A Blog Called Hope

John McCain may claim he’s a different kind of politician, but his efforts to cover up his misstatements about the war in Iraq instead of admitting he was wrong ring of the same kind of dishonesty we’ve come to expect from the Bush Administration. After seven years of a president who will distort the truth for political purposes, Americans don’t want four more years of the same with John McCain.

Last week we saw the lengths John McCain and his campaign will go to cover up misstatements he made about the facts on the ground in Iraq.

After inaccurately stating that U.S. troops were “drawn down to pre-surge levels,” McCain refused to admit his error and claimed what he said was “just facts.” [Wisconsin Town Hall, 5/29/08, http://youtube.com/watch?v=42ke9Q-qXg4]

Likewise, his campaign went into Washington spin-mode, organizing a last-minute conference call where McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann said that McCain’s mistake was an issue of “semantics” and that “[w]e are talking about a verb tense.”

But no one was buying it. One reporter wrote that “the attempt by the McCain media machine to spin the mistake as a simple matter of ‘verb tenses’ is an insult to our intelligence.” [The Fact Checker, Washington Post, 5/30/08; http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/30/mccain-call-nitpicking/]

McCain Says U.S. Troops At Pre-Surge Levels. “We have drawn down to pre-surge levels.” [Wisconsin Town Hall, 5/29/08, http://youtube.com/watch?v=42ke9Q-qXg4]

Troops in Iraq Not Expected to Return to Pre-Surge Level Until End of July. “The increased U.S. presence in Iraq — which topped out at about 170,000 troops — is expected to go down to 140,000 by the end of July. U.S. officials plan to keep 15 combat brigades in Iraq through the end of the year, though ongoing assessments could allow commanders to change those numbers.” [Washington Post, 5/20/08]

McCain’s foreign policy competency called into question due to Al-Qaeda-Iran gaffe

John McCain must be thanking his lucky stars that the remaining Democratic hopefuls continue to battle it out to decide who will get the nomination. Or otherwise, McCain’s own incompetence and misunderstanding of world affairs would be in the limelight.

But his confusion is not about just ANY issue. It is about THE predominant global conflict facing America. One could understand if McCain was a little mixed up about the Nigerian oil conflicts, strife in the Democratic Republic of Congo, or even human rights atrocities in China and Darfur. MAYBE an observer, or a voter, could let such a gaffe pass because they are not issues directly affecting our country at this moment. (Though, one would like to believe a potential leader of our country would have knowledge of such prevalent global topics.)

The issue is al-Qaeda. The issue is the leading terrorist organization in the world and our most dangerous and heinous adversary. The issue is al-Qaeda’s relationship (or lack thereof) with the always contentious Iran.

Unfortunately, John McCain appears to not grasp the realities surrounding al-Qaeda, Iran, and terrorism as a whole.

In recent weeks John McCain has upped his efforts to poke holes in Obama’s candidacy, and particularly what McCain deems Obama’s ‘naïve’ foreign policy approach. Speaking in front of an American-Israeli committee, McCain took the opportunity to rail against Mr. Obama’s desire to sit down with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

During one of his rants, John McCain falsely linked al-Qaeda to the Iranian government. McCain asserted unequivocally that, “Al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and is receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran.”

The truth of the matter is that the Sunni al-Qaeda is a rebellious counterpart to the ruling Shi’a regime in Iran. In fact, Iran has gone to great lengths to keep adversarial al-Qaeda fighters out of the country. It is this deep-seeded conflict that continues to enflame the already volatile situation in Iraq. So to think, and then say, that there is a relationship between a Sunni faction in al-Qaeda and a hard-line Shi’a regime in Iran is immensely deceptive.

It is hard not to notice the similarity in rhetoric between McCain’s baseless assertions and those spewed by Bush in late 2002 and early 2003. As we have seen, by way of the 9/11 Commission’s detailed report, al-Qaeda had no ties, affiliations, or relationship with Iraq. Despite this, the President continues to hold out false hope that he was somehow correct in his misrepresentation of Middle Eastern dynamics.

It’s these kinds of unfounded assertions that continue to shift our focus away from where it should be; finding al-Qaeda leadership and stemming the spread of its brutal ideology.

For those who hoped that the lens would shift back to a genuine focus on waging the war on terror, think again if McCain is elected. Given McCain’s misrepresentations, it would appear that the misleading of the American people won’t end with George W.

… Maybe getting riled up about McCain improperly aligning two prominant figures in our war on terror is an overreaction. Maybe foreign policy is not McCain’s strong suit… Problem is John McCain himself has asserted that foreign policy is a point of strength for him. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal back in November 2005, McCain proclaimed, “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.”

Given McCain’s egregious mix-up of two key U.S. foes, it certainly appears McCain needs a lot more education on BOTH (economics and foreign policy) fronts. Perhaps McCain should crack open some history books and prepare to pull some all-nighters studying; because, are there any more significant concerns facing our country than the economy and the war on terror?

McCain co-chair, and potential Treasury Secretary, tied to root of subprime mortgage crisis

Plummeting property values. Job losses numbering in the hundreds of thousands. Financial institutions crumbling to their knees. Economic growth screeching to a halt.

What may have been perceived as merely an economic nightmare during the booming 90s, has quickly become all too real in the last few years as the subprime mortgage crisis has reached immense proportions.

What some people may not understand what actually spurred this current crisis.

In 1999, under direct influence from bank lobbyists, the then-existing regulatory scheme controlling the banking industry was abandoned. As economists have theorized, this de-regulation was a leading cause of the current mortgage crisis our economy faces today.

As Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Former Texas Senator, and current John McCain campaign co-chairman, Phil Gramm helped spearhead that shortsighted and devastatingly erroneous legislation in 1999.

Then, three years later, Phil Gramm joined Swiss bank UBS where he served as a lobbyist on legislation regarding the mortgage crisis as recently as the end of 2007. Currently, while taking time away from McCain’s camp, Gramm continues to serve as a UBS vice chairman. Given the rivaling concerns within the mortgage crisis, this relationship with a predominant banking institution calls into question whose interests that former Senator Phil Gramm aims to protect. Will he work to protect the floundering property market and strapped mortgage borrowers, or work to sure up UBS’ bottom line?

John McCain, apparently cut from the same ragged cloth as Gramm, has come out in support of further de-regulation of the banking industry, which he believes will help resolve the current mortgage crisis. This proposal stands in direct conflict with the assessment of the Secretary of the Treasury. In March 2008, Treasury Secretary Paulson remarked that it would be necessary, and beneficial, to again regulate financial sectors that were de-regulated back in ‘99.

Amazingly, it appears that Phil Gramm, despite his immense miscalculations with far-reaching ramifications, has the ear of John McCain and the inside track to become the next Secretary of the Treasury if John McCain is elected in November. For now, as Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute explained to the Washington Post, “[Senator] McCain is counting on people having very short memories and not connecting some pretty obvious dots.”