Countdown: Spinning out of Control, KO and Chris Hayes

Run time: 07:03 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYSfWMtIJ6k   Posted on YouTube: July 22, 2008 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: July 22, 2008 By DU Member: Wetzelbill Views on DU: 1466

 
Chris says something here about how McCain's service as a POW is essential to people believing he is a foreign policy expert, when in reality, he's not. His knowledge on foreign affairs has been way overhyped because of his bio.

I've long felt that if you listen to McCain talk about foreign affairs then compare it to say Biden and Hagel, or even somebody like Dick Lugar, he sounds ill-informed and ignorant.

He runs things on his own persona, delegates authority, and governs and votes on a general ideology, whether the facts back that up or not. Iraq is a great example, because McCain believes what he believes, and it doesn't matter if Maliki and the Iraqi people want us out, or if the American populace wants out, McCain, based on his philosophy, believes he knows best. He thinks that he can wave a flag and lead cheers about "winning" when he doesn't even know what winning is. That's why the NY Times rejected his op-ed. He can't define what success is or how we get out. He doesn't know, but his ideology tells him we need to "win" and the only way to do it is to stay. So he's stuck on staying if violence goes down and staying if it goes up.

His whole plan for Iraq amounts to staying and talking about "winning." That's it. Anybody could say that.

It must have been stupid, because McCain couldn't even clear the bar set by Bill Kristol whose idiocy graces the Times Opinion page every Monday.

him a lot; he's quick on his feet.

I think he countered some of the things Howard Fineman said in another segment too. Fineman was pretty solid, but he kept saying how the surge was a great success, while Hayes pointed out that the successes were also attributed to the Sunni Awakening and the Al-Sadr truce. I'd say maybe even more attributed to those, personally, but the point is they are factors that McCain and most of the media conveniently omit.

...or 2. Have his beautician wax his brows in such a way so as to make the glasses "look" straight. It drives me nuts.

Now I'll be concentrating on that rather than what he says. Damn!

It's his face that's crooked.

(Sorry-- couldn't resist the straight line.)

McCain avoids defining what he means by "winning" in Iraq because to do so would be to let the oil cat out of the military base bag: winning means insuring that all the Bush-Chaney-McCain oil company buddies have secured long term monopolies over Iraq's oil resources, with 80 or so U.S. military bases permanently established there to protect their oil pipelines. When that is accomplished, they will have "won" in Iraq.

In this context, McCain's statement that it would be fine to leave American troops in Iraq for a hundred years make perfect sense.

Before the Iraqi invasion, in January of 2003, a U.S. military briefing team reportedly showed the plans for the invasion to a number of other high officials. When they got to the last frame of the power point presentation, a skeptical briefee asked why there was no exit plan in the invasion plan. "We haven't developed that yet" or words to that effect was the briefer's reply. There was no exit plan in the Iraq invasion program because the Bush-Chaney administration had no intention of exiting. They still don't, and won't have one for at least a hundred years.

is great! Yes, it's that absurd!