As of then, only Olbermann had called both CBS News and McCain to task about yet another demonstration that John McCain is either willfully ignorant or not in possession of all his faculties. But now the story is starting to be picked up by other news outlets:
Asked about Obama's contention that a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida combined with the addition of thousands of U.S. combat troops that were sent to Iraq contributed to the improved security situation there, McCain scoffed.
"I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened," McCain told "CBS Evening News," adding that Col. Sean MacFarland was contacted by a major Sunni sheik.
"Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening," McCain said, referring to the U.S.-backed revolt of Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida in Anbar province. "I mean, that's just a matter of history."
The problem with McCain's statement — as Obama's campaign quickly noted — was that the awakening got under way before President Bush announced in January 2007 his decision to flood Iraq with tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to help combat violence.
In March 2007, before the first of the additional troops began arriving in Iraq, Col. John W. Charlton, the American commander responsible for Ramadi, a city in Anbar province, said the newly friendly sheiks, combined with an aggressive counterinsurgency strategy and the presence of thousands of new Sunni police on the streets, had helped cut attacks in the city by half in recent months.
You'd think by now that the McCain camp would be aware of not just the Google but the YouTube as well -- and that now a nation of citizen journalists is out there recording McCain's appearances as they actually occur, not just in the heavily edited mode that appears on the evening news. And yet every time McCain gets caught in one of his lies/mistakes/gaffes/whatever you choose to call them, he embarks on a two-prong attack: impugn Obama's patriotism, to the point of nearly accusing him of sedition, and then whine that the media -- the very same media that have hammered the expressions "maverick" and "war hero" to the point that it's become practically treason to point out any of the myriad sleazy dealings and horrific votes that have peppered McCain's Senate career -- are being mean to him.
Much of the news media's love affair with John McCain has been a function of that same thrall they had to George w. Bush in the flightsuit. It's a peculiar fixation on the Tough Authoritarian Daddy Figure; on the American Male Mythos of the soldier, the cowboy, the policeman -- indeed, all of the archetypes skewered by the Village People.
The entire framing of Barack Obama as "elitist" is a function of the latter's command of language, his natty appearance in a suit, his aura of self-confidence that doesn't rely on stereotypical, cartoonish images of maleness. That kind of confidence obviously causes a cognitive dissonance in an industry of male reporters whose knee-jerk response is to laud the external trappings of mythological maleness.
As with George W. Bush, another man well under six feet tall who wears his Napoleon complex on his sleeve by swaggering around like a bantam rooster, John McCain seems always trying to prove he's a real man, whether through his philandering or his relentless hammering of his military experience. It seems strange that this kind of self-promotion of his military experience is regarded by the media as laudable.
My late father-in-law fought in the Battle of the Bulge -- and from what Mr. Brilliant told me, he never talked about it. Oh, he would do the standard lecture of "You kids just don't appreciate what we did for you in World War II...." -- but he never hammered the idea that he was a hero, even though it's next to impossible to define anyone who fought in that battle and emerged with his body intact as anything but. This article in the Montpelier Times-Argus from the other day describes another silent war hero of WWII. This country is full of them. They are now elderly men, standing at intersections on Memorial Day selling poppies, shaking cans for the VFW, marching in sparsely-attended parades. And most of them don't talk much about their war experience.
But John McCain isn't like these men. John McCain wants you to wake up every day of your life and know that because he spent five years in a POW camp, that experience entitles him to not just the presidency, but to complete acquiescence and complete acceptance of every word out of his mouth, no matter how ignorant, clueless, or preposterous it may be.
Army Pfc. Joseph Dwyer, made famous because of a photograph in which he carried an Iraqi child to safety, didn't think he was entitled to the presidency. Instead he died from an overdose on Dust-Off after battling PTSD for years.
Tomas Young, not even out of his twenties yet and the subject of the documentary film Body of War, doesn't feel entitled to the presidency, even though he was catastrophically injured while riding in an unarmored truck, provided by a Pentagon determined to fight a war on the cheap.
Tammy Duckworth doesn't feel entitled to the presidency, even though she lost both legs in Iraq and put up with attack ads accusing her of wanting to "cut and run" during her failed 2004 Congressional race.
Ty Ziegel doesn't feel entitled to the presidency, even though he lost most of his face in Iraq and had to fight like hell to get his disability benefits.
These are just four of the many, many catastrophically injured men and women who are casualties of the Bush/McCain war of lies; veterans who have had to fight for benefits, who have been largely forgotten by a population that no longer wants to think about this war. You don't see these people whining on television that they're somehow entitled to the presidency because they have to live the rest of their lives with these injuries.
But John McCain, whose life since returning from Vietnam has been one of power, privilege, wealth, a trophy chickie wife and God knows how many mistresses, thinks that he alone of all veterans is entitled to the presidency because he suffered in war. Perhaps he should ask Ty Ziegel or Tomas Young about suffering. He at least has his face and he can walk.
Funny how John McCain, the chosen candidate of the Worshippers of Male Toughness, is so weak that he can't handle anyone asking questions.
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