<p>Rick Perry?! I wouldn’t want him to be president of my Homeowner’s Association.</p>
<p>I dont like perry either; he’s the main proponent of the TransTexasCorridor.</p>
<p>I like McCain but worry that he is too stubborn and hot-headed. Can we trust him with the nukes? And his abortion stance worries me too.</p>
<p>McCain is a warmonger who appears at times to not be playing with all of his marbles. The Republican operatives know about his precarious state, but I think it become clearer once he is on even a tougher schedule. It is taking a big chance to elect him. However, the Republican Party thinks he is more manageable than Romney and they can control him better. If he is elected, look out for more soldiers killed in Iraq. Each of his beloved surges mean more promising lives are lost. I work in an area where the recruiters have stepped up their efforts and proportionally more young people there are coming home from Iraq wounded or killed. Which of the viable candidates actually cares enough to stop the blood? Certainly not McCain. </p>
<p>What’s another soldier’s life to him? His career is more important. As a former POW, he should be ashamed to send soldiers to such terrible fates. McCain is unteachable.</p>
<p>“What’s another soldier’s life to him? His career is more important.”</p>
<p>This statement more than any of yours tells me that you have no clue.</p>
<p>
And if you examining this issue objectively, then surely you would admit that Hillary Clinton is also a war monger given that she votd for the war in Iraq. And you would add that Bill Clinton was a war monger given that he dropped 450 Tomahawk cruise missiles on Iraq in 1998 and killed many people in the Kosovo etc. conflict. Are you willing to admit that?</p>
<p>Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the “surge” in Iraq result in a DECREASE in violence & the number of Americans killed?</p>
<p>McCain’s strategy will come closer to actually ENDING this thing - it wouldn’t be a protracted presence where we’re just “sitting ducks” such as some others are proposing. And it wouldn’t be “just backing out” creating a vacume readily filled by that crazy Amedinejad. McCain will listen to the generals on the ground and let them make the decisions. They know the best way to handle everything - not the politicians. THAT’S the way to keep the casualties down.</p>
<p>BTW, let’s remember that those jihadists declared war on US - they attacked US! Bush was smart to choose the battlefield. Would you rather we were trying to find and defeat ALL the jihadists in the mountains of Afghanistan? It’s tough enough to battle the few who didn’t go to Iraq to fight! Bush accomplished several strategic goals by claiming Iraq as the place to engage the enemy who had ALREADY gone to war against us. Thank God & GW that we aren’t fighting them HERE - I’m sure the jihadists would’ve much prefered that!</p>
<p>I don’t think any of them have a plan to get the troops out of Iraq. Reference Sen Byrd’s speech before the troops were sent there originally, and you will see what a real statesman thought about Iraq.</p>
<p>Are your children enlisting? Are you volunteering to go? Or are you allowing the blue collar kids to fight the war for you and McCain? He wants to be there for years. You come speak with the parents whose children have died in my area and explain why McCain wants to “surge” their young men and women.</p>
<p>I have never liked Hillary Clinton. I don’t think that she has policies that I can agree with on many fronts. But I think that there is no question as to whether she is in early senility, as there is with McCain, who will not release a list of medications that he is on, and bumbles and fumbles a lot now. That disqualifies him from being president, in my own opinion, and that of others who have worked with patients who have mental deficiencies.April is NOT a year. Putin is from Russia, not Germany. I think that McCain needs to know that if he wants to lead America.</p>
<p>“BTW, let’s remember that those jihadists declared war on US - they attacked US! Bush was smart to choose the battlefield. Would you rather we were trying to find and defeat ALL the jihadists in the mountains of Afghanistan? It’s tough enough to battle the few who didn’t go to Iraq to fight! Bush accomplished several strategic goals by claiming Iraq as the place to engage the enemy who had ALREADY gone to war against us. Thank God & GW that we aren’t fighting them HERE - I’m sure the jihadists would’ve much prefered that!”</p>
<p>The argument that the Iraquis would now be in the US fighting your boys and girls on the streets of Americia if we had not invaded them has absolutely no credence. It’s some kind of paranoid fantasy that Bush uses to justify an unnecessary war.</p>
<p>If you believe in it so much, go to Iraq and fight instead of sitting in the US at a computer on a website for exclusive parents and children. Or are you there as an enlistee? Probably not, you can leave the dirty work to those less fortunate.</p>
<p>
It is not possible to diagnose someone by watching him on television. It is possible to assume and speculate and then spread that unsubstantiated speculation until someone else believes it.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I can give you four thousand reasons to hate McCain. I can give those same four thousand reasons to hate Hillary as well.</p>
<p>Can you disagree with out hating?</p>
<p>bz2010: You obviously still buy the Bush/Cheney lie about linking Iraq and terrorism. The terrorism that exists in Iraq today would not have existed had we not gone in. Al Qaida was on the verge of extinction after the Afghanistan war and had we just continued there in full force there we would be in great shape. Instead, we went into Iraq, neglected Afghanistan and Pakistan, and now all three countries are a huge mess and breeding ground for terrorism. </p>
<p>Coming back to the topic though, I agree with you about the success of the surge strategy. I admired McCain then as I do now for supporting the surge. </p>
<p>From its inception, I was against the Iraq war but I was always for the troop surge. I am also for the continued presence of troops in Iraq, though I’m not sure we need to be there for 100 years. We should not have gone in there in the first place but now that we are there we cannot afford to leave without finishing the job and making amends to the Iraqi people. We have destroyed their country and we need to fix it before we leave.</p>
<p>swatparent - I have a son on active duty right now.
I was a navy wife for over twenty years.
My deceased brother volunteered for two tours as a Marine in Vietnam.
My sister was a Vietnam-era Navy Nurse.
My father was active duty during WWII.
Need I go on?
The ONLY reason I wasn’t active duty was because I had a crushed leg & 2 broken arms at age 18, but believe me, as a Navy wife & mother, you understand the deployments, the sacrifices, & the risks.</p>
<p>If you don’t think that Bush was smart to CHOOSE the battlefield on which to engage an enemy who had already declared war on us, then you really have no clue.</p>
<p>Vicarious…good on you!</p>
<p>I am so tired of hearing I am against the war, but support the troops, and then they go into a litany of how many troops have died, and how the plan is not working.</p>
<p>As a spouse of an active duty member, we are VERY AWARE of how dangerous it is over there, and how many brothers and sisters (military members considered ea and every one their family). We have had to attend the funeral services, nothing will shake you to your core until you hear a 21 gun, or the noise of a missing man.</p>
<p>If you truly support the troops, contact the nearest base and ask how you can send care packages to them and just write a note saying “Thanks, Enjoy the Oreo’s”</p>
<p>Back onto McCain…I actually have faith that because McCain lived the worse life any service member could ever endure, he would be the last to place the U.S. into a military conflict, the first to try to secure peace in the area and get our butts out. And would make sure Abu Grahib will never happen again.</p>
<p>I also respect him for being the guy who screams every year about Pork Barrel, he has done this for at least 8 years…I know he actually comes out every year and announces what has been put in the bill, because I laugh each and everytime.</p>
<p>My final respect for him is that as a father he has guarded his adopted daughter (Cindy met her on a medical junket in Africa (?) she had a cleft pallete) He never lowered himself to allow her to be a pawn in the campaign.
He also has been open about Cindy’s prescription drug dependency issue that she conquered back @ 15 yrs ago (not sure, but I think it was early 90’s).</p>
<p>With McCain, everything has already been brought out, I can’t see how they will find anymore ghosts…but then again I am sure people will now bring up the fact that Gary Hart was an usher in his wedding</p>
<p>Dear Swatparent,</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>MY DH is active duty and has spent many months at a time in that area for @ 17 yrs…yep he was in theatre when Kuwait got invaded and we had a 6 mos. old. His last stint was for 4 mos. in the green zone. BTW I come from area where we lost military members…I have been to the funerals,where the wife is holding a baby, I have heard the 21 gun salute, and seen the missing man formation. Have you actually talked to these parents/spouses, I have and believe it or not they do take great amount of pride. They know that this is what they chose to do and they are okay with it. If I lost my DH tomorrow I will be okay, I will miss him and cry hysterically, but I know he has always been very proud to defend your right to say that quote. I am proud of him and my son, and I am quite proud that they are so selfless. AF slogan “Service before Self”. So tonight when you argue about the surge, realize that there is someone right now that is in the AF, NAVY, ARMY, CG that will be on watch somewhere in the world so you have the ability to ask your questions. </p>
<p>MY DS will be attending college in the fall, he will be either going to the AF Academy or ROTC at various universities… his pick for president is McCain. He will be voting for him.</p>
<p>I do not know what I did in my life to be blessed with these 2 men, but I know that they are amazing people, both of them would not even get into this fight. They respect your right, that is what they signed up for…I am Wife and Mom, so I will defend their actions/decisions.</p>
<p>Just so you know I will vote for McCain too, but if Romney wins the nom, I will jump sides to Obama, my DS has decided he will too. Why? Romney scares us, when even his state papers and former governors don’t endorse him, you must start looking deeper as to why? I think Obama is a great orator, I don’t think he has the ability to say he is a proven leader, but faced with someone who is a “proven leader” and is not supported in his own state, I will go with hope that the unproven will be able to succeed</p>
<p>Bz- are you saying, that regardless of whether Iraq had anything to do with the attack on us, that Bush had the right to choose that country strategically as the front in order to lure those that hate us there to fight?</p>
<p>
Impressive !!!</p>
<p>Then you, having so many soldiers in your families, above anyone, should be looking to preserve world peace. There are way too many soldiers coming home with ruined lives and bodies. This war was not justifiable, and I am very glad that people who support it send their family members to fight there, so that those who don’t won’t be forced to do that. There is no evidence whatsoever that this war in Iraq has done anything towards peace, and has ruined innumerable lives in Iraq and the US.</p>
<p>We need great statesmen and women now. I see few, if any, just warmongers such as McCain.</p>
<p>As to his medical problems and mental state, if he had nothing to hide he would release his current psychological and physical exam results, and a list of medications he has taken in the last 2 years, especially when his mental status is so in question. He’s 71 and has been through a lot mentally and physically. The country deserves to know.</p>
<p>Swat,</p>
<p>Where is Hillary’s, Obama’s, Romney’s Huckabee’s. Pauls, etc.medical recs. Reagan was 1 yr younger when he was elected for his first term. </p>
<p>As a military spouse knock it off with the word “WARMONGER” it is as offensive to me as a racial, or religious slur is to anyone else. I have been personally told that my DH is a warmonger because he is in the military. Those in the military do not want to go to battle, they don’t sit there rubbing their hands and praying it will happen. They have families and loved ones left behind, just like McCain did…do not think for one minute that any former military member who has endured battle and imprisonment does not think alot longer and harder about the subject than someone who has never been in battle. What you are actually stating is McCain is heartless and wants the chance to send his son Jack (USNA class of 09) to war and take the chance he may have to repeat history of being the father to order a bombing run on a POW camp where he knows his son is being held. Seriously, that makes no sense at all. In case you didn’t know McCains dad ordered the bombing of Hanoi Hilton knowing John McCAin was prisoner. McCain also followed the rule when allowed to be swapped in a POW exchange, he refused, adhering to the rule First In First Out, and knew that if he left he would be propaganda and would not give that luxury to the Vietnamese.</p>
<p>BTW Hillary voted for the invasion, Obama didn’t because he wasn’t in the senate. It is easy for him to say he wouldn’t have voted, but the reality is he was not privy to the info supplied.</p>
<p>I think they all need to reveal their medical and mental fitness for president.</p>
<p>I am not saying that I support any of the current candidates, as they are all flawed in my mind, and none of them have the statesman or stateswomanly qualities that I would look for in a world leader. These are a rare breed.</p>
<p>The term warmonger means: “a person who advocates, endorses, or tries to precipitate war.” This describes McCain, and Bush. Both are for this war, as are other candidates, and saw solutions for Iraq in a violent, not peaceful manner.</p>
<p>This word is in sharp contrast to a racial slur. Race we are born into, supporting wars is a chosen behavior. There is no parallel.</p>
<p>You may not be able to see that there are ways to negotiate the vast majority of solutions without a militaristic approach, which should be used, in my opinion, only as a last resort, not as a preemptive move based on false intelligence in a relatively peaceful solution.</p>
<p>If your family has a different viewpoint that is fine, but not all of us see war as a solution that is begun as quickly as George W. Bush did in this case. And this is a learned behavior. Racial background is genetic. I certainly hope that support for war is not genetic!</p>