Memphis Liar Editor Bruce VanWyngarden picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue:
The presidential race is starting to turn nasty — at least on one side. John McCain said last week that opponent Barack Obama was willing to “lose a war in order to win a campaign.” McCain also ran an ad falsely claiming that Obama canceled a meeting with wounded vets in Germany because “cameras weren’t allowed.” (This, even though McCain similarly had canceled an appearance with wounded vets this spring, also at the request of the Pentagon.)
First off, and this is an admittedly minor point, the McCain ad doesn’t make the direct claim Bruce reports. To be exact, the ad’s narrator says: “He made time to go to the gym, but canceled a visit with wounded troops. Seems the Pentagon wouldn’t allow him to bring cameras.” The ad certainly implies or suggests that BRCK BM canceled his visit because he wasn’t able to stage it as a campaign event, but the direct charge is not specified, and VanWyngarden also tampers with the quote: “cameras weren’t allowed.”
Second, I find no evidence for VanWyngarden’s assertion that McCain “canceled an appearance with wounded vets this spring.” According to CNN, “the Navy declined a McCain campaign request to speak at the Naval Aviation Museum at the naval base in Pensacola, Florida, because it is a military owned installation and is located on the base.” Unless there were wounded vets lined up to appear with McCain at the museum, VanWyngarden appears to be making a stretch.
Third, and most importantly, VanWyngarden falsely suggests that the Pentagon asked the Senators not to meet with wounded troops, when in fact it has simply asked both to make such appearances in an official, rather than a political, capacity.
The Dallas News quotes Pentagon Spokesman Bryan Whitman: “Nobody denied Senator Obama the opportunity to visit our wounded being cared for at Landstuhl. Obviously as a sitting senator he has an interest in that and can certainly visit in an official capacity… The senator’s staff was informed of the limits on what the military can do with respect to a political campaign and how we could support a senator’s visit to Landstuhl, and quite frankly I expected them to have the visit.”
According to BRCK BM’s own campaign statement, canceling the event was a decision of his own choosing:
“The senator decided out of respect for these servicemen and women that it would be inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign.”
I’m willing to give BRCK BM the benefit of the doubt and take him at his word on this one, but McCain’s campaign is certainly free to reach a different conclusion, particularly in light of the larger context of BRCK BM’s campaign.
VanWyngarden continues his editorial with an analysis of McCain’s appearance on CNN’s The Situation Room, in which he repeated his vow to capture Osama bin Laden or otherwise “bring him to justice.”
Blitzer asked how McCain was going manage such a feat when President Bush hadn’t been able to do it in seven years.
This is an unexpected and welcome departure from the Leftist mantra that President Bush took his eye off the ball, but unfortunately it’s the only line approaching reasonable criticism in the whole editorial.
Of course, a few days earlier, McCain had proclaimed himself worried about the situation on the nonexistent “Iraq/Pakistan border,” which would suggest he doesn’t know the area quite as well as he’d like us to think.
Yes, of course… but what VanWyngarden fails to mention is that McCain’s comment was, like the question that elicited it, about Afghanistan, which in fact does border Pakistan — suggesting not that he’s unfamiliar with the area, as VanWyngarden implies, but instead that McCain’s simply as prone as any politician to verbal gaffes and temporary geographic confusion.
Take, for example, BRCK BM, who forgot his home state of Illinois shared a border with Kentucky when talking about that state’s primary…
“Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Arkansas. So it’s not surprising that she would have an advantage in some of those states in the middle.”
… and who at one point seemed to have discovered an additional eight states:
“Over the last 15 months, we’ve traveled to every corner of the United States. I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go.
VanWyngarden continues:
What got to me, though, was his assertion that he knew how to capture bin Laden but hadn’t bothered to share this magical information with the president, the CIA, or the Pentagon. He’s a U.S. senator, for heaven’s sake. Surely the president will take his calls.
Seems to me that McCain was dangling his secret plan to capture the world’s leading terrorist as an incentive for the American people to elect him president. “Elect me,” he appeared to be saying, “and I’ll get the bad guy.”
It’s nothing short of absurd to claim that McCain’s confidence in his own military experience, knowledge about warfare and determination to defeat Al Qaida somehow amounts to “magical information” that he has refused to share with the White House.
Yes, it’s unfortunate that McCain seems to be making the capture of Osama bin Laden a campaign promise, rather than simply expressing his desire and readiness to continue aggressively taking the fight to Al Qaida.
But at least he’s not promised to cure paralysis, a la John Edwards, or worse, control the land, sea and air, a la BRCK BM, who told the crowds in Berlin, “Let us resolve that we will not leave our children a world where the oceans rise and famine spreads and terrible storms devastate our lands.”
Huh. Sounds like he’d rather win a campaign than capture Osama bin Laden. Either that, or the “maverick” is full of, uh, non-straight talk.
The Memphis Liar certainly knows a thing or two about “non-straight talk.”
Cross-posted at MemphisLiar.com.