GENERAL WESLEY CLARK IS CATEGORICALLY CORRECT ON MCCAIN’S LACK OF EXPERIENCE TO PREPARE HIM FOR THE WHITE HOUSE.
WHEN MODERATOR BOB SCHIEFFER, OF CBS’S FACE THE NATION [JUNE 29, 2008] MADE THE POINT THAT OBAMA DID NOT POSSESS THE EXPERIENCE NECESSARY TO BECOME COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF COMPARED TO JOHN MCCAIN GENERAL CLARK HIT THE BALL OUT OF THE PARK
GENERAL CLARK RESPONDED NOT ONLY WITH THE TRUTH THAT NOBODY IN THE MEDIA BUSINESS HAS HAD THE HUTZPAH TO VERBALIZE OUTLOUD, BUT HE OPENLY AND HONESTLY SPOKE THE TRUTH THAT IS INTRINSICALLY INHERENT IN THE FACTS:
“PERFORMING HEROIC MILITARY SERVICE IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR GAINING COMMAND EXPERIENCE.
“JOHN MCCAIN'S MILITARY SERVICE DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY QUALIFY HIM TO BE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.”
SCHIEFFER DID NOT STOP THERE. HE PRESSED THE ISSUE BY CONVEYING THE OBVIOUS TO THE GENERAL—NOT ONLY WAS OBAMA NOT A PRISONER OF WAR BUT NEITHER DID HE HAVE THE EXPERIENCE OF RIDING IN A FIGHTER PLANE AND BEING SHOT DOWN.
CLARK REPLIED, "WELL, I DON'T THINK RIDING IN A FIGHTER PLANE AND GETTING SHOT DOWN IS A QUALIFICATION TO BE PRESIDENT."
OBAMA WAS EIGHT (8) YEARS OLD DURING THE VIET NAM WAR. HE WOULD HAVE GLADLY SERVED BUT THEY COULD NOT FIND A UNIFORM TO FIT
I have been suggesting for some time that all of the brouhaha touted primarily by the media over McCain’s prisoner of war experience and how those 51/2 years make him an expert on national security, terrorism or foreign affairs. The answer is simple—absolutely none.
This in no way is intended to diminish McCain status as a true American hero or to honor his service to his country. What I fear most is that because of his solely military schooling and experience he will look at the problems of our country and our international relations through the near-sighted mind’s eye of a armed forces man. Many of the least effective presidents of our country and others—Napoleon, Hitler, Grant and Eisenhower to name a few, have been military men with backgrounds comprised exclusively in the rigid martial view and manner of working with others of different perspectives and less unbending styles of life.
Looking at McCain’s performance thus far as the “presumptive nominee” of the Republican Party, he has traveled to Iraq and each time returned with a very upbeat evaluation of what our surge has accomplished.
The truth of the matter is that the only results of the surge which has been extended far beyond its original term, is to cut down (not eliminate) but to cut down on the killing of American troops, suicide bombers and IED’s.
That is progress some of you will argue, but when we put this reduction in mass murder up against the colossal problems facing the al Maliki government, it is as though we have taken but the first baby step in what could turn out to be the longest marathon imaginable. The Iraqi government has barely begun to solve the differences between the three parties to this conflict. Worse yet, they do not seem to have any interest in accomplishing the tasks that must be completed before our troops can come home. Not as many as before the surge, but too many for the surge to be called a success.
Every day we hear of fewer but nonetheless too many American soldiers and Iraqi citizens being killed by IED’s, car bombs, and suicide bombers.
And still the government has not resolved the conflicts that have existed in the multi-cultural nations for hundreds of years.
Now that we know that the U. S. government is and has been negotiating since 2004 with al Maliki government to maintain 58 permanent U. S. military bases distributed throughout Iraq, we know for certain that it has never been Bush’s intent to bring the troops home.
John McCain did not have a slip of the tongue when he recently said that we could be in Iraq for 100 years. He meant it because he was told of the Bush plan to construct 58 mini-cities across Iraq that will be comprised of clusters of democracy that are armed with all of the military equipment necessary to protect both the U. S. troops and Iraqi Oil.
General Clark expanded his remarks:
“In the matters of national security policy making, it's a matter of understanding risk," he said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "It's a matter of gauging your opponents and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces, as a prisoner of war.
"He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee and he has traveled all over the world, but he hasn't held executive responsibility," Clark said. "That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded — that wasn't a wartime squadron."
While Chris Matthews, Fox News’ Hannity, O’Reilly, Larry King, Wolf Blitzer, Brian Williams, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Ollie North, Gordon Liddy, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, U. S. News and World Report and a host of other newspapers, magazines, radio and television talking heads have been salivating all over McCain’s military record as if flying a jet plane, spending five and a half years in a military prison camp earned him a PhD in national security and how to win war on terror. Those in the press who have a bent to the right have been treating him like the second coming of Winston Churchill. He is not!
Is it obvious that if McCain had the judgment, and yes, even the experience to be president he would not be endorsing every jot and tittle of Bush’s failed foreign policy. Those who know him best believe that he has a tendency because of his hair thin trigger finger to use preemptive strikes against suspected enemies than Bush had. He is emotional and sometimes his emotions preempt his rationale.
If he truly understood national safety, he would recognize that our energy crisis is inextricably bound to our national security. The sooner we become energy independent, the safer we will be. A ninety day respite from our federal gasoline tax does nothing but put 200,000 highway construction employees out of work without moving us one step closer to energy self-sufficiency. To toss into the political wind a policy that pledges energy independence by 2025 that includes drilling off-shore in the East, South and West is folly. First of all, we cannot wait until 2025 and secondly, most of us are not prepared to endanger our environment by drilling for a fuel from which we must extricate ourselves.
There are alternative fuels that can be developed even faster and without the toxic residuals that fossil fuels leave behind.
What McCain does not comprehend is that the greatest danger to our energy self-determination is the vulnerability of several Middle Eastern and South American nations that provide us with majority of our imported oil.
Saudi Arabia, next to the United States, is al Qaeda’s biggest enemy. They abhor the House of Saud and the streets of Ryad, Mecca and Medina are swarming with al Qaeda’s sympathizers who are waiting until the time is right to overthrow the entire corrupt family--all of their countless children, their incalculable grandchildren and anyone else who has had any relationship with the throne.
Iran’s iron fist still has control of its people, but it remains one of the most volatile governments that at any given moment for any unwarranted reason may shut off their oil supply to the rest of the world and send gas prices into a “cyclone-like” violent whirl upward.
Under the dictator, Bush-hating head of Venezuela, any moment either an internal revolution or a Chavez sparked rage against America, the pipe lines delivering oil to the U. S. through CITGO would be shut down sending oil prices rocketing to the moon.
If John McCain had the experience and the judgment he needs to be president he would not sanction the Bush tax cuts for the rich and send our deficit radically higher placing taking us further in debt to nations that are not always trustworthy such as China, Japan that are our two principal lenders. Great Britain is third, followed by Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Libya. and other names whose loyalty to our future has been depleted since Bush attacked Iraq.
Between McCain’s endorsement of the war in Iraq until victory is attained which at a cost of $12 billion per month, [the actual costs which have never been made available to the Congress or the voters] will cost approximately $3 trillion dollars as a new book by the same name recently projected.
Just to deploy one U. S. soldier to Iraq for one year, the Congressional Research Services places the cost at $390,000.
Another issue that should be brought to the attention of the people is that the U. S. has “lost or unaccounted for” at least $9 billion in actual money, $549.7 million in spare parts, 190,000 in guns including 110,000 AK-47 rifles according to a report prepared by ABC News.
In addition, there is $1 billion in tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades all of which was provided to the Iraqi security forces and has suspiciously disappeared (perhaps to the Sunni insurgents or the Shiites militia—the very enemy our young men and women are dying to protect.)
Add to that another $10 billion has vanished because of mismanagement and waste according to February, 2007 Congressional hearings.
Vice-President Cheney’s former company overcharged approximately $1.4 billion, not taking into account the fact the it’s subsidiary, KBR, has been paid $20 billion for food, fuel, housing, etc.
The Pentagon auditors believe that $3.2 billion of the money paid to KBR was “questionable or supportable.”
At present the U. S. is maintaining 75 bases throughout Iraq, 58 of which the Bush administration without the approval of Congress and without a legal document granting the right to such bases once the U. S. mandate to be in Iraq has expired.
McCain’s proposed policies for health care insurance and energy are as shallow as a 2 ft. deep grave. In other words, they simply provide no meaningful benefits to the American people. He has no plan. He has no costs factored into the propositions and they have behind them all of the thought and research of a $2.00 bill.
Do not condemn General Clark’s comments. He is unequivocally correct. John McCain has neither the judgment nor the experience in national security and the war in Iraq to fulfill his claim of being prepared to assume the duties of Commander-in-Chief on the first day on the job.
You have to like John McCain when he is a good mood or when he has not been crossed by a reporter to happens to ask a question that offends the sensitive Naval officer who has offended men and women in the Congress, members of the press, and other individuals not familiar with his hyper-sensitive disposition.
People, this is no political ploy to defame John McCain. This is who he is. Those from every chapter of his life have a story to tell about his temper, his loss of control of his rage over big or even little things that simply rub him the wrong way.
At 3:00 am in the morning when the telephone in the president’s bedroom rings with a crisis anywhere in the world, I do not want John McCain to answer it. I do not want his finger on the button that could trigger a major world conflict. I do not want the red telephone from a world leader who is caught in the clutches of a life or death crisis near him as he emerges from a deep sleep in a bad mood.
General Wesley Clark makes a very good point that voters should listen to carefully. McCain lacks the management experience and the emotional judgment to be president.
10:38:33 PM 
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