McCain Draws A Blank When Asked About Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio
McCain Draws A Blank When Asked About Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio
Yesterday in an interview with Phoenix’s KTVK 3TV, the local news anchor asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to play a quick word association game. McCain was left tongue-tied and speechless when the reporter asked him to give a one-word response to what he thinks about the controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio:
HOST: Health care.
MCCAIN: Needs reform.
HOST: That’s two words. [weird laugh] Iraq.
MCCAIN: Success.
HOST: Arizona.
MCCAIN: The best.
HOST: US-Mexico Border.
McCain: Cartels.
HOST: GOP.
MCCAIN: Transition.
HOST: Sheriff Joe Arpaio:
MCCAIN: Umm…
Watch it:
Though McCain — who is up for re-election — failed to provide his own constituents with a clear answer last night, he offered CNN’s national news anchor John King a much more extensive reaction when asked about Arpaio back in February:
KING: You have had a roller-coaster relationship with this sheriff [Joe Arpaio]. He says he is just simply enforcing the law. He goes into businesses, he’s rounding up people. John Conyers, others in Congress say racial profiling. Is the sheriff in line or out of line in your view?
MCCAIN: Having been engaged in the presidential campaign, I haven’t paid as close attention. I’ve disagreed with the sheriff fundamentally about the fact that we need to have a comprehensive approach to illegal immigration.
Watch it:
Here’s some one-word responses McCain could offer next time when asked about Arpaio: dangerous, unconstitutional, racist, wasteful, stubborn, self-promoting, media-whore.
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New Budget Estimate Of Public Plan Proves It Lowers Cost And Covers More Americans
New Budget Estimate Of Public Plan Proves It Lowers Cost And Covers More Americans
A couple of weeks ago, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a preliminary score of the health care legislation under consideration in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. The bill was estimated to cost $1 trillion over 10 years, while reducing the number of uninsured by “only” one-third. As many informed bloggers noted at the time, the cost estimate was incomplete because the legislation that the CBO reviewed did not contain language about a public health insurance plan or an employer mandate.
Nevertheless, Republicans seized on the opportunity to engage in merciless political attacks, citing the incomplete CBO score as proof that health care reform is not worth doing:
John McCain: “[The CBO estimate] should be a wake up call for all of us to scrap the current bill and start over in a true bipartisan fashion.”
John Boehner: “[T]he public option would cost over $1 trillion, and would cause 23 million Americans to lose their private health care coverage.”
Lindsey Graham: “The CBO estimates were a death blow to a government run health care plan.”
The HELP Committee has since added language for a public plan option to its legislation, as well as an employer mandate provision. The AP reports the new results:
The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly over $600 billion, and would lead toward an estimated 97 percent of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and Chris Dodd said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. [...]
The [employer mandate] provision is also estimated to greatly reduce the number of workers whose employers would drop coverage, thus addressing a major concern noted by CBO when it reviewed the earlier proposals.
In other words, the addition of the public plan dramatically reduced the overall cost of the bill and ensured coverage of almost all Americans. So what excuses will McCain, Boehner, Graham, and other Republicans offer now? Their attacks were not only found to be baseless, but their concerns about the costs and coverage have also been addressed.
GOP Operative Schmidt Blasts Bill Kristol: ‘He’s In The Business Of Ad Hominem Insults And Criticism’
GOP Operative Schmidt Blasts Bill Kristol: ‘He’s In The Business Of Ad Hominem Insults And Criticism’
Yesterday, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol — a long-time aggressive public advocate of Sarah Palin — took great exception to a new article in Vanity Fair by Todd Purdum which quoted McCain campaign officials disparaging Palin’s performance as a vice presidential candidate.
Kristol fingered one particular McCain official for blame: chief strategist Steve Schmidt. Kristol claimed that Schmidt trashed “Palin’s mental state to others in the McCain-Palin campaign.” And now Schmidt is firing back by unloading some very candid rhetorical bombs against Kristol. Politico’s Jonathan Martin reports:
Asked about the accusation, Schmidt fired back in an e-mail: “I’m sure John McCain would be president today if only Bill Kristol had been in charge of the campaign.”
“After all, his management of [former Vice President] Dan Quayle’s public image as his chief of staff is still something that takes your breath away,” Schmidt continued. “His attack on me is categorically false.”
Schmidt then offered more colorful perspective of Kristol’s character:
“Bill Kristol, going back to the time of the campaign, has taken a lot of cheap shots at the campaign without ever offering a plausible path to victory,” Schmidt said. “He’s in the business of ad hominem insults and criticism.” […]
As for the charges of being a sunshine soldier with regard to Palin, Schmidt said: “Nonsense. I’m a team player. That’s a reflection of [Kristol’s] values. He’s the Washington, D.C., talking head and glitterati. I live in Northern California and I really don’t give a s— about that stuff.”
Kristol responded by claiming that “John McCain deserved better” than Schmidt. And Kristol’s chief McCain campaign ally — Randy Scheunemann — likened Schmidt to the “Iranian secret police.”
During the presidential campaign, neoconservatives Kristol and Scheunemann had made Palin their “project,” seizing upon her cluelessness to shape her foreign policy views. As Matt Duss observed at the time, Palin’s “simplistic presentation of the Russia-Georgia conflict, her mindless threat of war with Russia, asserting that America shouldn’t ‘second guess’ Israeli policy, and her tiresome and dishonest conflation of 9/11 and Iraq,” all confirmed that she was getting the neocon talking points. And now the neoconservative camp is returning the favor by rushing to defend her.
After Campaigning For Climate Change Legislation, McCain Now Derides It As ‘Cap-And-Tax’
After Campaigning For Climate Change Legislation, McCain Now Derides It As ‘Cap-And-Tax’
On Friday, the House passed the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act which, among other things, would institute a cap-and-trade system to curb U.S. carbon emissions that contribute to man-made climate change. The Senate is set to consider the legislation in the fall, but a number of Republican senators have declared the legislation dead on arrival. In an interview this morning with conservative talker Mike Broomhead on Pheonix, AZ’s Newstalk 550 KFYI, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) echoed their sentiments. He smeared the ACES legislation as a “cap-and-tax” program motivated by the Obama administration’s desire to pay for things like “banks and the world’s largest insurance company”:
MCCAIN: In its present form, which is cap-and-tax. … It’s really terrible, because I believe that climate change is real, I believe it is something that we need to address, and I’m sure that a lot of Americans do, but to do so with a bill like this? … What [the Obama administration is] doing is using cap-and-trade…to raise billions of dollars so they can spend money on Cash for Clunkers, you know, buying General Motors and Banks and the world’s largest insurance company. … So it started on the wrong path and now it’s just turned into, you know, it’s laws and sausages at its worst in my view.
Asked whether he thought ACES would get through the Senate and the U.S. would “end up with cap-and-trade,” McCain lamented, “Look, elections have consequences.” McCain said further that Americans didn’t support ACES, calling it a “far-left” agenda item. Listen here:
While resistance to ACES among Senate Republicans isn’t surprising, McCain’s apparent disdain for the legislation certainly is. During the campaign, McCain laid out a plan to reduce U.S. carbon emissions that included a cap-and-trade component. Describing his plan in May 2008, McCain said, “A cap-and-trade policy will send a signal that will be heard and welcomed all across the American economy.” In June 2008, he said, “I have proposed a new system of cap-and-trade that over time will change the dynamic of our energy economy.” What was that McCain said about elections having consequences? It seems Congress would likely be considering a cap-and-trade system today even if McCain had won the election last fall.
More to the point, however, McCain’s principle substantive objection to early versions of ACES — that it would have auctioned 100 percent of the initial emission permits — has been addressed. The version that passed the House on Friday allows for 85 percent of the emission permits to be distributed free of charge for a “prolonged transition period.”
Finally, McCain is simply wrong to claim that the American people are not supportive of legislation like ACES. According to a Washington Post-ABC Poll, 75 percent of respondents said they supported government regulation of green house gas emissions, and 80 percent of those respondents said the government should do so even if it raised the cost of goods. As for their support for a cap-and-trade system, in particular, 52 percent of respondents favored it while just 42 percent said they opposed it.
McCain says the House is ‘almost under an autocracy now with Speaker Pelosi.’
McCain says the House is ‘almost under an autocracy now with Speaker Pelosi.’
During an appearance on a local radio station in Phoenix, AZ this morning, a caller asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) when Republican leaders were going to emerge in Congress to “wake the American people up” to the “cap-and-tax” bill. “Why can’t we get the House members and the Senate members to just walk out on what the Democrats are doing?” the caller asked. In response, McCain said that the GOP lawmakers — particularly his House colleagues — have to stay and fight, even though they are working under Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) authoritarian rule:
McCAIN: We’re fighting every single day. You don’t want to leave the arena; you want to stay in it and fight. And I guarantee you we are using every parliamentary possibility we have and I have great sympathy for my friends in the House because it’s almost under an autocracy now with Speaker Pelosi.
Watch it:
For the House to be an autocracy, Pelosi would have appointed herself ruler and would possess unlimited power. Even if she expressed any desire for this outcome (something she hasn’t done), then American democracy, the electoral process, and the Constitution’s system of checks and balances would prevent that from happening.
Transcript: More »
Rep. Akin disses McCain: ‘I don’t know that McCain is that influential’ in the GOP.
Rep. Akin disses McCain: ‘I don’t know that McCain is that influential’ in the GOP.
Ever since Iran’s disputed presidential elections this month, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been a ubiquitous presence on TV, slamming President Obama’s response to the crisis and trying to pump up his own profile. This morning on C-Span’s Washington Journal, a caller asked Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) why anyone should listen to McCain. Akin suggested that the GOP has already tuned him out:
CALLER: Why is [McCain] considered a leader? … Why is his point of view so important, and why should Obama listen to him? [...]
AKIN: I don’t know that McCain is that influential within the Republican Party per se.
Watch it:
Yesterday, a reporter asked President Obama whether McCain’s criticisms of his handling of the Iran situation had “influenced” him at all. “What do you think?” Obama replied:
I think John McCain has genuine passion about many of these international issues, and I think that all of us share a belief that we want justice to prevail. But only I’m the President of the United States, and I’ve got responsibilities in making certain that we are continually advancing our national security interests and that we are not used as a tool to be exploited by other countries.
Scarborough Lambastes McCain And Graham On Iran: They’re ‘So Shortsighted I Find It Stunning’
Scarborough Lambastes McCain And Graham On Iran: They’re ‘So Shortsighted I Find It Stunning’
Since the disputed June 12 presidential election in Iran, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been routinely criticizing President Obama’s response to the crisis. Yesterday on CBS’ Face the Nation, McCain echoed the GOP’s party line, saying “the United States hasn’t done anything” and sought fervently to cast Obama’s actions as “tepid.” Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) demanded that Obama “lead the free world and not follow it.”
But this morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough broke ranks and called the senators’ criticism “an exercise in doing things that make us feel good about ourselves” while labeling it “outrageous.” Scarborough — called the “new face” of the GOP by Christopher Buckley — went on to say that those rebelling in Iran would be punished more severely if Obama were to follow McCain’s advice:
SCARBOROUGH: All we would do is undermine those people in the street, who the second that they are attached to the United States of America, the country after all that’s been known in Iran as the great Satan since 1979, we will undermine their cause … It’s so shortsighted I find it stunning. […]
What would John McCain and Lindsey Graham specifically have the president say? All of those people that are emailing in and telling me that I’m being liberal? Oh really? I’m being liberal? No I think it’s called restraint. Showing a little bit of restraint. Looking at the battlefield in front of you and not just running up Pickett’s Charge and getting gunned down. If you want to feel good about yourself — and you can only feel good about yourself by screaming about the evils of Iran — fine do that. But our leaders in Washington don’t need to do that because people will be routed in the street the second they are identified with the United States of America.
Watch it:
Despite McCain and Graham’s claims to the contrary, Obama has expressed U.S. disapproval of the Iranian government’s actions. Obama released a statement on Saturday condemning the violation of human rights while steering clear of the politics. In an interview with CBS’ Early Show this morning, Obama responded similarly to Scarborough, saying the U.S. has to guard against being used as a scapegoat by the Iranian regime:
“The last thing that I want to do,” the president said, “is to have the United States be a foil for — those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States. That’s what they do. That’s what we’ve already seen. We shouldn’t be playing into that. There should be no distractions from the fact that the — Iranian people are seeking to — let their voices be heard.
McCain and Graham are growing increasingly isolated, as Republicans in Congress and conservatives in the media endorse Obama’s measured response.
Will Krauthammer attack McCain for referring to Khamenei as ‘Supreme Leader?’
Will Krauthammer attack McCain for referring to Khamenei as ‘Supreme Leader?’
In his Washington Post column today, Charles Krauthammer bitterly attacked President Obama for referring to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as the “Supreme Leader” of Iran. “‘Supreme Leader’? Note the abject solicitousness with which the American president confers this honorific on a clerical dictator,” wrote Krauthammer. But on Fox News later in the day, one of Krauthammer’s most admired politicians also referred to Khamenei as “Supreme Leader.” “There may be those indications since the Supreme Leader said that they were not going to tolerate further demonstrations in the street,” said Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Watch it:
Will Krauthammer lash into McCain next for his “abject solicitousness?”
Caught Up In Nostalgic Reagan Hysteria, ‘Student Of History’ McCain Credits Him For 1968 Prague Spring
Caught Up In Nostalgic Reagan Hysteria, ‘Student Of History’ McCain Credits Him For 1968 Prague Spring
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been having a tough time with the current situation in Iran. He has been criticizing President Obama’s “hands off” approach and encouraging him to get more involved (despite expert opinion that says otherwise). But former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger — a McCain supporter whom McCain recently called “the smartest man in the world” — said this week that he thinks Obama “has handled this well.”
Last night on Fox News, McCain and Sean Hannity joined in with the right wing’s Reagan-era hysteria, with Hannity arguing that Obama should offer “some moral support the way that Ronald Reagan offered moral support” to anti-communists. But in this instance, McCain got carried away, crediting Reagan for something that happened well before he became president:
McCAIN: You and I are both students of history and we’ve seen this movie before. When Ronald Reagan stood up for the workers in Gdansk in Poland, when he stood up for the people of Czechoslovakia, in Prague Spring, and America did. And some good Democrats did, too.
Watch it:
Perhaps McCain needs a new history lesson. The Prague Spring was a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia when Communist Party leader Alexander Dubcek allowed greater speech and assembly freedoms when he came to power… in January 1968. Ronald Reagan had just completed his first year as California’s governor at that time. Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops invaded eight months later to end the reform movement.
Since the uprising in Iran over its disputed elections, conservatives of all stripes have been quick to invoke their hero Ronald Reagan as a guidepost from which to criticize Obama’s response (as they often do with just about any issue). But as Matt Duss noted, referring to McCain, “Indeed, we’ve all seen this movie before”:
It’s the one where conservatives deploy a potted history of the Cold War — in which Reagan spoke and the walls came tumbling down — to cast international politics as a zero-sum contest between good and evil, and to cow progressives into a more aggressive rhetorical posture toward America’s adversary of the moment. It is usually hidden under the guise of “solidarity with captive peoples” and absent any genuine consideration of the practical effects on the peoples concerned.
If McCain and company are going to continue to rely on Reagan for guidance, they should at least try to maintain the correct historical time-line.
Kissinger: Obama is handling the situation in Iran well.
Kissinger: Obama is handling the situation in Iran well.
In an interview with CNN yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) criticized President Obama’s approach to the turmoil in Iran, saying that he shouldn’t be concerned about being seen as “meddling” in Iran’s affairs. But on Fox News last night, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, noting that he was a McCain supporter, said that he thinks “the president has handled this well”:
KISSINGER: Well, you know, I was a McCain supporter and — but I think the president has handled this well. Anything that the United States says that puts us totally behind one of the contenders, behind Mousavi, would be a handicap for that person. And I think it’s the proper position to take that the people of Iran have to make that decision.
Of course, we have to state our fundamental convictions of freedom of speech, free elections, and I don’t see how President Obama could say less than he has, and even that is considered intolerable meddling. He has, after all, carefully stayed away from saying things that seem to support one side or the other. And I think it was the right thing to do because public support for the opposition would only be used by the — by Ahmadinejad — if I can ever learn his name properly — against Mousavi.
Watch it:
Kissinger isn’t the only prominent conservative to push back against McCain and the neocons. On Tuesday, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, said that “for us to become heavily involved in the election at this point is to give the clergy an opportunity to have an enemy…and to use us, really, to retain their power.” Other Republican senators, including Sens. Mel Martinez (R-FL), Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Thune (R-SD), agree that Obama is handling the situation well.
Lugar disagrees with McCain’s call for the U.S. to ‘act’ against Iran.
Lugar disagrees with McCain’s call for the U.S. to ‘act’ against Iran.
Yesterday on Fox News, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called the Iranian election a “sham” and said that he hopes the U.S. “will act.” President Obama said that he would refrain from weighing in. “[We] want to avoid the United States being the issue inside of Iran, which sometimes the United States can be a handy political football,” he said. Today, McCain responded, calling on Obama to turn up his rhetoric. “He should speak out that this is a corrupt, flawed sham of an election and that the Iranian people have been deprived of their rights,” he said. But this morning on CBS, McCain’s Senate GOP colleague and Foreign Relations Committee ranking member Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) sided with Obama:
HARRY SMITH: Beyond watching…beyond supporting the idea that these disputed votes should be recounted, is there anything the United States can do?
LUGAR: No. I think for the moment our position is to allow the Iranians to work out their situation. When popular revolutions occur, they come really from the people. They’re generated by people power within the country. For us to become heavily involved in the election at this point is to give the clergy an opportunity to have an enemy…and to use us, really, to retain their power.
Watch it:
As the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss noted, “Were the U.S to clumsily wade into this Iranian political crisis, as McCain would have us do, it would support Ahmadinejad’s main arguments against his domestic opponents, and likely provide the perfect pretext for a more intense crackdown. In other words, the preferences of hardliners in Iran and the U.S. are pretty closely aligned here.”
McCain Doesn’t Know That Other Countries’ Gov’t-Run Systems Are More Efficient Than U.S.
McCain Doesn’t Know That Other Countries’ Gov’t-Run Systems Are More Efficient Than U.S.
Today, President Obama spoke before the American Medical Association about the immediate need for far-reaching health care reform. He insisted that one of the options presented to Americans “needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest.”
On CNN earlier today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) rejected the public option as “a non-starter.” He admitted that the current “competition” between “1,300 health insurance companies in America today” is not successfully driving down costs — but insisted that a government plan could never be more cost efficient:
MCCAIN: Look, if we have a government option, then sooner or later it will dramatically increase the cost, it will crowd out private health insurance. And if you’re doing it in the name of competition, we have 1,300 health insurance companies in America today. They’re competing but they’re not getting the kinds of health care costs under control that is necessary.
CNN: Yeah. Do you think that is absolutely necessarily so? That if you have a competing government system, that invariably what will happen is that you will drive some of the private health insurers out of the business?
MCCAIN: I don’t think there’s any doubt about it. Over time you’ll drive them all out, and the idea that somehow the government can administer health care in a more efficient fashion than the private sector I think flies in the face of examples of other countries that have done so.
Watch it:
McCain is simply wrong. The United States ranked last in terms of efficiency among five other nations with universal health care, according to a Common Wealth study. In fact, the purely government-run Great Britain ranked first:
Compared with five other nations — Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, the United Kingdom — the U.S. health care system ranks last or next-to-last on five dimensions of a high performance health system: quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives.
Efficiency: On indicators of efficiency, the U.S. ranks last among the six countries, with the U.K. and New Zealand ranking first and second, respectively. The U.S. has poor performance on measures of national health expenditures and administrative costs as well as on measures of the use of information technology and multidisciplinary teams. Also, of sicker respondents who visited the emergency room, those in Germany and New Zealand are less likely to have done so for a condition that could have been treated by a regular doctor, had one been available.
One needn’t even look abroad: The government-run Veterans Administration health care system is the most effective health care system available, not just on results but on cost efficiency as well:
Or consider this measure of the VA’s medical efficiency. Veterans enrolled in its health care system are as a group far older, sicker, poorer, and more prone to mental illness, homelessness, and substance abuse than the population as a whole. … Yet the VA’s average expenditure per patient in 2004 was $5,562, including prescription drug and longer-term care benefits that have long been available to VA patients. By comparison, Americans as a whole, including children and those who never saw a doctor during the year, consumed an average $6,260 in health care dollars in 2004.
McCain: ‘I Hope That We Will Act’ Against Iran
McCain: ‘I Hope That We Will Act’ Against Iran
Today, thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest the election results declaring Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner — results Vice President Biden said yesterday he had “doubts” about. Speaking on Fox News this morning, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) condemned the Iranian election as a “sham,” declaring, “I hope that we will act“:
MCCAIN: It really is a sham that they’ve pulled off, and I hope that we will act. [...]
CARLSON: How will the Obama administration react to this? Will they come out directly and say that this is unconscionable, that this can go on when they claim to be a democracy, or will they take an easier tact [sic] on it?
MCCAIN: Well, initial reports by, quote, administration officials, are that they say that they’re not going to change their policy of dialogue, et cetera, et cetera. I think they should be condemned, and it’s obvious that this was a rigged election and depriving the people of their democratic rights. We are for human rights all over the world.
Watch it:
As with McCain’s impetuous response to the Georgia crisis last summer, his first reaction to the events in Iran is condemnation and a call to “act.” By contrast, the Obama administration seems to understand that knowing when not to act is just as strategically important as knowing when to do so, and that the most productive thing the United States can do for Iran’s reform movement — and human rights — at the moment is to keep itself, to the extent possible, out of the equation.
McCain on Cheney’s torture speech: ‘I just don’t see where it helps.’
McCain on Cheney’s torture speech: ‘I just don’t see where it helps.’
Vice President Cheney’s speech on national security yesterday has been received positively by several Republican senators. In an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg yesterday, however, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that Cheney’s full-throated defense of torture isn’t helpful:
He told me of his fundamental disagreement with Cheney: “When you have a majority of Americans, seventy-something percent, saying we shouldn’t torture, then I’m not sure it helps for the Vice President to go out and continue to espouse that position,” he said. “But look, he’s free to talk. He’s a former Vice President of the United States. I just don’t see where it helps.”
And then he got acerbic: Cheney, he says, “believes that waterboarding doesn’t fall under the Geneva Conventions and that it’s not a form of torture. But you know, it goes back to the Spanish Inquisition.”
Yesterday on Fox News, McCain reiterated that waterboarding is “not a new technique, and it is certainly torture.” “You hear it from al Qaeda operatives that when we torture people and it becomes public, then it helps them recruit,” he said. Watch it:
McCain: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Has ‘Been Working And I Think It’s Been Working Well’
McCain: ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Has ‘Been Working And I Think It’s Been Working Well’
In January, Sandy Tsao, an army officer, told her superiors that she is gay — a violation of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) law. On May 5, Tsao received a handwritten letter from President Obama stating that he is “committed to changing our current policy,” but that “it will take some time to complete (partly because it needs Congressional action).”
Today, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) about his views on DADT. McCain did not commit to changing the policy, saying, “in all due respect, right now the military is functioning extremely well” without openly-gay service members. McCain concluded that the policy “is working well”:
McCAIN: But in all due respect, right now the military is functioning extremely well in very difficult conditions. We have to have an assessment on recruitment, on retention and all the other aspects of the impact on our military if we change the policy. In my view, and I know that a lot of people don’t agree with that, the policy has been working and I think it’s been working well.
Watch it:
McCain’s statement defending the efficacy of DADT comes in the wake of news that the military is about to discharge Dan Choi — a gay Arabic speaker –- simply for being openly gay. Choi’s dismissal is “the first known case” of a “mission-critical specialist” being discharged under DADT by the Obama administration. Last week, Choi told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow why the policy is problematic:
CHOI: But the biggest thing that I’m angry about is what it says about my unit. It says that my unit suffered negative good order — negative actions — good order and discipline suffered. That’s a big insult to my unit. I mean, all the insult that the letter can do, to say that I’m worthy of being fired, you know, that’s nothing comparing to saying that my unit is not professional enough, that my unit does not deserve to have a leader that is willing to deploy, that has skills to contribute.
Choi isn’t alone. Since 1994, DADT has resulted in the discharge of more than 13,000 military personnel across the services, including approximately 800 with skills deemed “mission critical,” such as pilots, combat engineers, and linguists. According to a 2005 report from the Government Accountability Office, “the cost of discharging and replacing service members fired because of their sexual orientation during the policy’s first 10 years totaled at least $190.5 million — roughly $20,000 per discharged service member.
It’s unclear how these facts led McCain to conclude that the policy is “working well.”
McCain: Bybee Violated The Law, But It Was Just ‘Very Bad Advice’
McCain: Bybee Violated The Law, But It Was Just ‘Very Bad Advice’
Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) repeated his view that the United States had conducted torture by authorizing waterboarding. Saying the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times was “unacceptable,” McCain declared, “One is too much. Waterboarding is torture, period.”
However, discussing torture on CBS’s Face the Nation today, McCain insisted, “We’ve got to move on” and ignore the Bush administration’s torture program. Indeed, McCain refused to support the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee — even as he acknowledged that Bybee had broken both U.S. and international law in authorizing torture:
MCCAIN: He falls into the same category as everybody else as far as giving very bad advice and misinterpreting, fundamentally, what the United States is all about, much less things like the Geneva Conventions. Look, under President Reagan we signed an agreement against torture. We were in violation of that.
McCain claimed that “no one has alleged, quote, wrongdoing” on the part of Bush administration lawyers, only that they had given “bad advice.” And yet minutes later McCain himself acknowledged that Bybee’s advice led the U.S. to be “in violation” of both U.S. and international law. Watch it:
Later on Face the Nation, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who supports holding broad investigations about torture, pointed out that McCain supports a commission to investigate the causes of the financial crisis. “But just as important as losing our money, what happens when we lose our national honor? That’s what we should look at,” Leahy said.
Yesterday, the blogger dday asked Sen Barbara Boxer (D-CA) whether she would support a Congressional inquiry into Bybee, including the possibility of impeachment. “I’m very open to that,” Boxer said. “There is an ongoing investigation at the Justice Department into his work, and we’ll see how that goes. But I’m very open to that. And I’ll remind everyone that I didn’t vote for him when his nomination came up. I was one of 19 to do so.”
Please join our campaign calling on Congress to begin impeachment hearings against Jay Bybee.
Note To McCain And Fox News: Bush’s DHS Also Objected To Terms Like ‘Islamic Extremists’
Note To McCain And Fox News: Bush’s DHS Also Objected To Terms Like ‘Islamic Extremists’
Today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) went on Fox News to add to the right-wing backlash against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. When Fox and Friends host Brian Kilmeade asked McCain “how messed up has Homeland Security been since they took office,” McCain agreed that “some mistakes have been made, obviously.”
McCain and Kilmeade then criticized Napolitano for dropping terms like “terror” and “Islamic extremists”:
KILMEADE: Do you have a problem calling terrorists, Islamic extremists, terrorists or using the term terror or man-made disasters?
MCCAIN: No, I don’t. Nor do I agree with overseas contingencies because those overseas contingencies can quickly turn into a domestic contingency unless we take care of them overseas.
KILMEADE: But that’s the mindset, Senator. Does that mindset worry you?
MCCAIN: I know. It worries me a great deal. But this change in language comes down from the very top.
Watch it:
This change, however, was also adopted during the Bush administration. Last year, the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Michael Chertoff released a report saying that phrases such as “Islamic terrorist” may actually be hurting counterterrorism efforts:
Because of religious connotations, that report, released in January and obtained by AP this week, counseled “caution in using terms such as, ‘jihadist,’ ‘Islamic terrorist,’ ‘Islamist,’ and ‘holy warrior’ as grandiose descriptions.”
“We should not concede the terrorists’ claim that they are legitimate adherents of Islam,” the report said, adding that bin Laden and his adherents fear “irrelevance” more than anything else
Regarding the “war on terror” catchphrase that has largely been dropped across the Obama administration, a RAND study in July 2008 concluded that “the United States should abandon the use of the phrase. “The term we use to describe our strategy toward terrorists is important, because it affects what kinds of forces you use,” said Seth Jones, the study’s lead author. “Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism.”
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Two Days After Defending Waterboarding, Lieberman Now Claims He’s ‘Strongly Opposed’ To It
Two Days After Defending Waterboarding, Lieberman Now Claims He’s ‘Strongly Opposed’ To It
In a letter to President Obama today, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) asked him to resist prosecuting Bush administration officials who wrote legal memos authorizing torture. “Pursuing such prosecutions would, we believe, have serious negative effects,” wrote the three senators.
Acknowledging that the Office of Legal Counsel memos were “deeply flawed,” the three senators claim that they have always been “strongly opposed” to torturous interrogation tactics like waterboarding:
We disagree, however, with Administration statements suggesting that the lawyers who provided such counsel may now be open to prosecution. Some of the legal analysis included in the OLC memos released last week was, we believe, deeply flawed. We have also strongly opposed the overly coercive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that these memos deemed legal. We do not believe, however, that legal analysis should be criminalized, as proposals to prosecute government lawyers suggest.
The idea that Lieberman would sign his name to a letter claiming that he has always been “strongly opposed” to waterboarding is surprising. In fact, just two days ago, he told Fox News that in some situations “we ought to be able to use something like waterboarding“:
Q: First of all, is waterboarding torture?
LIEBERMAN: Well, I take a minority position on this. Most people think it’s definitely torture. The truth is, it has mostly a psychological impact on people. It’s a terrible thing to do. … I want the president of the United States in a given circumstance where we believe somebody we’ve got in our control may have information that could help us stop an attack, an imminent attack on the United States like 9/11 or, god forbid, worse, we ought to be able to use something like waterboarding.
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In the past, Lieberman has defended the use of waterboarding in select situations. “You want to be able to use emergency tech to try to get the information out of that person,” said Lieberman, adding that “it is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological.”
McCain Reacts To KSM Being Waterboarded 183 Times: ‘One Is Too Much. Waterboarding Is Torture’
McCain Reacts To KSM Being Waterboarded 183 Times: ‘One Is Too Much. Waterboarding Is Torture’
This morning on Fox News, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) responded to the startling information — first noted by blogger Marcy Wheeler — that detainee Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. “It’s unacceptable,” McCain said, adding:
One is too much. Waterboarding is torture, period. I can ensure you that once enough physical pain is inflicted on someone, they will tell that interrogator whatever they think they want to hear. And most importantly, it serves as a great propaganda tool for those who recruit people to fight against us.
McCain later reiterated his point, “The image of the United States of America throughout the world is a recruiting tool for Islamic extremists.” Watch it:
Despite his outspoken advocacy against torture, he said it was a “serious mistake” for the Obama administration to release the torture memos. “The release of these memos helps no one, doesn’t help America’s image, does not help us address the issue.” Obama adviser David Axelrod said the president’s belief in “the law and his belief in transparency” ultimately convinced him to release the memos.
McCain touted his sponsorship of the Detainee Treatment Act, which “prohibited torture.” In fact, that legislation contained a loophole permitting CIA agents to continue engaging in torture.
Limbaugh’s Proof That Torture Works: McCain Was ‘Broken By The North Vietnamese’
Limbaugh’s Proof That Torture Works: McCain Was ‘Broken By The North Vietnamese’
On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh responded to the Obama administration’s release of four of the OLC torture memos with a full-throated defense of of torture and its effectiveness for gathering useful intelligence. As evidence of the effectiveness of torture, Limbaugh noted that — in his speech to the Republican National Convention last summer — Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said the North Vietnamese “broke” him while he was a POW. Limbaugh suggested that in saying the North Vietnamese “broke” him, McCain was saying that torture worked:
LIMBAUGH: The idea that torture doesn’t work– that’s been put out from John McCain on down– You know, for the longest time McCain said torture doesn’t work then he admitted in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last summer that he was broken by North Vietnamese. So what are we to think here?
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This is not the first time Limbaugh has claimed that McCain’s remarks about his experience with torture proves its effectiveness. But just like the last time, Limbaugh is wrong.
With regard to his speech to the RNC, McCain explained that after refusing an offer of early release, North Vietnamese soldiers “worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.” While McCain did not go in to detail during his speech, he explained in his memoir Faith of my Fathers that the information he gave the Vietnamese after being “broken” was out of date, fabricated, or of little use to his captors:
Eventually, I gave them my ship’s name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed.
Elsewhere in his memoir, McCain recalled providing false information to his captors on multiple occasions in order to “suspend the abuse.” Further, McCain explained in a 2005 Newsweek column that he believed torture would yield little actionable intelligence. “In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — whether it is true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering,” McCain wrote.
McCain was right. As the Washington Post reported last month, the torture of Abu Zubaydah — who was once thought to be a high-level AQI operative — did not foil “a single significant plot” and provided the CIA with a number of “false leads.” “We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms,” one former intelligence official told the Post. Further, “most of the useful information from Abu Zubaydah — chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates — was obtained before waterboarding was introduced.”
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