Tag Archives: John McCain

Dismantling McCain’s Disastrous Legacy Should Now Be Trump’s Top Priority, by Tom Luongo

Posted on July 22, 2017 | 2 comments

John McCain has been the stalwart of a foreign policy that has been nothing but disastrous for the US. From Tom Luongo at lewrockwell.com:

It is hard to estimate how much influence over U.S. domestic and foreign policy John McCain had. With his illness upgraded to a glioblastoma in his head, the likelihood of his return to a policy position is unlikely.

As I predicted earlier this week, the severity of McCain’s health problems will inevitably usher in a major power shuffle in Washington.

The Arizona senator’s absence creates a unique opportunity for President Trump to alter the course of our foreign and domestic policy. From Iraq to Libya, Syria to Afghanistan and right up to Russia’s borders in Ukraine, McCain’s bloody paw prints are all over more than a decade of American foreign policy blunders.

Most of these foreign policy nightmares have served, directly or indirectly, to weaken Russia’s western and southern flanks and prevent Eurasian integration. And of all the excrement that has exited McCain’s mouth, his hatred for Russia has always seemed most sincere. Everything else is politically fungible.

His irrational hatred of Russia made him the perfect vessel for neoconservative policy. It allowed him, without irony, to share the stage with Nazi-sympathizers in Ukraine or rub elbows with Salafist head-chopping radicals in Syria while ensuring a steady flow of taxpayer money to these animals.

McCain’s Hate Talk Express to Hell

With him gone the driving force is gone as well. Many who stood with McCain on these issues did so because Washington is the ultimate ‘go along to get along’ kind of place. And few, if any, in the Senate have his drive to continue the work. Notice how quiet Lindsay Graham has been the last couple of weeks.

Many will see the writing on the wall and kiss the ring of President Trump to avoid a primary challenge in the spring.

And some will see this as a great opportunity to retire now that the status quo has shifted. Don’t forget that Diane Feinstein, McCain’s Democrat doppleganger is retiring in 2018. Harry Reid and Barbara Boxer are gone. The generation of U.S. legislators that brought us this madness are being put out to pasture. Nancy Pelosi is in trouble as House Minority Leader.

Do you really think many Democrats and RINOs have the will to fight now that their GOP Trojan Horse is on chemo?

To continue reading: Dismantling McCain’s Disastrous Legacy Should Now Be Trump’s Top Priority

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Speaking of overthrowing governments and getting away with it… by the Ron Paul Liberty Report Staff

Posted on July 11, 2017 | Leave a comment

The only issue with John McCain is whether he’s an evil moronic idiot, or an evil idiotic moron. From the Liberty Report Staff at ronpaullibertyreport.com:

No one should be surprised that neocons are unhappy with a ceasefire in Syria.

America working with Russia is a cardinal sin according to the neocon bible.

Senator John McCain is very unhappy that Putin is “getting away” with this:

CBS reports: 

“If you were Vladimir Putin, who I’ve gotten to know over the years, you’re sitting there and you got away with literally trying to change the outcome not just of our election. French election. Tried to overthrow the government of Montenegro, a beautiful little country,” McCain said.

“And there has been no penalty whatsoever,”

Speaking of getting away with things, and overthrowing governments, we know for sure that the U.S. overthrew the government of Iraq.

Was John McCain trying to stand in the way of what would become one of the biggest (if not the biggest) disgrace in American history?

​Or was John McCain saying stuff like this:

– “I am very certain that this military engagement will not be very difficult.” [Link]

– “I remain confident that we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” [Link]

–“I think most Iraqis would greet the removal of Saddam Hussein with relief and pleasure.” [Link]

-“There’s no doubt in my mind that we will prevail and there’s no doubt in my mind, once these people are gone, that we will be welcomed as liberators.” [Link]

– “I think the victory will be rapid, within about three weeks.” [Link]

– “…the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished, and it’s very appropriate. [Link]

That’s just Iraq.

We can move around the world, from one U.S. military debacle to another, and reflect on all of McCain’s war-hungry prognostications.

The “penalty” for McCain?

He’s still Senator from Arizona 14 years later, and is regularly sought out by the American mainstream media for his opinions.

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McCain and Montenegro: The Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory, by Justin Raimondo

Posted on March 20, 2017 | Leave a comment

If John McCain has his way,  the US will be obligated to go to war to protect Montenegro? If you don’t see what vital interest the US has in Montenegro, you’re a Putin stooge. From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:

Sure, he’s unhinged – but so is practically everyone else

Just in case you thought the conspiracy theory that Russia secretly controls the US government is exclusively an affliction affecting the Democratic party, Sen. John McCain’s recent performance on the floor of the US Senate should disabuse you of this optimistic notion. Responding to Sen. Rand Paul’s blocking of a vote in favor of the accession of Montenegro to NATO, the failed former GOP presidential candidate let it all hang out:

“I note the senator from Kentucky leaving the floor without justification or any rationale for the action he has just taken. That is really remarkable, that a senator blocking a treaty that is supported by the overwhelming number, perhaps 98 – at least – of his colleagues would come to the floor and object and walk away. The only conclusion you can draw when he walks away is he has no justification for his objection to having a small nation be part of NATO that is under assault from the Russians. So I repeat again, the senator from Kentucky is now working for Vladimir Putin.”

What’s “remarkable” is that this kind of lunacy is tolerated in the US Senate: I recall that Sen. Elizabeth Warren was rebuked – and silenced – by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell because she read a letter from Coretta Scott King that called into question the motives of Jeff Sessions, then a Senator and a candidate for the office of Attorney General. Surely McCain’s outburst was an even more egregious violation of the rules than Warren’s, and yet McCain was allowed to proceed uninterrupted. Perhaps this is an example of “warmonger’s privilege.”

In a later interview, Sen. Paul sought to explain McCain’s behavior as an indication of the Senator from Arizona’s advanced age: perhaps, he suggested, McCain is “past his prime,” and, by the way, “this is a good argument for term limits.” Well, yes, but in the current political atmosphere – where Vladimir Putin has been elevated to the status of a virtually omnipotent force who has the power to change election results and infiltrate the highest reaches of Western governments – it’s no crazier than anything else we’re hearing out of Washington these days.

To continue reading: McCain and Montenegro: The Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory

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From Nuisance to Threat: The High Cost of Truth, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on March 17, 2017 | Leave a comment

Truth, and respect for it, is vanishing. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

When one gives so much scarce time and energy from one’s life to a large and unknown public, one needs to know that it is sufficiently appreciated to be a worthwhile use of one’s time and energy. This is especially the case when there are large costs associated with the commitment.

Your response to my quarterly request for donations showed me that enough of you value what I am doing to justify its continuation.

I am convinced that the US, and probably the entire Western world, that is, the American Empire, has entered an era in which respect for truth does not exist in public and private institutions. We have been watching this develop for some time. Think, for example, back to August 3, 2002, a recent time in terms of our present predicament, but a time prior to political consciousness of anyone younger today than 33 years old. In the summer of 2002, the world was being prepared by propaganda for a US invasion of Iraq. On August 3 of that year, the prestigous British publication, The Economist, summed up the consensus of ruling opinion in two sentences: “The honest choices now are to give up and give in, or to remove Mr. Hussein before he gets his [nuclear] bomb. Painful as it is, our vote is for war.”

As Lewis Lapham, myself and others asked at the time, what bomb? The only evidence of a bomb was fabricated and known to be fabricated. The UN weapons inspectors concluded that the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction were a creation of US propaganda. President George W. Bush eventually acknowledged that Iraq had no such weapons. US Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the lies he was deceived by the Bush regime into telling the UN about Saddam Hussein’s WMD are a stain on his career.

Despite the 2003 US invasion known to have been based entirely on lies, US troops were not pulled out of Iraq until 2011, and whether or not they were pulled out, they are back in Iraq now. None of these facts has had any impact on the good opinion that Washington and the media have of themselves.

To continue reading: From Nuisance to Threat: The High Cost of Truth

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Is McCain Hijacking Trump’s Foreign Policy? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on March 17, 2017 | 2 comments

In his dotage, John McCain gets nuttier and nuttier. Now he’s accused Rand Paul of being a Putin employee. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

“The senator from Kentucky,” said John McCain, speaking of his colleague Rand Paul, “is working for Vladimir Putin … and I do not say that lightly.”

What did Sen. Paul do to deserve being called a hireling of Vladimir Putin?

He declined to support McCain’s call for a unanimous Senate vote to bring Montenegro into NATO as the 29th member of a Cold War alliance President Trump has called “obsolete.”

Bordered by Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania, tiny Montenegro has a population roughly that of D.C., and sits on the western coast of the most volatile peninsula in Europe.

What strategic benefit would accrue from having Montenegro as an ally that would justify the risk of our having to go to war should some neighbor breach Montenegro’s borders?

Historically, the Balkans have been an incubator of war. In the 19th century, Otto van Bismarck predicted that when the Great War came, it would come out of “some damn fool thing in the Balkans.” And so it did when the Austrian archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo June 28, 1914 by Serbian ethnonationalist Gavrilo Princip.

Aflame with ethnic, civil and sectarian war in the 1990s, the western Balkans are again in political turmoil. Milo Djukanovic, the longtime Montenegrin prime minister who resigned on election day in October, claims that he was targeted for assassination by Russia to prevent Montenegro’s accession to NATO.

Russia denies it. But on the Senate floor, McCain raged at Rand Paul: “You are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin … trying to dismember this small country which has already been the subject of an attempted coup.”

But if Montenegro, awash in corruption and crime, is on the verge of an uprising or coup, why would the U.S. issue a war guarantee that could vault us into a confrontation with Russia — without a full Senate debate?

The vote that needs explaining here is not Rand Paul’s.

It is the votes of those senators who are handing out U.S.-NATO war guarantees to countries most Americans could not find on a map.

To continue reading: Is McCain Hijacking Trump’s Foreign Policy?

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Lavrov vs. McCain: Is Russia an Enemy? by Patrick Buchanan

Posted on February 28, 2017 | Leave a comment

Is Russia a natural enemy or ally of the United States? The commonalities are probably greater than the differences. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

The founding fathers of the Munich Security Conference, said John McCain, would be “be alarmed by the turning away from universal values and toward old ties of blood, and race, and sectarianism.”

McCain was followed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who called for a “post-West world order.” Russia has “immense potential” for that said Lavrov, “we’re open for that inasmuch as the U.S. is open.”

Now McCain is not wrong. Nationalism is an idea whose time has come again. Those “old ties of blood, and race, and sectarianism” do seem everywhere ascendant. But that is a reality we must recognize and deal with. Deploring it will not make it go away.

But what are these “universal values” McCain is talking about?

Democracy? The free elections in India gave power to Hindu nationalists. In Palestine, Hamas. In Lebanon, Hezbollah. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, then overthrown in a military coup welcomed by the world’s oldest and greatest democracy. Have we forgotten it was a democratically elected government we helped to overthrow in Kiev?

Democracy is a bus you get off when it reaches your stop, says Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, autocrat of Ankara, a NATO ally.

Is freedom of religion a “universal value”?

Preach or proselytize for Christianity in much of the Islamic world and you are a candidate for martyrdom. Practice freedom of speech in Xi Jinping’s China and you can wind up in a cell.

To continue reading: Lavrov vs. McCain: Is Russia an Enemy?

 

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The Sooner We are Rid of Him, the Better, by the Bionic Mosquito

Posted on February 21, 2017 | Leave a comment

The Bionic Mosquito saves SLL the trouble of writing a scathing piece on one of the planet’s more execrable human beings: John McCain. From the Bionic Mosquito at lewrockwell.com:

 My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can’t prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.

– Christopher Hitchens*

I will suggest this is certainly true for much of official Washington. I can prove it.

John McCain gave a speech at the Munich Security Conference (I can rest my case now, I think). What is the Munich Security Conference?

The Munich Security Conference is an annual conference on international security policy and has been taking place since 1963. …Each year it brings together about 350 senior figures from more than 70 countries around the world to engage in an intensive debate on current and future security challenges.

Nothing fishy going on here…

Since 2009, the conference awards the Ewald von Kleist Award:

The award will be given to prominent individuals who have made an outstanding contribution to peace and conflict resolution.

The theme of the conference is peace through dialogue. At least that’s what they claim. Instead, everything you need to know about the true purpose of this conference is wrapped up in the name of the first recipient of this annual award: Henry Kissinger.

Now, returning to McCain’s speech:

My friends: In the four decades I have attended the Munich Security Conference, I cannot recall a year where its purpose was more necessary or more important.

So, it wasn’t more important when US blockades starved 500,000 Iraqi children? It wasn’t more important before the US invaded Iraq and Afghanistan? It wasn’t more important when the western attendees of this conference made rubble out of several North African, Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries? It wasn’t more important when McCain and his cohorts decided to turn Ukraine into a war zone?

To continue reading: The Sooner We are Rid of Him, the Better

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McCain’s Hypocrisy Has No Bounds, by Mike Mish Shedlock

Posted on January 20, 2017 | Leave a comment

The biggest disappointment of election night was the state of Arizona’s reelection of John McCain to the US Senate. The senator must really bring home the bacon for his state. However, he seems to issue an idiotic press release every other day. Here’s a scathing take on one of his latest, from Mike Mish Shedlock at mishtalk.com:

TechDirt writer Mike Masnick is so disgusted with fake-patriot politicians that he stopped writing about tech dirt and instead wrote about human dirt: Senator John McCain.

Masnick took McCain’s statement “President Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence is a grave mistake that I fear will encourage further acts of espionage and undermine military discipline.” and ripped to shreds.

Almost Every Word Of John McCain’s Response To Chelsea Manning’s Sentence Commutation Is Flat Out Wrong says Mike Masnick.

What follows is Masnick’s entire article because every point he makes is an important one.

From the Hypocrites-in-Congress Dept

It’s hardly a surprise that a bunch of people who have been fed a load of bullshit about what Chelsea Manning did years ago are now quite angry over President Obama’s decision to commute Manning’s sentence. But I don’t think any are quite as painstakingly wrong as Senator John McCain. Someone should call up the Guinness World Record folks, because the wrong-per-sentence ratio of McCain’s angry statement might just set a new world record. Let’s dig in.

President Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence is a grave mistake that I fear will encourage further acts of espionage and undermine military discipline.

Wait. Really? Manning has been in prison for seven years, with a significant portion of that being held in solitary confinement, sometimes being made to strip naked before being able to sleep. This was called “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of article 16 of the convention against torture” by the United Nations. You would think, of all people, Senator John McCain, who similarly was held in solitary confinement and tortured for extended periods while being held captive for 5 and a half years in Vietnam, would recognize that “only” 7 years of such treatment wouldn’t exactly encourage more of Manning’s behavior.

To continue reading: McCain’s Hypocrisy Has No Bounds

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Dear Senator McCain, Our National Security is Threatened by You, Your Policies, and Your Soulmate, Hillary Clinton, by Mike “Mish” Shedlock

Posted on October 6, 2016 | Leave a comment

SLL has already called Hillary Clinton “The Most Dangerous Candidate,” and Mike “Mish” Shedlock agrees, using a particularly moronic Wall Street Journal op-ed from Senator John McCain as the launching pad for his argument. From Shedlock at mishtalk.com:

Senator John McCain is the biggest warmonger on the planet, next to Hillary Clinton of course.

Ironically, McCain has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today that proclaims Stop Assad Now—Or Expect Years of War.

Like Hillary who wants a no-fly zone over Syria, McCain says “Ground the regime’s air force, create safe zones for Syrian civilians, and arm the opposition.”

McCain: America’s intrepid secretary of state has now taken the meaningless step of suspending talks with Russia over Syria. Meanwhile, Mr. Assad and Mr. Putin are creating military facts on the ground in Syria that will enable them to dictate the terms of a peace secured by carnage. They have decimated coalition-backed Syrian groups, slaughtered countless civilians, consolidated the Syrian regime’s hold on power, and even struck a United Nations humanitarian-aid convoy. And they have done all of this with no consequences. Thus the war grinds on.

Mish: Dear Senator, how many innocent civilians were slaughtered in Iraq in a needless war you sponsored? How many in Afghanistan? How many innocent victims has US drone policy killed? And for that matter, how many innocent people have died in Syria because the US backed Al Qaeda terrorists? Can we please have an accounting?

McCain: While the U.S.-led coalition is making progress in the fight against Islamic State, we cannot forget this terrorist organization is a symptom of the Syrian civil war. The future of that conflict will have significant strategic impact on U.S. national security.

Mish: Dear Senator, need I remind you that ISIS is a direct result of US policy in Iraq. Even former UK prime minister Tony Blair Admits Responsibility. And you know what else Senator? Saudi Arabia is the biggest support of ISIS. And it was Saudi Nationals that attacked the US in 911, not Iraqis.

McCain: Any alternative approach must begin with grounding Mr. Assad’s air power. It is a strategic advantage that enables the Assad regime to perpetuate the conflict through the wanton slaughter of innocent Syrians.

Mish: Dear Senator, the correct alternative approach is not to get in bed with Hillary, but to stop meddling in the first place. Where are your crocodile tears for millions slaughtered in Africa? Is the difference oil by any chance? Oil that gives Saudi Arabia enough money to buy hundreds of billions of dollars worth of US military equipment?

McCain: If Russia continues its indiscriminate bombing, we should make clear that we will take steps to hold its aircraft at greater risk. And we must create safe zones for Syrian civilians and do what is necessary to protect them against violations by Mr. Assad, Mr. Putin and extremist forces.

Mish: Dear Senator, were you remotely paying attention to what the chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, General Joseph Dunford, told the Senate armed services committee just a few days ago? “For us to control all of the air space in Syria, would require us to go to war, against Syria and Russia. That’s a pretty fundamental decision I am not willing to make.” My suspicion is you were paying attention and you want a war with Russia just as you wanted the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. On the off chance you were sleeping when General Joseph Dunford said a no-fly zone might mean war with Russia, please check out Syria Spotlight: US Suspends Talks with Russia – What’s Really Going On?

To continue reading: Dear Senator McCain, Our National Security is Threatened by You, Your Policies, and Your Soulmate, Hillary Clinton

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McCain Urges Military Strikes Against FIFA, by Andy Borowitz

Posted on May 29, 2015 | Leave a comment

John McCain is at it again. From Andy Borowitz, of The Borowitz Report, via theburningplatform.com:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – Calling the Obama Administration’s actions against the soccer organization “weak and ineffective,” Senator John McCain on Thursday proposed military action to “dismantle and destroy FIFA once and for all.”

“These are people who only understand one thing: force,” McCain said on the floor of the United States Senate. “We must make FIFA taste the vengeful might and fury of the United States military.”

McCain said that he was “completely unimpressed” by the Department of Justice’s arrests of several top FIFA lieutenants this week, calling the action “the kind of Band-Aid solution that this Administration, sadly, has become famous for.”

“Rounding up a few flunkies in a hotel is meaningless when the leader of FIFA remains at large,” he said. “I will follow Sepp Blatter to the gates of Hell.”

McCain requested a four-billion-dollar aid package for moderate elements within global soccer, and said that the United States should be prepared to put boots on the ground in Switzerland.

Calling the use of force against FIFA “long overdue,” he placed the blame for the group’s alarming growth squarely on the shoulders of the White House. “Barack Obama created FIFA,” he said.

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