John McCain, today:
Arguing that the status quo in Afghanistan “is not acceptable,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) suggested today the U.S. can win the battle against the Taliban by “applying the tried and true principles of counterinsurgency used in the surge” in Iraq. In a prepared speech peppered with attacks against the presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), McCain suggested Obama had been proven wrong in Iraq and lacked the judgment to oversee military forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
“I know how to win wars. I know how to win wars,” McCain told the audience at a town hall in Albuquerque. “And if I’m elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory, I know how to do that.”
Is that not a tacit admission that we are losing in Iraq? And if so, why does he hate America? And how does he define “winning?” You really have to catch the video to see how truly awful a candidate he is.
And putting aside all that, what wars has John McCain won? Going through my checklist of wars, I am not so sure I have Viet Nam in the “W” column.
*** Update ***
And as a side note, when the revolution happens, Mark Halperin is the first in line for the re-education camps. Or the soup line. Either way. Just take his god damned keyboard away. Does Time have no shame?
Dreggas
TPM has been all over this especially the fact that McShitstain has basically tried to co-opt what Obama has said about Afghanistan for over a year now.
Soylent Green
Which explains why McCain wants to wage war so badly, to “get even.” Any war will do.
Scotty
However he wants, because no one knows what the measurable end goal is at this point.
matt
Yes. This has been…
Dreggas
Well he does seem to be losing the war on senility, after all he wants to put part of the missile defense shield in Czechoslovakia. That’s kinda like saying you will put it in The Duchy of Grand Fenwick.
Just Some Fuckhead
I was typing the answer CIVIL WAR when it occurred to me to google McCain’s involvement in it. Turns out he was a fucking Reb. So there ya go.
cleek
the war on Thai chili sauce !
no ?
maybe …. the war on high gas prices !
BombIranForChrist
Yeah, the “I know how to win wars” schtick is suspect. If Vietnam is his example, then that is like telling someone, “I am a Cubs fan! I know how to win!”
Tom Hilton
As Otto says, it was a draw.
cleek
the war on greed !
the war on Errorism !
the war on bugs !
he’s a war hero.
nightjar
But first he has to make the Russians do right by the country of ‘Czechoslovakia’. Might take him awhile since it no longer exists.
That’s our “give ’em hell Johnnie” .
Dreggas
Maybe he won the war on bladder control problems, but I guess that depends….
Tom Hilton
Bad memory for quotes; not ‘draw’.
Now imagine Otto in the early stages of senile dementia…
Incertus
Is this the same Time that employs Joe Klein as some sort of expert something or others?
rawshark
A Fish Called Wanda?
cyntax
Shorter John McCain:
“McSurges® for everyone! Hell, while we’re at it, let’s supersize them.”
Calouste
Via the GOS:
Someone has dug up an article from 1986 where McCain was accussed of making the following joke:
Great Orange Satan
cleek
how McCain feels about Asians…
Bob In Pacifica
John, ” When the revolution comes”! Damn, we’re having a meeting Thursday.
rawshark
LOL…….um…I don’t get it.
Delia
The war on you damn kids who won’t get off my lawn.
stevie314159
Vietnam just hosted the Miss Universe Contest.
Perhaps we won that one after all.
Dreggas
Neither do I. However, channelling alternate-universe-ann-althouse, there is something racially charge with it being a “gorilla”…
Just Some Fuckhead
Satire, bitches!
Ted
Remember, according to Halperin himself, Matt Drudge rules his world.
And no, Time is toilet paper. Really slick toilet paper that doesn’t even work very well.
Dreggas
I read an article about how the Vietnamese gov’t would welcome a John McCain presidency….
cyntax
Dreggas, if only there was an HTML tag for rimshot.
cleek
gorilla brutally rapes woman. woman thinks the gorilla was “marvelous”. ergo: women like rough, violent, forced sex.
clearly McCain is a superior candidate for feminists to support.
rawshark
Why? Isn’t he (directly/indirectly) responsible for a united Vietnam?
Ted
Now try to find even one wingnut blogger who would even get that joke.
cyntax
Uh, Dreggas @ 6:34PM that is.
rawshark
FAIL!
I thought the Dreggas said ‘wouldn’t welcome’. Never mind.
Delia
Paging Carly Fiorino. Clean-up on Aisle 4.
nightjar
When asked by a reporter if he was still in-continent, MCcain looked flummoxed then responded , which one?
Tom Hilton
Yup. “Boy, they whooped yer hide REAL GOOD…”
gypsy howell
Well, he DID make all those North Vietnamese propaganda videos.
And as I recall, they did win…
So I guess it depends on whose side you think he was on.
Just Some Fuckhead
lolz
tom.a
Anyone catch Halperin’s “McCain is such a funny guy, he’s so hilarious” comment on MSNBC’s Race for the Whitehouse today? They played a clip of McCain saying “Obama’s now got a plan for Iraq BEFORE he even visited” and apparently Halperin thought that was just hilarious, as in really really funny from a really really funny man. The guy could barely contain his enthusiasm for McCain.
John Cole
Rachel Maddow is en fuego tonight.
The Grand Panjandrum
McCain’s take on this is so far from reality it isn’t funny. This is the guy who called the fucking dog n’ pony show at a Baghdad market proof that things were better in Iraq. Flack jacket, a platoon sized element providing security, and air cover. Shit! That would convince me the streets were safe. It could be worse for McCain, the press could actually ask him a tough question.
Joshua Norton
I assume he was referring to the Spanish American war.
In other news, as a tribute to Chimpy, the citizens of San Francisco are going to vote on naming a sewage treatment plant after him. The employees say having the facility named after Bush is an insult to sewage. And it operates more efficiently and provides more of a service than Bush ever did. I’m torn on how to vote.
Dennis - SGMM
She sure is. She briefly brought up a point that’s been bothering me. If petroleum speculators are a factor in the price of gasoline then why not get rid of them now? Bush/McCain are proposing that we drill everywhere, that will take years to have an effect (If any) on prices. Taking out the speculators would have an immediate effect, would it not?
99 Percent Pure
We didn’t win the Vietnam War and it wasn’t a draw.
And as if that and his repeated gaffe about the non-existent Czechoslovakia wasn’t enough, The worsening of the Afghanistan war and Obama’s more excellent Afghanistan plan forced McMorton to do a doozy of a flip flop, including attempts at playing H-O-R-S-E on the number of brigades that should be deployed.
Whammer
Joshua, I’m in the “insult to sewage” camp on that……
Don’t live in SF any more though, so can’t vote.
The Grand Panjandrum
Please stop with all the common sense. That might actually have its intended effect of helping folks who have to go to work every day and pay bills.
trailertrash Josh
Cleek-
clearly McCain is a superior candidate for feminists to support.
Not!
Every one knows you only get blowjobs if you let women kill their babies.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
Going through my checklist of wars, I am not so sure I have Viet Nam in the “W” column.
As Otto says, it was a draw.
Yeah – they got to keep Vietnam, and you got to keep America.
georgia pig
Wes Clark’s point, exactly. McCain hasn’t “won” shit because, if he had, he’d know, like Eisenhower, that no one really wins.
Martin
But that would make it harder for really rich guys from becoming really, really rich guys.
Do you not want America* to become more prosperous?
(* America, meaning rich people that matter)
Dennis - SGMM
I was there, down in the Delta. We had them right where they wanted us.
Martin
But that’s 50% more brigade goodness! As soon as we’re done in Iraq in 2108, he’ll send them RIGHT over! Only he wants to win!
chopper
next you’ll be telling me that we shouldn’t extend our ‘nuclear umbrella’ over prussia. pfft.
harlana pepper
Good on the Obama camp for countering that one quickly, and on the internets, of course. I like their response time to bullshit.
Joshua Norton
Or negotiate with the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Just Some Fuckhead
Maybe Moveon could run a big ad asking not to get us McChained in Afghanistan. They fixed everything in Iraq with their last ad.
Chris Johnson
ROFL, seriously. Gypsy, you magnificent bastard. (or possibly magnificent slut- but that would be bad, as McCain is really referring to the war on trollopy c*nts :) )
harlana pepper
It’s not a flip-flop. More like a twist. The McCain Twist.
harlana pepper
He said “Prussia”?
Calouste
He didn’t, but no one would be surprised if he did.
(I still wonder how the Onion stays in business these days)
jake
Is it also not a tacit admission that he knows the big secret that would make everything perfect but he’s such a big fucking baby he won’t share unless he’s in the Oval Office? And if so, why does he hate the troops?
And yet some in some polls this gibbering, foul-tempered, bloated burden on the tax-paying public is ahead of Obama.
American voters. Dumb fucks, or dumbest fucks ever?
rawshark
How would you do that?
McCain thinks Czechoslovakia still exists, Bush couldn’t name foreign leaders.
I think we’re finally seeing proof that all that matters to some is that the (white) guy in the White House has an ‘(R)’ after his name.
West Coast libertarian
I hate to thread jack, but a couple of threads back someone quoted W as saying he is 64 and doesn’t remember things. W is about a week older than I and I am 62. What can one say?
PK
He knows how to win in Iraq, he knows how to turn things around in Afghanistan and he knows how to balance the budget in 4 yrs. The man is a genius! I am so voting for John McCain.
PaulW
Here’s a brilliant idea, and it would be nice if people actually listened to it for once: STOP BUYING TIME MAGAZINE. Just stop buying it. And let TIME know that the reason you’ve quit is because they have idiots like Halperin dumbing their publication down.
Better yet, get the main advertisers from their magazine pages, and tell them you’ve quit reading TIME and that the next step is you not buying their sh-t.
edmund dantes
Not sure how all you guys missed this. I thought this was the best damn website for snark out there, and I come here disappointed that no one has pointed out the obvious.
Remember he’s dog whistling to his wingnut base.
Vietnam’s in the W column until those dirty fucking hippies ripped defeat from the jaws of victory and stabbed us in the back all while spitting on returning soldiers.
He knows how to win the war on the DFH and keep them from keeping us from winning in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Duh!!!!
Dreggas
hehehehe
Dreggas
Actually the article is true and I was going for the whole angle of ’00 when McShitstain was painted as the manchurian candidate. Now the Vietnamese are welcoming the idea of him as president…hmmmm.
Dennis - SGMM
I was a DFH before I went to Vietnam and I was one after I returned. Of course that meant that I had to spit on myself but rules are rules.
OriGuy
I remarked on this over at Obsidian Wings, but I don’t mind repeating myself. Having someone called the “Afghanistan czar” is a really bad idea, considering the Russians have been involved in Afghanistan since the 18th century.
TenguPhule
Why not just line them up against a wall and be done with it?
TenguPhule
If enough money is thrown at a search team up McCain’s ass, they might just find them.
Jay C
That Our Preznit can count about well as he can speak?
Zach
“In all candor, we thought our civilian commanders were complete idiots who didn’t have the least notion of what it took to win the war.” – John McCain from one of his books as quoted by Wikipedia.
So, he knows how to win wars — he just blames LBJ and tricky Dick for not listening to him. In McCain’s defense, he served on the Armed Services Committee in the Senate through two won wars in Iraq and Yugoslavia.
Bedlam UK
I still have bad dreams about that ‘thats not change you can believe in’ wierd Smile McCreepy did.
Please dont let that man be your President.
2 questions from a brit;
First, did Dubya really say “Awesome Speech” to the Pope?
Coz that one really made the rounds here on the stupidity conversation.
Second, did McCain really refer to Czechoslovakia as an active State?
Oh my, if McCain got in the Oval Office, you’ll really have fun in 8 years ( Bush managed it somehow ) trying to find the third and final Stupid President to get the full set.
Zach
@Bedlam UK
“Second, did McCain really refer to Czechoslovakia as an active State?”
Indeed, and in their typically restrained style, the Obama camp responded to this with a quote from George W Bush, vintage 2000:
ABC News Noted That This Isn’t The First Time McCain Has Mistakenly Referred to Czechoslovakia. “In early 2000, then-Gov. George W. Bush told Roger Simon, then with U.S. News & World Report, that he was befuddled by how soft the media was on Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. ‘I don’t think there is any plot; I hope there isn’t,’ Bush said. “But it’s an amazing phenomenon, I’ll tell you that. It’s like the flap over the foreign-leader deal. A guy gets up and quizzes me — it’s my fault for trying to answer — but John McCain says something about the ‘ambassador to Czechoslovakia.’ Well, I know there is no Czechoslovakia (there’s a Czech Republic and a Slovakia), but yet it didn’t make the nightly national news. I’m not going to gripe about it, but the media question is starting to pop up.’ Apparently that Czechoslovakia lesson never took, because McCain keeps making that mistake, eight years later.”
Bedlam UK
Damn, if EVEN Bush knows it, then its thats pretty much grade school knowledge surely.
Bless McCain and his senile little bones.
I wonder if the Repubs have put this guy at the front in the full knowledge of him going senile in about 6 months and some high powers having him as some puppet president for Repub bandits.
Ohh, I feel a conspiracy brewing, where’s my damn tinfoil?
Thomas Beck
If McCain knows how to win wars, does that not imply that he thinks Bush does not know how to win wars? And how is that different from Nixon’s secret plan to win in Vietnam? And why isn’t anyone calling McCain on all this rather obvious bullsh*t? (Okay, I know, the answer to that is also rather obvious.)
PaminBB
Does no one remember our Glorious Victory in Grenada?