Sen. McSame Strikes Out Again, And Again, And Again

Warhawk and Bush cheerleader extraordinaire John McCain continues to display his "serious" foreign and military policy credentials.

This time, he showered us with his wisdom concerning Afghanistan. Behold:

"(...) Afghanistan is not in trouble because of our diversion to Iraq."

Yeah. Ri-ight. Gotcha. Thanks for the head's up.

Say - come again? (emphasis original)

Last week, Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Richard Cody insisted that the "Army is out of balance" and that the "current demand for our forces … exceeds the sustainable supply."

And it just gets better:

Before leaving, McCain assured (...) that, as president, he would "get" Osama bin Laden "and bring him to justice." Apparently McCain is overlooking the fact that the reason bin Laden is still on the loose is because the fight in Iraq diverted attention from perusing the terrorist leader in Afghanistan.

Exactly.

And now, for the clincher: (emphasis original)

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services this afternoon, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said he was "deeply concerned" about Afghanistan:

"With the bulk of our ground forces deployed to Iraq, we've been unable to prepare for or deploy for other contingencies in other places. We are not training to full spectrum capabilities. We are not engaging sufficiently with partner militaries. And we cannot now meet extra force requirements in places like Afghanistan."

And let us not forget this: (emphasis mine)

"Well, back in 2001, early 2002, the Taliban were pretty much vanquished. And I wasn’t over there during the intervening years. But my sense of looking back is that we moved focus to Iraq, which was the priority from 2003 on, and the attention and the resources focused on a different place. There’s been some resurgence in the Taliban. This is a country — Afghanistan needs a lot of work in the business of rebuilding itself."

So, allow me to summarize here:

Dismiss outright pre-war/post-war planning incompetence - check.
Deny previous mistakes - check.
Ignore your generals - check.
Ignore the quagmires you are sinking deeper into - check.
Create your own deluded reality and make policy in accordance - check.

Sounds exactly like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al. to me.

Ergo: this is Sen. John McSame all over indeed.

But hey - who I am to disagree with such a grand personnage? After all, according to the MSM traditional media, he is such a foreign policy expert and differs so much from Bush, no?

No?


(Cross-posted at DKos)