"A Republican who told the truth about the Iraq War when it mattered..."

[babylonsister]

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/02/15/party-first/


Party First
Andrew Sullivan
Feb 15 2013 @ 11:16am

“To be honest with you, Neil, it goes back to there’s a lot of ill will towards Senator Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly and say he was the worst President since Herbert Hoover and said the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War, which was nonsense. He was anti-his own party and people — people don’t forget that. You can disagree but if you’re disagreeable, then people don’t forget that,” – John McCain, still a douche.

Do you think he might have given his own vice-presidential nominee a sliver of the enhanced confirmation techniques he has applied to a fellow Republican with two Purple Hearts? A Republican who told the truth about the Iraq War when it mattered, who was dead right about the surge (and all the neocon bullshit about it), and who served honorably in the Senate and won two Purple Hearts for his country in Vietnam. McCain never ceases to tell us about his own war experience as a core insight into his character while he and his fellow tools among the neoconservative dead-enders try to destroy the character of a real war hero by McCarthyite smears, lies and innuendoes.

Let’s vent this the way McCain would: Senator McCain, you are a victim of torture who acquiesced to the CIA’s use of torture (often by the exact same techniques) on others; you nominated the least qualified and psychologically stable candidate to be a potential president of the US without even a cursory vetting. You’ve lost every campaign you ever fought for the presidency. You made a catastrophic error of judgment on Iraq and still refuse to show even a minimum of grace toward those who got it right. And yet you preen about putting “country first” which was your slogan in 2008. Why don’t you actually put your country first and allow the Senate to vote on a nominee for defense secretary? Or are you too bitter about the past and too petty in the present to give US troops an actual leader when they are putting their lives on the line for the rest of us?

[patrice]

1. Being disagreeable about DEAD BODIES is not politically correct, so Hagel has attracted the wrath of

the Owners and their NRA minions who are protecting PRIVATE War Profiteers.

[life long demo]

2. Yes! Thank you Andrew Sullivan

[indepat]

3. Wish Andrew Sullivan would take the kid gloves off and give McDouche

the scathing evisceration he really deserves and this time with absolutely no holds barred.

[bvar22]

4. That still doesn't make him Democrat.

If I wanted Republicans occupying places of power and authority in our government,
I would vote for them.

[babylonsister]

7. And I think the person deemed most qualified for the

job by the President should get it regardless of party affiliation, and despite personal grudges like McCain's.

[warrior1]

5. On Monday,

Rachel will be hosting a show on the big lie that lead us in this war. It's going to piss a lot of GOPers off big time.

[pacalo]

6. It's all about obstruction for the sake of the corporate world's interest.

Perpetual war for profit is what they want, & Hagel is on the same page as Obama in regard to diplomacy with Iran & wars in general.

As for McCain's disingenuous claim that Hagel's former colleagues had ill feelings due to Hagel's "merciless" rebukes against the worst president ever in regard to Iraq, McCain himself did the same thing in 2008:

“Spending, the conduct of the war in Iraq for years, growth in the size of government, larger than any time since the Great Society, laying a $10 trillion debt on future generations of America, owing $500 billion to China, obviously, failure to both enforce and modernize the regulatory agencies that were designed for the 1930s and certainly not for the 21st century, failure to address the issue of climate change seriously,” Mr. McCain said in an interview with The Washington Times aboard his campaign plane en route from New Hampshire to Ohio.

(...)

He rejected Mr. Bush’s use of issuing “signing statements” when he signs bills into law, in which the president has suggested that he would ignore elements of the bills, labeling them potentially unconstitutional.

(...)

And Mr. McCain emphatically rejected Mr. Bush’s claims of executive privilege, often used to shield the White House from scrutiny.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/23/mccain-lambastes-bush-years/#ixzz2Kx0sp4GF

/edited for clarity