Earlier today, President Bush delivered his final speech as president to the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and once again — like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) two days prior — tried to portray himself as a champion of the 21st century GI Bill. Bush said that his administration worked “closely and effectively” with the VFW. As an example, he cited the legislation:

BUSH: When the history of the last eight years is finally written, it will show how closely and effectively my administration and the VFW have worked together on behalf of America’s veterans. [...] Earlier this year, I was pleased to sign a piece of legislation that the VFW has long championed, a GI Bill for the 21st century.

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Not only is Bush misleading the VFW about his support for the bill, but the VFW actually opposed a competing measure that Bush supported.

The Pentagon and the White House consistently resisted Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-VA) strong bipartisan effort to pass the bill. They warned of the “harm” Webb’s bill would do to the military and objected to its generous education benefits to returning veterans.

Moreover, the Bush administration wasn’t working very close with the VFW on the bill as Bush suggested. The VFW endorsed Webb’s proposal in June 2007, and continued to press for the bill this year, rejecting the White House’s concerns. In fact, the VFW said they “didn’t have much input” on the competing proposal Bush (and McCain) supported and called it “very partisan.”

While the VFW honored Webb — the real champion of the GI Bill — with a gold medal and citation of merit for his leadership on the issue, Bush can probably trust Fox News to take his bait.

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Today at a townhall meeting, an audience member praised Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for his vow to “follow bin Laden to the gates of hell.” After a long question about veterans’ care, the questioner said she believed we needed to reinstate the draft, to which McCain seemed to readily agree:

QUESTIONER: If we don’t reenact the draft, I don’t think we’ll have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.

[Appaluse]

MCCAIN: Ma’am, let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said.

Watch it (via Progressive Accountability):

In June, McCain said it would take an “all-out World War III” to make the draft necessary — which seems to mean he’d consider it. In July 2006, when asked to react to Newt Gingrich’s claim that “You’d have to say to yourself this is in fact World War III,” McCain said, “I do [agree] to some extent.”

Asked about the draft last September, McCain said, “I might consider it, I don’t think it’s necessary, but I might consider it if you could design a draft where everybody equally could serve.”

Considering McCain’s vow that “there’s gonna be other wars” and that we could stay in Iraq for 100 years, a draft might seem reasonable to him.

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Our guest blogger is Nina Hachigian, a Senior Vice President and Director for the California office at American Progress.

For decades now, American presidents have come to office having promised to be tougher on China than the last guy. Sometimes outside events — as in 2001, when an American EP3 airplane collided with a Chinese fighter — fuel a confrontational stance. It can take months or years for the relationship to return to the pragmatism that it always eventually does because of our deep interdependence with China. In the interim, neither American nor Chinese interests are well-served.

Today, Senators Obama and McCain are also under pressure to take a tougher position on China. A tanking U.S. economy, high gas prices and Chinese ascendancy make the politics of bashing China very tempting (even if, at the moment, Russia’s invasion of Georgia is making Beijing seem downright responsible by comparison) and we have serious policy differences with China — human rights, Tibet and currency, to name a few.

But the urgency of our shared challenges, like climate change and North Korea’s nuclear program, as well as the legacy of foreign policy debacles to which the next administration will need to devote much of its time, make it essential that the next president take a forward-looking and clear-eyed approach to China from day one, and not waste political capital or time we don’t have. Read more

On Monday, USA Today reported that barracks for wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan at the Army’s Fort Sill were infested with mold. In addition, soldiers living in the units said that “their complaints about mold and other problems” have been ignored for months and that they were told to keep quiet about the problems:

Twenty soldiers, who spoke to USA Today early last week, said their complaints about mold and other problems went unheeded for months. They also said they had been ordered not speak about the conditions at Fort Sill.

The base commander, Maj. Gen. Peter Vangjel, said in response to inquiries about the ongoing problems, “We’re going in and we’re going to take care of this for these guys.” In a later Associated Press report, Vangjel acknowledged that soldiers who knew about the mold were ordered to “remain silent,” but added that suggestions that the complaints were ignored are “simply not true.”

But now the Army appears to have retaliated against the Army social services official, Chuck Roeder, who first reported the poor conditions at Fort Sill — and their neglect — to the media. USA Today reports that Roeder has been forced out of his job:

An Army social services coordinator…who told USA Today about poor conditions at Fort Sill’s unit for wounded soldiers has been forced out of his job, the employee and base officials said Tuesday.

Soldiers meeting with Army Secretary Pete Geren…on Tuesday said Chuck Roeder, 54, was a strong advocate for their problems and should not have been forced to leave. [...]

Roeder, a retired soldier, said he was told to resign or he would be fired.

An executive officer at Fort Sill said Roeder’s departure is “purely coincidental.”

The episode at Fort Sill is reminiscent of the handling of the deplorable conditions at Walter Reed uncovered by the Washington Post last year. In the aftermath of the Post’s report, CQ Today revealed that Walter Reed’s problems were long-known to officials in the Army and Congress, the Army accused the media of propagating “misinformation,” and the Pentagon tried to quiet criticisms by blocking the congressional testimony of the former Walter Reed Chief.

Noting that Fort Sill is the second Army installation in recent months to have such problems with barracks for returning soldiers, VetVoice writes, “this is pathetic.”

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Taking a break from this week’s main project of expelling great volumes of sanctimonious gas over whether John McCain falsely shared the “cross in the dirt” story as his own — or only just happened to remember this totally true anecdote right around the time he needed to ingratiate himself with the religious right — McCainblogger Mike Goldfarb falsely attributes some comments to Barack Obama.

Goldfarb writes that last August, Obama “threatened to send troops across the Afghan border,” and now Obama is “criticiz[ing] McCain for not echoing his own ill-advised comments on Pakistan.”

Goldfarb is probably referring to this speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center, in which Obama declared:

If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets, and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.

“Threatened to send troops across the Afghan border”? Looks like Goldfarb just made that part up.

Of course, John McCain had already signaled back in February that we could expect this sort of dishonesty from his campaign when he attacked that speech by claiming that Obama had “suggested bombing our ally, Pakistan.”

Unfortunately for Straighttalk McSurge, that very same week the Washington Post ran a story detailing how, weeks earlier, the CIA had had actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets in Pakistan, and President Musharraf wouldn’t act, so the CIA did. On Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft killed Abu Laith al-Libi, “a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA’s dragnet.” The Post described the operation as “the first successful strike against al-Qaeda’s core leadership in two years”:

Having requested the Pakistani government’s official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

Officials say the incident was a model of how Washington often scores its rare victories these days in the fight against al-Qaeda inside Pakistan’s national borders: It acts with assistance from well-paid sympathizers inside the country, but without getting the government’s formal permission beforehand.

To sum up, the United States scored this victory against Al Qaeda by following precisely the policy that McCain derided, and which, according to Goldfarb, McCain still considers “ill-advised.” (I guess McCain will follow Osama bin Laden “to the gates of hell” — just not into Pakistan?)

It’s clear that it was McCain who was confused here — after all, he was for Musharraf before he was against him — so it’s unsurprising that his campaign is now trying to muddy the record.