Reply #9: The Washington and Lincoln stories are both fables,

[karynnj]

that McCain was a POW and that he was tortured are not fables, but truth. In the early 1990s, when he was on Kerry's POW/MIA committee, Kerry got them access to the prison in which McCain was held. McCain spoke of it in his book. To question whether that happened is equivalent to Bob Dole saying that Kerry never bled in Vietnam.

I do think that giving him more credit on torture issues because he was tortured makes little sense. There is more reason to predict that Kerry who risked his future to protest American actions would be firm in never deviating from his statement that the US shouldn't torture period.

I disagree that McCain was ineffective on ABC - with the help of the media arguing that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, McCain is stating that now that they are doing what he argued for since 2002, it is working. Did you notce that Cokie Roberts spoke of "If they did what they should have in 2003 - and went in with a bigger force, ....." (In 2003, Shinshicki argued that they needed the much larger force to deal with the peace.

Fortunately for us, McCain is a long shot. I think that, wrong as he is, none of our front runners would have an easy time arguing with him on Iraq. On global warming, he can point to having been more active on that issue than any of our front runners. He and Kerry tried to raise CAFE standards - I think twice in the Clinton years.