Learning from Failure

"I know how to win wars"

--Republican Presidential candidate John McCain

For some reason, devout Republicans in the US seem to think that because of his military experience, their man McBush can be trusted to do a better job of defending the nation than Democratic rival Barack Obama. I am not at all sure why - how does fighting on the losing side in a war in which you spent five years as a PoW qualify you to win wars? However heroic McCain may have been during this ordeal (and unlike those in his party who smeared John Kerry's record during the last election, no one questions that), the key issue here is not courage, but political wisdom.

In the same speech, McBush came out with another classic line:

"Understand this: When I am commander -in-chief, there will be nowhere the terrorists can run, and nowhere they can hide."

Except, presumably, the Iraq-Pakistan border that exists only in his imagination.


OK, let's pass that one over as a slip of the tongue. What, you may ask, about McCain's years of service on the Senate Armed Services Committee?

Er, would that be the same Committee that endorsed the war on Iraq on the basis of "intelligence" reports supplied by a gung-ho President eager to flex his testicles? Reports that Barack Obama, I, and probably you as well, had no diffiulty recognising as lies, as indeed they proved to be? Reports that a credulous John McCain apparently swallowed whole?

Need I say more?