"The man is unstable. On impulse, he picked an unqualified vice-presidential candidate, and now he's surprised to find her mired in personal scandal. His out-of-control temper is legendary in the Senate. He wanted to invade Iraq before 9/11. He wants to bomb Iran and fight Russia. We honor his sacrifice as a tortured prisoner of war, but a dangerous powder keg like John McCain has no place in the White House.
Democrat Strategist, 2008
Surrogates should refer to McCain as "John Bomb-first-and-ask-questions-later McCain." And the candidates should, at every opportunity, conflate McCain's experience with his aggressive posture with language like, "We all admire John's service but experience in war doesn't give you the judgement to make peace."
Democratic Strategist, 2008
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be President.
Meet the Press, 2008
liberal blogger
John Aravosis,
writing that "[g]etting shot down, tortured, and then doing propaganda for the enemy is not command experience."
Slate, 2008
Gore Vidal questioned McCain's war record in a
New York Times Magazine interview: "Who started this rumor that he was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?"
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., essentially denounced McCain for being a fighter pilot: "What happened when they [the missiles] get to the ground? He doesn't know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues."
After statements by a half-dozen high-profile Democrats and Obama surrogates, you cannot
persuade me that there is not a concerted effort on the part of Obama Democrats to criticize McCain on his war record. George McGovern, Jay Rockefeller, Tom Harkin, Democratic congressional candidate Bill Gillespie, Ed Schultz, Tony McPeak, and now Clark. Way too many to be coincidence. We’re seeing a lot more derisive comments about McCain’s wartime service than we are about Obama’s race. Jim Geraghty, 2008
"John McCain is a warmonger, pure and simple. He must not be allowed in the White House to continue the Bush wars."
Ed Schultz introducing Obama at a rally
“He’s a supporter of a war that Senator Obama believes should have never been authorized and never been waged.”
Jen Psaki, current White House commications director
"Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years?" Steinem asked, suggesting the media would ask "'What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?" ...
Referring to his time in captivity, Steinem said, with bewilderment, "I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so."
Gloria Steinem, 2008
"If John McCain wants to know where the bad guys live, come back with me to Afghanistan. We know where they reside, and it's not in Iraq."
Joe Biden, 2008
What war did McCain win? And he spent Vietnam, his biggest war, of course, in a POW camp as Wesley Clark struggled to say accurately, but impoliticly, Eisenhower ran a war, McCain did not.
Mark Green, CEO of Air America, 2008
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/some-on-...ns-war-record/ (it won't copy and paste so here are some of the relevant statements if you want to look them up)
Noam Chomsky and Medea Benjamin (Code Pink founder) accuse McCain of being a "war criminal" for bombing civilians.
Tom Hayden compares McCain's time in captivity to that of a convicted criminal in prison.
Jeffrey Klein of Mother Jones, accuses the McCain family of protecting the screw up John McCain throughout his career.
Doug Valentine of Counter Punch magazine accuses John McCain of being the biggest collaborator in the Vietnam War.
I'll stop here. This is only four pages into my search for democratic attacks on John McCain's war record. I also seem to recall attacking whether or not John McCain was even an American citizen since he was born in Panama, and whether or not he violated national security regs because he had a torrid affair with a South American beauty queen...in his 20s.
