LIKES being at war.
exception.
WE NEED OUR TROOPS TO COME HOME......
Make the wise choice this november..
Get a clue. All the surge is about paying Sadr $30 Million each time for a cease fire and $240 Million a month to the Sunni Alliance.
All we need is a couple of bag men to drop off the cash, and the rest of the troops can come home and then deploy over to Korea, Afghanistan, or wherever you think they should go, as long as it's away from mom.
We don't need to keep sending all that hardware to Iraq. It's lost hardware as soon as it gets there. It's worthless in that god foresaken hell hole. Soon, every teenage hoodlum Iraqi is going to be getting head in the back seat of their very own humvee.
"Troops don't mind deployment?"
That flies in the face of a an article in this week's Newsweek, which reports that many soldiers are now resorting to "self-harm" as a way of preventing re-deployment to Iraq.
From the article:
"Last summer, according to published reports, a 20-year-old Bronx soldier paid a hit man $500 to shoot him in the knee on the day he was scheduled to return to Iraq. The year before that, a 24-year-old specialist from Washington state escaped a second tour of duty, according to his sister, by strapping on a backpack full of tools and leaping off the roof of his house, injuring his spine."
See "Anything Not to Go Back"
http://www
if you read the article you linked more carefully, you'll realize that it doesn't say "many". It mentions a couple of cases, and quotes a doctor who says she doesn't know how many are actually doing this.
The military is not for wooses. That's is why I did not join the Navy at 18. I'm a woos. If you join you better know that the military is not the boy scout. You can and maybe killed. If you can't handle dying prematurely than the military is not the place for you. These few people who are doing what you said, and I already read the article, should never have joined to begin with. Most likely they had no job prospect and that was their choice or prison. I know it's hard to believe but many people join the army because they don't want to go to prison. We really could do without them. In war they are useless. As it is demonstrated. It takes balls of steel to be a soldier. If your balls are still a little soft, you should join community outreach center or something.
I don't disagree with you that most of the troops DON'T mind deployment.
And I think in those other countries you mentioned they will gladly serve.
HOWEVER, with Iraq being the quagmire that it has become - along w/ 2, 3, 4 deployments for these young soldiers with barely any rest....th
John McCain doesn't support the troops, he supports his cronies and his own wallet.
I guess your reading of the news stop at Iraq being a quagmire, because every article I have been reading in dozens of papers here in America and overseas says that the war is being won. But it is an "inconvenient truth" to Obama.
Shit, I just realize what McCain next ad should be. It should be called and inconvenient truth. An ad about how good news about the war is so bad for people like Pelosi that they would rather attribute success to the goodwill of Iran instead of the hard work of US soldiers busting their ass and the hard work of the Iraqi government. If anyone from the McCain campaigns read this get cracking. I am 110% sure that this ad would be a blockbuster.
There should be a shot of McCain talking about the Iraq war. He could say, like Gore, did This is city of Iraq before the surge and this is the city after. And so on and on. And don't be afraid to have some Iraqi woman saying thank you because she can go get groceries and not getting shot. And a line at the end that says "What is at stake is America's standing in the world. We are Winning. Let's not change that." Fade to black.
Troops don't mind deployment, they mind getting killed? Ive been to war in Viet Nam....
Another unjustified war! To many ," deployment = death or injury".
Get a grip, UNCOOL REPUBLICA!
Perhaps one way to reduce the causalities would be to end this insane debacle and bring them home.
That would probably reduce casualities, too.
And now the Iraqi's want us to leave sooner than later. They don't want 200 permanent US military bases, they don't even want 58 permanent bases, and they don't want the US military (and US mercenaries) to stay, in any significant way, after the UN mandate comes to an end.
So what exactly is McCain suggesting?
Maybe we should pull all of the military out and re-invade Iraq!
Mc Cain theme song: " If it takes 100 years I will have you".
In general, McCain is seriously deluded about most everything, but to be fair whether or not soldiers are being killed it is a little more important than the length of their tour of duty.
HuffPost's Pick
The point is, that it's a false choice. It's not as if we have to choose between them getting killed or being deployed indefinitely. In fact, by simple logic, the longer they are deployed the higher the chance of them dying, being disabled, or mentally scarred.
Comparing the situation in Iraq to Japan and Germany is not remotely analagous. The Iraq War is not remotely similar to WWII. We were attacked by Japan. Germany was attacking passive nations in an attempt to conquer Europe. And once all was said and done, the inernational community told them they couldn't have a military, so we stayed to provide that security. Iraq didn't attack us.
Also, there is not even a hint of a plan to get from the point we're at now--where an uneasy ceasefire on the part of Muqtada Al'Sadr is the only thing keeping violence at its reduced current levels (reduced only relative to the raging disaster that it was prior)--to the point where our troops are not in harm's way.
Senator McCain never left that prison camp in Viet Nam.
He just does'nt care, He will be on the other side of the grass when our children and grandchildren pay the price for this war. Accelerating Armegeddon must be on his "bucket list"
Oh, no, he dit'unt!
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