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Bush Administration, McCain Finally Following Obama's Lead

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By FRANCES EARL

Call to Patriots

Published: July 24, 2008

Before coming to Florida 18 years ago, I worked as an account manager for my firm's multimillion account, Wal-Mart. Prior to that I worked many years as a legal secretary. When I was interviewed for the second time by the attorney I would be working for, he told me that he had seldom had a secretary last more than six weeks. This, he said, was because he was a perfectionist, sometimes high-strung and annoying, and asked if I still wanted the job. I said "yes" and all these years later, Stuart and I are the best of friends.
The reason for that is Stuart was also brilliant and precise and a mentor to anyone paying attention. The one thing I cannot do is work for someone who is stupid. I would not last a week with Sen. John McCain.
The "right" is comparing McCain to Dwight Eisenhower. Let's get this straight right away. General Eisenhower gave commands and ran a war, while, albeit regretfully, McCain sat it out in a POW camp. So how the heck do we credit McCain with the knowledge and experience to know anything about winning or losing a war? Any good sergeant on the ground in battle would be better qualified, ask any vet.
On the campaign trail, McCain mentioned in detail that to stop torture, he gave the names of a football team as his fellow fliers. If he admits that torture does not provide credible information, why does he now support torture? Think his real purpose is to patch Bush's failed presidency and then repeat it?
McCain wants to increase the 68 million acres of leases already in the hands of the oil companies to include the waters off our coasts. Then why did the Republicans in Congress just vote against a bill mandating the beginning of drilling on the lands already under lease? If they did drill, the oil would go to the highest bidders, not necessarily to us. Get the message? It's the money stupid, and they don't give a darn about any of us. That, folks, is the difference between idle rhetoric and real leadership, honor and judgment.
McCain, at least five times now, has referred to Czechoslovakia, a country which ceased to be at least 15 years ago and became the "Czech Republic." He said, in the last few days, that our major Mideast problem is the border between Iraq and Pakistan. Iraq is 750 miles away from Pakistan – the border exists between Afghanistan and Pakistan. He plans to lead a war and he doesn't even know where he's going?!
He says Obama has not presented any bills in Congress directing our main attention to Afghanistan instead of Iraq, but in fact, six meetings addressing that very thing were skipped by McCain. He never even bothered to sit and listen. His chief financial adviser, Phil Gramm who told us we were "whiners" and that the recession is not real but imagined, was not dismissed from the lobbyist-laden campaign staff but merely moved a little out of sight. Well now Gramm has officially resigned, trying to make it look as though McCain's moral judgment finally came into play. Could it be because the bank he chairs, UBS, is now under investigation for tax fraud? Are there any Republicans left who are not on trial or headed that way?
Bush, trying to save anything from the disasters he has wrought, in now effectively doing what Obama has been advising as our Mideast strategy since the aggression of the U.S. against a nation that was not guilty of any part of the 9/11 attack and, finally, "talking about" a gradual withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq. Bush and McCain are telling you this was their plan and Obama never said this. Huh? As to the surge, its purpose was not only to decrease active violence in the streets of Iraq, but to enable the building of an effective Iraqi army to maintain that control and to strengthen the Iraqi government to rule on their own. Only one part of the surge has "succeeded" and that is the lessening of violence in the streets. Why, after seven long years, was this not already an accomplished fact? Guess it wasn't their sons and daughters who were dying?
McCain says we will "come home with honor." Sorry, but when you invade a nation, guilty of nothing, to steal their oil resources, when you kill hundreds of thousands of its citizens, leave a million orphans and rubble in their streets, many people without electricity, jobs, adequate means to feed their families – there is no honor except apology.
He who proclaims the truth, let him proclaim it without asking who is for or against it.

Frances Earl, a former vice chairwoman of the Hernando County Democratic Executive Committee, can be contacted at fearl@tampabay.rr.com

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