With respect, on the Swiftboating of McCain.

I'm personally going to opt out of this. Just as the '04 Swiftboaters took issue with John Kerry's service, now a fellow prisoner of war takes issue with McCain's conduct as a prisoner -- and it begins. When Republicans I know have dared to say anything to me about the '04 Swiftboaters, who angered and sickened me to an extent I cannot describe, I always said to them: He was there, he was on the boat, he carries shrapnel in his body to this day. That's all I need to know about his service.

I feel the same about McCain. He was imprisoned there for those years. That's all I need to know.

Obama himself, very often, before he starts criticizing McCain politically, will pay respect to his service. I join Obama in this. There are plenty of negatives we can hit McCain with without going to his military service.

Beyond McCain's politics, his temperament, for example -- the anger that has frightened even many of his friends and allies -- is fair game, in my opinion. That is as relevant to performance as President as policy. His changing his position on almost EVERY issue is utterly shameless, and that is not widely understood. His embrace of Bush after what Bush and Rove did to his wife and family in 2000 in South Carolina is incomprehensible to me. What kind of husband and father can do that and look at himself in the mirror?

What happened in Vietnam those many years ago, which none of us can ever know with certainty, is, however, something I think we should leave out of the campaign.

Also, there is a much more practical consideration, and a prediction: If we engage in this Swiftboating of McCain, it will backfire on us, as DEMOCRATS, disastrously.

I don't expect much, if any, support in this view, and I respect the many reasons almost everyone will want to run with it. The stakes in this election could not be higher. I don't think this will win us the election, however -- in fact, it could lessen our chances.

And this is just a statement I personally wanted to make.

I personally welcome outside groups ripping into his record and his invented/borrowed stories (Packers Offensive/Steelers Defensive line, cross in the dirt) like jackals into a soft underbelly. I'll enjoy it. I hate the lying, dishonorable, nasty little son of a bitch.

You can't believe how many fucking times McCain tells people he was a POW back in the Vietnam War.

He says it like someone should pay him for it whenever he mentions it.
And he mentions it within minutes of meeting new people.
As if we all lived in a fucking cave for the last 30 years.

He says it so often he should just start wearing POW clothes, so that he wouldn't have to tell people that he was a POW.
From the way he says it, my gawd, you'd think he was the only one!!!

He says it as if he wanted to be a POW all his life and got to be what he wanted to be!

McCain has used his unfortunate luck as a POW in every political campaign he has run.
It's a fucking broken record with him.


But, what has McCain done since?
That's the real question people should be demanding answers for.

That was what led to Bomb Bomb cultivating his "maverick" image
(to clean up the fact that he was one of the unethical political
tools BEHIND THE KEATING SCANDAL), upon which he has based his
campaign this time out. Somebody needs to do some reporting
into Bomb Bomb's political career -- how it (like his positions
on so many issues) has "evolved" and for what reasons.

of self-promotion, and a way to belittle those who haven't served, it serves as a shield against attack.

but criticize the way he and his surrogates try to use it to side-step hard questions about his character and his policies.

certainly we can attack that, since it is not a direct attack on his service, but rather a criticism of the way he would demean his service and the service of others as a means for his own ambition.

in attacking him for demeaning his own service and the service of others, we are protecting the dignity of vets everywhere by saying that service should be honored and not belittled for the sake of achieving cheap political points.

as a member of the armed forces is off-limits, over the span of 20 or more years, is to eliminate a large portion of his adult life from scrutiny. Does Obama get that luxury? My husband is a career serviceman--it's not some untouchable holy vocation, it's his day-in, day-out job. He fully expects his future civilian employers to evaluate what he did and how he conducted himself over the course of his military career. That's all I'm sayin'.

I have seen NONE of that happening here. Nice phrasing.

Who is saying he wasn't?

Being a former POW doesn't give one carte blanche to lie and plagiarize. This is not about his service in Vietnam, it's about his lying today.

His service was exemplary..... there is no need for him to lie about it.


It is the LYING that is the problem... not the service.

At what point will any Republican take responsibility for the actions of the Republican party? This act was one of the most disgusting acts in American political history.

Sure, McCain did speak out against the swift boating of Kerry, but McCain didn't scold his cult about the band-aids.

Then there's what he did after his POW days. He actually voted to allow bush to continue to torture. Don't forget the Keating 5, in which he began voting against the American people. Americans can no longer let McShame get a free ride. If anything do it for his own good. This man is simply incapable of doing the right thing. Him being president is like Hitler running a Synagogue. It is dangerous and deadly.

I think there are 2 issues with mccain that can backfire on the Dems - his military service and his age.

There is plenty to criticize without going there.

I expect this will mean nothing here.

This ass hole should have withdrawn his support from Bush when it was known that Rove and company were fully funding those ads against Kerry.

McCain showed his stripes as a complete fucking hypocrit and an asshole.

When the Repigs, at the convention, were mocking Kerry with those stupid Band Aides, McCain should have been the first to get off stage and confiscate that crap.

He didn't do a thing when Rove and company attacked his family in South Carolina! If he is not going to stand up against them for attacking his family, why would McCain stand-up against the Swift-Boating of John Kerry!

So far, he can lie, cheat, commit infidelity, and make gaffe after gaffe on foreign policy because of it. Sorry, but if he wants us to respect his POW status, he needs to stop throwing it in our faces and acting like it's a permanent Get Out Of Jail Free card.

his lies to belittle Obama while lying to his fellow veterans' faces.

McCain is lying all over the place and it needs nipped in the bud... now.

If the campaign gets extremely dirty, then all gloves are off in my opinion.

Sure, he was imprisoned there all those years; so were a lot of other men who never made propaganda broadcasts for the Vietnamese or offered military information in exchange for medical treatment.

is legitimate - first and foremost his policies, next his general temperament, and so on and so forth - why go anywhere else. It takes focus off the real issues. At the same time, we have all heard "John McCain, whose service. . . " so often that Obama does not need to reiterate it. In fact, if McCain and his minions keep it up, it could eventually wear on the public in much the way that Rudy "Mr. 9/11" Guilian did. As much as I love citing his plagiarism of Solzhenitsyn ( and I have on this board a few times), I would even be careful about goofing on the "cross in the sand" bullshit.

He is the one that wants to run as POW in chief.

He is going to win the war and he is going to catch bin Laden.

Why because of his brilliant military career.

The truth is he was a lousy student, lousy pilot and never had significant command experience.

He manipulates his POW experiences in the same way that Bush/Cheney lied about WMD.


One thing is for sure, he has the temperment of a pilot. Got a problem, push a button and drop a bomb.

With Iran begging to get bombed so that it can justify its radicalism and increase the price of Oil McCain is the made to order
candidate who will drop a couple of bombs to let people know that he is a tough guy.

If it came down to it I would rather have George Bush in for a third term than McCain.

The only reason that we are talking about this stuff is because he keeps making it an issue and he keeps lying about it.

embellished, exaggerated, and frequently shifting. He says he knows how to win wars, but never won one, for example. He's proud to have commanded squadrons or whatever, but violated the UCMJ by porking Cindy while married to his first wife--and stalled out, career wise. He's lauded for not accepting early release from prison, but there was a code of conduct in place for ALL military held as POW's that those captured first get to leave first--to go home ahead of others would have been unthinkable, especially for a son of Admirals. He presents heroic stories about himself that cannot be corroborated or proven, with details changing upon retelling--and then defies us to challenge their veracity, because how DARE we question a POW's integrity? And we're not to question any of this?

while his people spend enough time talking about his military service, it's certainly fair game, I just don't think it's good politics to make an issue of it. Sure you can point out inconsistencies between something he said last week and some interview he gave in 1975 to try to show him as a liar or political opportunist, but to do that you are also reminding everyone again and again that he was a POW. The risks can be large and the reward relatively small since you can make the exact same arguments about his record in the senate without having to bring his military service into the discussion at all. While it may make some feel good to think we're doing to McCain what was done to Kerry, IMHO, it's a losing strategy.

is true and relevant to the campaign, I don't think anything is off limits.

I think there are some things that we, as democrats, would certainly handle in a more tactful way than republicans do.

And about Vietnam, I agree with Wes Clark. Being a POW is not something that qualifies a person to be POTUS or CIC.

Clark was right when he said "getting shot down in a plane does not qualify anyone to be the President".

Clark had the fortitude to say whatever else was thinking.
Just because McCain got shot down does not, in and of itself, qualify him to be the President.
If that were true, Bush would not have been the GOP nominee in 2000.
And we all know how well that went.

What bothered me about Bush's AWOL record in the Air National Guard was how he acted like he was a macho hero for starting the Iraq War. Then he flew on a jet plane that someone else piloted, and he got out on the deck and declared "Mission Accomplished".

It's just ridiculous of McCain to act like his being a POW from the Vietnam War qualifies him to be anything other than just another POW from the Vietnam War.

However, his age is showing really bad now, though, and that makes him more dangerous than Reagan was when he ran for his 1st term in the White House.
I thought that Reagan was going senile back in 1984, but everyone else around me told me not to worry about him being too old.
I think we have learned a lot more about aging, and senility, or whatever condition McCain has, to know better than to trust him now, though.

if he's not senile, he's lying.

Either way he can't be POTUS.

Got it.

Some of the attacks here even make me cringe--people saying he denounced the United States when in fact he got tortured for refusing to sign a statement about exactly that. It's appalling. This kind of malarkey will only serve to turn people off to all the positive things Obama is talking about.

I really do mean that!

Please allow me to disagree with you on the "Swift-boating of John McCain". I believe there is a huge difference in the Swift-boating of John Kerry, and the Swift-boating of John McCain. What John Kerry had endured was sickening, purely political, and alright lies! I know two wrongs do not make a right, but I believe if there are inconsistencies in John McCain's duties, they should be questioned.

I do believe that John McCain should be commended for his service. I do believe that he is worthy of all of his military honors. But, I think it is wrong to allow him to exaggerate his service for political gain!

then John McCain is surely swiftboating himself.
This "cross in the sand" story sounds like the most contrived piece of pandering bullshit ever...
and it even looks quite likely that McCain plagiarized it. Are we all supposed to give McCain a pass on lying
just because he got shot down and captured? No, of course not. We should demand some friggin' straight talk.

because the corporate media is playing bodyguard. Just like Clark's statement, any hits on McCain will be twisted into a noose around our necks.

It's not right and it's dishonest but we have to play the hand dealt. Apparently, only Republicans can question anything relating to military service.

I'd say the only way this may fly, is to have hard documentation on the misinformation. Even that may still just bounce back on us. We should have enough to slam him on without going back 40 years, 25-30 should be plenty. The Keating Five situation MUST be exposed to daylight. I'm tired of the honest POW stuff, we have it on record and TV clips of him being officially censored on this issue alone. Not to mention a ton of other "inconsistencies".

The smart thing is not to live in the past LIKE MCCAIN, but to show how the present will impact the future. Hitting him on stuff that happened in Viet Nam just takes us back to his service, that's not where we want our focus. I think the media will be much less protective of his failing over the past generation or so.

POW POW POW. "thats all I need to know". :eyes:

accountable for his lies?

This man built himself up on somebody elses POW story. Who is disrespecting who?

McSame that disrespects someones military service as a POW or us, who say McSame plagiarized a POW service man's story once no longer a prisoner. This is as low as one can go.

Can you imagine carrying this story around with you for about 40 years and telling it over and over to build yourself up, yet you know it is a lie?

votes for our side than it would gain. There is enough to attack McCain on without going after this. It will backfire on us big time with active and former military personnel and their families.

for pummeling someone with the truth.

If someone were to lie about McCain's service, that would be wrong on many levels. If McCain lies about his service, his lies should have the harsh, cold light of truth shone upon them immediately.

military service or his POW status would alienate a large group of voters. If it can be proven that McCain lied about his service by all means shed light on that, but you must have solid proof and not just anecdotal evidence. McCain's story, whether completely true or not, has been out there for many years. To try to refute it now, without absolutely unshakable evidence, would appear to be swiftboating in retaliation for what was done to John Kerry. There are other ways of exposing McCain as being unsuitable for the Presidency.

It's the HuffPo(?) piece by his fellow former POW, right?

I think a lot of people are getting this confused with the possible Solzhenitsyn plagiary issue (which he certainly can be criticized for, IMO)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6653233

The subject line is "McCain's Former POW Speaks Out," and the title of the piece posted is "Why I Will Not Vote for John McCain."

Let me say though that I have no argument with its posting, and appreciate the OP, Phx_Dem, for finding, and posting, it.

"cross in the dirt story".

I think that many posters are assuming that you're stating that criticism of McCain's possible plagiarism is unwarranted. At least that's what I see while browsing through the responses.

would make it understood that that was my topic. Also, the comparison I made with Swiftboating was the similarity of fellow service members criticizing the service of others. That was how I saw it as the same thing as was done to Kerry in '04. If I was misunderstood, it wouldn't be the first time! Anyway, I regret any misunderstanding -- and thanks, again!

It's not an orchestrated malicious effort to lie about McCain's service. It's one person's opinion, and he specifically states that McCain was a POW for 5 1/2 years and was tortured.

So he is not calling McCain's service into question.

it could backfire tremendously.

The McCain camp would love to make this about "dirty hippies" spitting on returning soldiers. That kind of mythology has launched a thousand GOP political careers.

Especially since McCain was so visibly injured and disabled during his time there, it could serve to make him a sympathetic figure.

However, the "cross in the sand" thing is fair game, IMO. It goes to his fundamental dishonesty, his lack of personal convictions, and the depths he will sink to to pander to the RW.

Debating what happened in Hanoi 40 years ago keeps the conversation on McCain and his military service. This is his brier patch. We don't need a month of talking heads arguing over whether McCain was tortured for 2 years or 3 years. We need to talk about today.

...not to mention questions about his entire senate career, and his personal life RE womanizing.

If we want to win, IF WE WANT TO WIN, we need to start rattling cages NOW about ALL of those questions.

The verb, 'swift-boating' is characterized by lying about one's service to her/his country. There are no lies being used on McCain. It may or not be wise to use some of the truthful information about McCain and his military service, but the uncomfortable feeling that you are experiencing has not the slightest thing to do with "swift-boating".