[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
This is all a crock. Schieffer stated that Obama had none of the experience that Clark was talking about , “…nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down.” That is a completed thought. There is no other clarifying context coming down the pike. There was no reason to mention that Obama has never been shot down in a plane in the context of a discussion about qulaifications for President than to try to imply that it’s a qualification for President If he wasn’t trying to cite it as a qualification, there was no reason to bring it up. It was not a cheap shot for Clark to call bullshit on that. Just admit it. There’s nothing here.
[/QUOTE]
Well, I can agree that it’s next to nothing. Just because I think it’s a cheap shot doesn’t mean I think it’s important. There are going to be hundreds of cheap shots taken by both sides in this campaign. They really don’t mean much to me one or the other. If you want to feel it’s not a cheap shot, that’s fine with me. It’s generally in the eye of the beholder anyway. I gave may reasons, and if you don’t agree, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
[QUOTE=Shodan]
So what you are saying is, you could never support a military man who dumped his first wife when she was having health problems for a rich heiress, is that right?
[/quote]
No, as a matter of fact, that wasn’t what I was saying at all.
This has been another installment in the ongoing series of Simple Answers to Simple Questions.
[QUOTE=John Mace]
Just so you know, I usually don’t respond to people who poison the well like that-- especially with a thinly veiled insult. I will this time, but don’t expect me to in the future. I really wish it were possible to discuss politics around here with getting personal in the process.
[/quote]
You alone will choose whether to respond and when. Don’t pin your decisions on me.
Schieffer (i before e) was the first to interrupt. Clark merely tried to finish his point. Schieffer, in fact, interrupted multiple times to make his editorial points.
There’s no reason it’s any more important to be a POW than it is to rebuild a slum. If anything, one would expect the mental and emotional damage from McCain’s alleged torture to be a detriment. It could be one reason he is so hot-headed and confused about almost everything to do with the war in Iraq.
[QUOTE=Liberal]
There’s no reason it’s any more important to be a POW than it is to rebuild a slum. If anything, one would expect the mental and emotional damage from McCain’s alleged torture to be a detriment. It could be one reason he is so hot-headed and confused about almost everything to do with the war in Iraq.
[/QUOTE]
Listen, I’ve been pretty consistent in saying on these boards that a person’s status as a veteran essentially has very little to do with his success in either winning office or governing once he is there.
But that’s a far cry from what you are saying, which is that McCain’s military experience is totally meaningless except to the degree that it is totally disqualifying. I don’t think that is an argument that will gain a lot of traction with the voting public.
If John McCain’s five years in the Hanoi Hilton do in fact make one more qualified for being President, then I can think of someone who’s far more qualified than he.
Remember a couple of decades ago, a young woman was freed after seven years of captivity? She’d been picked up while hitchhiking, and the guy who gave her a lift abducted her and turned her into his personal sex slave for seven years, as well as inflicting all sorts of other tortures on her.
Maybe she should be President. Or maybe we should acknowledge that, regardless of the debt we owe to the heroism of McCain and others similarly situated, it doesn’t make them significantly more qualified for high office than anyone else is.
ETA: This was not in any way a reply to Mr. Moto’s post.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
What does it say that isn’t true?
[/QUOTE]
I agree .That is a crappy defense against the idea that the Repubs savaged McCains military record far beyond what the Dems will do. It would be fair to use that as a guideline.
Besides military men have been crappy presidents. Grant and Eisenhower let the party a free reign for corruption. The military experience obviously did not translate to President very well.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
Besides military men have been crappy presidents. Grant and Eisenhower let the party a free reign for corruption. The military experience obviously did not translate to President very well.
[/QUOTE]
Actually I think Eisenhower was quite a good president. In any case I should demand a cite for your allegations of corruption.
[QUOTE=chacoguy420]
There are, at least two, defining moments in John McCain’s military career. The first was when he was on the USS Forrestal. A fire broke out around his plane, he could have ejected to save himself, but chose otherwise to avoid spreading the fire. He crawled out on the fuel probe and jumped clear. He was running back towards the fire when the first of several large bombs went off and blew him into uncontentiousness.
[/QUOTE]
They have ejection seats that will actually work from a standing plane and not kill the pilot?
Actually, I believe that McCain’s military experience is a good reason he shouldn’t be President. When all you’ve got is a hammer, all the world’s a nail.
I’d much rather have a President whose first response to any issue isn’t “send in the troops.”
So what you are saying is, you could never support a military man who dumped his first wife when she was having health problems for a rich heiress, is that right?
Someone who did that is unqualified for the Oval Office due to lack of moral character. Right?
And obviously adultery is a clear indication that a politician is a lying sleazeball and not suited for the White House.
Just so we’re clear here.
Regards,
Shodan
[/QUOTE]
Leave it to you to find an extraordinarily biased site, present it as established fact and misrepresent the details, inventing parity that simply doesn’t exist.
[QUOTE=Merijeek]
They have ejection seats that will actually work from a standing plane and not kill the pilot?
-Joe
[/QUOTE]
Sure. We were plane guard one night for the USS John C. Stennis (meaning that as a cruiser, we were some 1500 yards behind her) when a pilot on deck ejected and landed in the water. We had to reverse our screws and do a full stop quickly to avoid running him over, while the boat crew lowered the boat down.
There was a slight snafu or two, but within a few minutes the pilot was recovered and returned to the carrier, slightly the worse for wear.
I don’t think the seats in the 1960s were much different, but the problem would have been that McCain would have landed in the water while the entire ship was engaged in fighting a major fire. Getting him would have been an additional problem to deal with.
There’s no guarantee he would have landed in the water, and even if he had, there was still significant chance of injury. The much safer thing to do what what he did, which was to make the easy, two foot hop back down to the flight deck. Ejecting would have been stupid.
[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
yeah, except for this part:
Secretary of Defense William Cohen felt that Clark had powerful allies at the White House such as President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that were allowing him to circumvent The Pentagon in promoting his strategic ideas, while Clark felt he was not being included enough in discussions with the National Command Authority, leading Clark to describe himself as “just a NATO officer who also reported to the United States”.[53] This command conflict came to a ceremonial head when Clark was not initially invited to a summit in Washington, D.C. to commemorate NATO’s 50th anniversary, despite being its supreme military commander. Clark eventually secured an invitation to the summit, but was told by Cohen to say nothing about ground troops, and Clark agreed.[54]
The flag lowered at the United States Consulate General in Hong Kong in respect for the victims of the embassy bombing[55]Clark returned to SHAPE following the summit and briefed the press on the continued bombing operations. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times asked a question about the effect of bombings on Serbian forces, and Clark noted that merely counting the number of opposing troops did not show Milošević’s true losses because he was bringing in reinforcements. Many American news organizations capitalized on the remark in a way Clark said “distorted the comment” with headlines such as “NATO Chief Admits Bombs Fail to Stem Serb Operations” in The New York Times. Clark later defended his remarks, saying this was a “complete misunderstanding of my statement and of the facts,” and President Clinton agreed Clark’s remarks had been misconstrued. Regardless, Clark received a call the following evening from General Hugh Shelton who said he had been told by Secretary Cohen to deliver a piece of guidance verbatim. "Get your fucking face off the TV. No more briefings, period. That’s it."[56][57]
These things happen for a reason. And Clark, being a Democrat under a Democratic President, can’t hide behind the current meme of “I tried to tell Rumsfeld no and he fired me!”
[/QUOTE]
So? You’re simply bolding two instances where Clark was in the right. (It was a NATO operation, and he but told the truth to the press.) How does either of them reflect badly on Clark’s “integrity and character,” as Shelton said?
[QUOTE=elucidator]
Let me offer some information brought about by the simple expedient of being born before you and not dying. It worked. It was political theater, yes, it was meant to shock. It was meant to rock the public’s notion that our heroes were all of one mind, and that mind was patriotic and supportive of the war, and shared their contempt for Dirty Fucking Hippies.
When Viet Nam vets started showing up for anti-war demonstrations, it was a sea-change. When you are marching with a guy wearing his campaign hat and has his sleeve pinned up over his missing arm with his Purple Heart, you didn’t hear any screams of “Coward!” from the sidelines, you saw stunned disbelief and the horror of dearly-held illusions shattered. It worked.
If you were he, and believed as he believed, and believed it sincerely…what would you have done? What impolite, rude, nay, even “smarmy” things might you be willing to do to bring a senseless slaughter to an end?
[/QUOTE]
But that’s just it, to me. The “smarminess” I alluded to was a general sense of uneasiness about Kerry’s convictions regarding his military service. On the one hand he was ashamed of it, so much so that he threw medals that honor war wounded over a fence during a protest, but on the other hand when it became time to run for president, those medals became politically expedient as a means of certifying his patriotism, even though he had disowned them earlier in life.
I’m not saying that Kerry wasn’t qualified for office, or that he isn’t allowed to change his mind about anything he wants, but it certainly didn’t help to defuse the GWB campaign from painting him as a flip-flopper, even though Kerry’s military service was of greater merit than GWB’s minimal participation in the Armed Forces.
This is exactly why I think Clark is off base about McCain. At the very least, comments like that are not helpful to Obama.