Tuesday, October 16, 2007

JOHN MCCAIN

John McCain before the Republican Jewish Coalition

McCain opens with an old joke, “After following Senator Brownback and Mayor Giuliani, I feel a bit like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s fifth husband. I understand he said on his wedding night, ‘I know what I’m supposed to do, I just don’t know how to make it interesting.’” Then he tells that he used that joke a few years back before a different audience, and when he finished his remarks, he found that the subsequent speaker was… Senator John Warner, Elizabeth Taylor’s sixth husband. “He was not amused,” McCain said.McCain talks about his early support for the troop surge, and how he was a critic of previous strategies that didn’t use enough troops. Referring to yesterday’s Washington Post story suggesting al-Qaeda in Iraq may be falling apart, McCain says, “Don’t underestimate al-Qaeda. Don’t underestimate their ability to use cyber-space. Don’t underestimate their ability to replace their leader… This is a struggle that’s going to be with us for the rest of this century.”He mocks the U.N. resolutions calling for the disarmament of Hezbollah. “Seen any disarming of Hezbollah lately?”

McCain seems fired up today, perhaps a bit irked, or irritable. Not angry at the audience, but angry about the topics he’s talking about. (He later says he's in a mood because the Arizona Diamondbacks "have ceased their efforts to win the World Series.")

He speaks for a few moments about torture, and says, “every retired general and military offcial figure says we shouldn’t torture. Those who have never served in the military want to torture. Why is that?”

“I would make clear to Mr. Putin he’s not going to bully us… It’s time we got a little tougher with Mr. Putin. There are penalties associated with his behavior. I don’t think I would invite him to Sedona.”I think that was a jab at Bush for having Putin to the ranch, and meeting in Kennebunkport this summer.A questioner asks about the Democrats ‘efforts to ruin our relationship with Turkey.’

“What happened in 1915 was genocide and we deplore it. It’s important that we point that out. It’s important to point out that genocide is happening in otherplaces in this world, places like Darfur. Genocide may occur if we fail in our mission in Iraq… What happened in 1915, it was not the present government of Turkey. I very much worry about alienating the Turkish people. What we’re doing to deliberately alienate the Turks is not in our national interest… We need to work harder on the Kurds, and with the Turks, to suppress the PKK.”

10/16 11:07 AMShare