Flashback: Senator Who Saw War Up Close Doesn't Want to See Another

[depakid]

Senator John S. McCain of Arizona is a conservative Republican and a war hero, a medal-spangled Navy pilot in Vietnam, the son and grandson of admirals in a family whose fighting lineage extends to George Washington's Continental Army. If politicians were thoroughbreds and bloodlines dictated performance, Mr. McCain might be the Secretariat of Senate militarists.

But anyone who wagered that Mr. McCain would favor United States intervention in Bosnia's war would lose his shirt. As President Clinton and lawmakers ponder the prospect of air strikes to counter Serbian aggression or the despatch of thousands of American troops to enforce a cease-fire, Mr. McCain has been sounding the Senate's most persistent and most urgent alarms on the question of involvement in a European war. Far Too Many Ifs

"We need to be honest about one central fact: We have no way to predict the size, length and casualties of a peacemaking effort," he told the Senate on April 21.

"If we find ourselves involved in a conflict in which American casualties mount, in which there is no end in sight, in which we take sides in a foreign civil war, in which American fighting men and women have great difficulty distinguishing between friend and foe, then I suggest that American support for military involvement would rapidly evaporate."

More: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE2D7123DF936A35756C0A965958260

[roody]

1. Duh.

[magellan]

2. Nice find. n/t