NeoCon Republicans and their candidate, McLame, are liars, hypocrits and thieves. Are we as a country REALLY going to give them 4 more years to suck the lifeblood out of us??? I say: NO WE WON'T!

"McCain allies Sen. Lindsey Graham stepped in to rescue him. Graham expressed admiration for McCain’s stance on the treatment of detainees in US custody."

"'That to me is a classic example of how his military experience helped him shape public policy in a way no other senator could have done,’ Graham said."

Um, except that in the most reprehensible of his flip-flops, McCain switched his position on torture so that it is now "Torture is just fine as long as the CIA does it." He's also opposed to the Supreme Court decision that Guantanamo prisoners can challenge why, after all these years, they're actually being held.

The guy without the experience of being tortured, Barack Obama, is actually the one opposed to it. McCain's position is, as usual, the same as Bush's position. His regard for prisoners ended the moment he realized it would get in the way of his obtaining the Republican nomination. Try again.

You know, it would be nice if the reporter doing this work would point out these inconsistencies occasionally, instead of leaving it to people in his comments section. Please try to provide context for what people are saying.

Sorry, Repubs, but after the Swiftboaters, it is now fair game to completely trash McSame's war experience.

You folks set the rules back in 2004, now live with it, and we DON'T want to hear any of your crap about it! Hell, McBushy even hired one of the Swifters to work for him. After that, how can he keep a straight face while complaining about Wesley Clark. Oh yeah, he IS and expert at lying.

McCrappy graduated 894 out of 899 in his class and has shown that he has not improved a bit since.

McCain then collected himself and apologized for his initial reaction.

"I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences," he said, noting that he has huge admiration for the "heroes" who served with him in the POW camp and said the experience taught him to love the U.S. because he missed it so much.

"I am always reluctant to talk about these things," McCain said.

What a load of crap. When has McCain ever NOT talked about his Vietnam incarceration as qualification for office? It's been the cornerstone of every campaign he's ever run.

This is another case of the fawning media buying into the McCain mystique that they help propagate each and every day. Not a day goes by when we don't hear McSame talk about his experience. Nearly every ad features photos of John in his flyboy days or worse, on the stretcher drawing attention to his POW status.

He wields his captivity as proof of his bona fides as a leader and military expert. We have the right to expect the press to call him on it when he does.

Was he right on Iraq? No! And yet 6 years later, knowing what he knows now, he STILL says he's do nothing differently. It's this intractability, this unswerving adherence to dogma that is so tied to Bush that immediately disqualifies him to be President.

But when he does change his mind? Boy, does he ever! Look at the list:

http://www.therxforum.com/showthread.php?t=593495

He's not qualified not because of his service which we all agree was exemplary. I disagree with him on so many things, but he has unquestionably devoted his life to the service of his country. He's not qualified because he is wrong about too many things to simply dismiss.

The reason McCain gets uncomfortable and even upset on the topic of his war service, is simply due to "shame". The fraud of his heroism has been out for decades, yet everyone ignores it. Audy Murphy was a 'hero', McCain is a fraud who spit in the face of every single POW/MIA family back in the 80s and 90s. His mental problems have been apparent for decades as well. He SING about mass murdering Iranians with a Beach Boys song, and he is still a candidate for Pres.???? Wow America!

So let me get this straight-

Lindsey 'REMF' Graham and Joe 'Never Served/Never Will' Lieberman ran defense for John McCain on the question of Military Service qualifications for a president.

Have I go this right?

God Bless all Veterans for their service but let's face it; Military Aristocrat and bottom of his class John McCain has no real command experience.

Washington- Yes
Jackson- Yes
Grant- Yes
Eisenhower- Yes
Kennedy- Yes

McCain- No

"That to me is a classic example of how his military experience helped him shape public policy in a way no other senator could have done,’’ Graham said.

It takes personal experience with torture to know that torture ain't right. Please. Is that the only way Republicans ever learn anything, by personal experience? Can't they just trust their own moral upbringing to tell them it ain't right? Oh, that's right; they have no moral upbringing from which to draw, so they need things to affect them personally in order to understand them. Riiiiiiiiight. Like the conservative Republican who comes out in favor of stem cell research because a close family member has Parkinson's. Give me a break, Sen. Graham.

drewcypher wrote:
He's not qualified not because of his service which we all agree was exemplary.
**********
No, WE don't ALL agree. Bottom of his class, crashed 5 planes, remedial flight school, making propaganda films for the enemy.....NONE of this is "exemplary"

But the press is loathe to go there.

I served 26 years in the Air Force (enlisted, 1966; commissioned, 1978; retired, 1992) including various activities in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. While I was not a POW, I have worked for and with a fair number of folks who have had that experience. Not one of them was uniquely qualified to be Commander in Chief. Nor am I. Nor, on the basis of his military service, is Senator McCain.

The Constitution of the United States is pretty clear on the single qualification for becoming Commander in Chief -- get elected President. That's it. To use the military term, CinC is an additional duty.

When Senator McCain demands unquestion adulation for his military history, he insults every one of us who has worn the uniform. In the United States, the military is under civilian control. We are accountable for our actions, and I don't notice any statute of limitations in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. As with any other element of public service, the American people have the right and the duty to question our service and to receive an answer.

When General Clark was asked a direct question last Sunday, he gave a direct reply, using the questioner's phrasing. Just what is wrong with that?

Hey Ann and every other person who has the fake outrage claiming Wes Clark dissed your man. He didn't. Go back and watch the whole clip. The interviewer, Bob Schieffer, asked Clark about Obama's qualifications stating that Obama had never been shot down and taken prisoner and Clark responded that those are not qualifications to be president. True enough. Because McCain's ideas are as old and worn out as he is, he has to manufacture fake issues for all the ditto heads out there to get distracted by. Hey Ann, did you protest the Swiftboaters when they lied about Kerry? How did you feel about the republicans at 2004 convention mocking his purple hearts? It was ok then because Kerry was a Democrat right! There is no end to the republican hypocrisy.

McCain allies Sen. Lindsey Graham stepped in to rescue him. Graham expressed admiration for McCain’s stance on the treatment of detainees in US custody.

"That to me is a classic example of how his military experience helped him shape public policy in a way no other senator could have done,’’ Graham said.

Didn't McCain do a one-eighty on this issue just a few weeks ago?
And how about this howler:

McCain then collected himself and apologized for his initial reaction.

"I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences," he said, noting that he has huge admiration for the "heroes" who served with him in the POW camp and said the experience taught him to love the U.S. because he missed it so much.

"I am always reluctant to talk about these things," McCain said.

Remind me please... when is he ever reluctant to speak of these things?

What goes around comes around. Did McCain stand up for John Kerry when Bush surrogates swiftboated Kerry? Or are only Republican veterans granted immunity from criticism? After eight years of Karl Rove's filthy tricks, which in turned followed 10 years of Lee Atwater's filthy tricks, no one in the Republican Party has any grounds to complain about below-the-belt shots. It's payback time, my friends, for the campaign style you people invented.

I learnt so much from reading the comments, some of which I assume were written by vtes.

McCain always seems to have Graham and Lieberman around to run interference for him. Looks remarkably like Larry, Curly and Moe!!! And he wants to be our latex salesman, shades of Seinfeld. Costansa would do better.

We need a real across the aisle type maverick politician…
Voted with the GOP 95 % of the time
Voted with Bush 90% of the time
Has flip-flopped on taxes, immigration, torture, spying, free trade etc. etc.

Free trade is a farce- any educated American now knows that free trade benefits the owners, CEOs the wealthy/elite at the expense of American jobs and exploiting third world labor and the environment.
Please educate yourselves and read about these issues- free trade: NAFTA and CAFTA.
You wont like it, but you will learn that four more years of McBush will just about do it to our nation!

There is no such thing as an unwounded combat vet. McCain's military record needs to be examined. I'm a combat vet, by the way.
Eric Hussein Miami

John McCain seems like such an angry man. I don't think America is ready for anger of this magnitude in the White House.

McCain said "I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences..."

So why is he showing off his photos of laying in a hospital bed after he was released from prison, and at every chance, he touts the fact that he was a POW? McCain's 'alleged' trump card is his military experience. Now that it's being questioned in terms of how this experience equates to expertise in foreign policy, McCain shifts the scope of the argument to say that his military experience is being personnally attacked. This GOP talking point is being chiselled away and they can't stand it. Every past presidential candidate that served in the military had their military record scrutinized to see if that experience qualifies one to be the president. Who gave McCain immunity to scrutiny?

The press needs to urge McCain to release his FULL military record, the way they did with John Kerry in 2004.

John McCain did denounce the "SwiftBoat" people in 2004 as "dishonest and disrespectful", which I found honorable at the time.

Now, however, McCain has hired one of them Bud Day to work for him.

Dishonest and disrespectful is right, Mr. McCain.

So McCain cannot explain how being a POW qualifies him to be President either. That's because it doesn't. And how did Graham rescue him? By lying about McCain's stance on torture:
"McCain allies Sen. Lindsey Graham stepped in to rescue him. Graham expressed admiration for McCain’s stance on the treatment of detainees in US custody."
LOL, McCain caved into Bush/Cheney and voted against the torture ban. Fact is, McCain has no priciples and he cries like a baby when people point out that being a good soldier does not qualify him to lead this country.