{"id":16403,"date":"2008-07-29T14:20:23","date_gmt":"2008-07-29T18:20:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16369.html"},"modified":"2008-07-29T14:20:23","modified_gmt":"2008-07-29T18:20:23","slug":"mccain-to-follow-bin-laden-to-the-gates-of-hell-unless-the-gates-are-in-pakistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccain-to-follow-bin-laden-to-the-gates-of-hell-unless-the-gates-are-in-pakistan\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain to follow bin Laden to the gates of hell — unless the gates are in Pakistan"},"content":{"rendered":"

John McCain appeared via satellite with CNN’s Larry King last night, and the two covered a fair amount of ground in a short amount of time. There were a handful of important exchanges, but this<\/a> was arguably the most striking.<\/p>\n

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For those of you who can’t watch clips online, TPM first showed McCain vowing to follow Osama bin Laden to “the gates of hell.” Then, from the CNN interview, King asked McCain what he’d do, as president, if he learned that bin Laden was in Pakistan, and he had a choice to send in U.S. forces after him. McCain replied<\/a>, “Larry, I’m not going to go there and here’s why, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation…. But I want to assure you I will get Osama bin Laden as president of the United States and I will bring him to justice no matter what it takes.”<\/p>\n

Unless, “what it takes” includes going into Pakistan.<\/p>\n

I have to admit, I’ve heard McCain staking out a similar position for months, and I have no idea why he’s sticking to this. Barack Obama has said he’d pursue high-value terrorist targets into areas of Pakistan where the Musharraf government has little or no control, launching limited attacks based on actionable intelligence. McCain believes we shouldn’t<\/i> pursue these terrorist targets, because he’s concerned about Pakistani “sovereignty.”<\/p>\n

But this is crazy. Existing U.S. policy, under the Bush administration, is to go after terrorists in Pakistan. Obama wants to keep this policy in place. In fact, we’ve already executed this policy on more than one occasion, and have killed al Qaeda leaders<\/a> hiding in Pakistani mountains. McCain thinks this is a mistake? McCain disagrees with existing U.S. policy? He wants to do “what it takes,” but Pakistani “sovereignty” is so important, McCain would scale back<\/i> counter-terrorism efforts in the region?<\/p>\n

If there’s any coherent rationale behind McCain’s approach, it’s hiding well.
\n
\nAs long as we’re on the subject, there were a few other tidbits worth noting from McCain’s CNN interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

He claimed, for example, that Obama “wants basically government to run the health care program.” That’s an obvious lie<\/a>. McCain insisted that Obama “wants to raise taxes,” without noting that Obama is targeting those who make more than $250,000 a year, and actually offers more generous tax cuts for the middle class<\/a> than McCain does.<\/p>\n

McCain also boasted, “I would remind you, I said we would have an easy victory [in Iraq]. We did,” proving once again that the twisted “Mission Accomplished” mindset is identical in both Bush and McCain.<\/p>\n

This might have been my favorite exchange, though:<\/p>\n

KING: You said yesterday that you endorse an Arizona ballot referendum to eliminate affirmative action. Ten years ago, you described a similar effort as “divisive.” What changed?<\/p>\n

MCCAIN: You know, I don’t know what we’re talking about. About 10 years ago and I’m going to look it up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“I don’t know what we’re talking about.” That’s one of my favorite McCain quotes in a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John McCain appeared via satellite with CNN’s Larry King last night, and the two covered a fair amount of ground in a short amount of time. There were a handful of important exchanges, but this was arguably the most striking. For those of you who can’t watch clips online, TPM first showed McCain vowing to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}