On the morning of the 9/11, just moments after the World Trade Center collapsed from the terrorist strikes, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) went on television and immediately began focusing the nation’s attention on Iraq. In an interview with CBS’ Dan Rather on 9/11, McCain said:To be honest with you, Dan, I never thought that an operation of this sophistication and size would take place. I just never did. But I don’t think there’s any doubt that there are countries — Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea and others — who we know engage in proliferation of — of capabilities and, from time to time, involve themselves in state-sponsored terrorism. But never did we imagine on a scale such as this.
The next day, on 9/12, McCain reiterated the point in an interview with Chris Matthews. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he said, “we’re talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, perhaps North Korea, Libya and others.”
Just a few weeks later — on Oct. 9, 2001 — McCain narrowed his focus, arguing that Iraq was “obviously” next:
PAULA ZAHN: And as you know, Senator, the U.S. and Great Britain notified the U.N. Security Council yesterday that they reserve the right to strike against other countries in this campaign. What countries are we looking at?MCCAIN: Well, I think very obviously Iraq is the first country, but there are others — Syria, Iran, the Sudan, who have continued to harbor terrorist organizations and actually assist them.On Oct. 18, 2001, McCain told David Letterman, “the second phase is Iraq” while linking Iraq to the anthrax attacks. In Jan. 2002, McCain visited a crowd of soldiers aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt and yelled: “Next up, Baghdad!”
The New York Times’ David Kirkpatrick recently noted that McCain “began making his case for invading Iraq to the public more than six months before the White House began to do the same.” The Times reported:While pushing to take on Saddam Hussein, Mr. McCain also made arguments and statements that he may no longer wish to recall. He lauded the war planners he would later criticize, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney. (Mr. McCain even volunteered that he would have given the same job to Mr. Cheney.) He urged support for the later-discredited Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi’s opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, and echoed some of its suspect accusations in the national media. And he advanced misleading assertions not only about Mr. Hussein’s supposed weapons programs but also about his possible ties to international terrorists, Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks.
I didn’t know about this. I guess that back then I was in the same fog everyone else was. All I knew was that Clinton had taken a pot-shot at Afghanistan after somebody, and that there was a sense that the embassy bombings and the other attacks were coming from some unified group. I’m either surprised or ashamed to say that I’d never even heard of Al Qaeda or Osama Bin Laden before 9/11. I think back then, it was a more naive time. When McCain and others said these things about Iraq, we thought they were talking about something they knew – like James Bond told them or something like that. We had no idea that McCain, Bush, Cheney, et al were all just shooting from the hip.
And back then, I would have personally listened to John McCain over Bush and Cheney. Back then, I listened to Colin Powell in the same way. Principled Warriors speaking the informed truth. But even more than his indictment of Iraq, McCain was making a massive mistake – one that Bill Clinton did not make. The C.I.A. and the rest of the Intelligence Community was saying that the Terrorism was not "State Sponsored," but a movement growing on its own. That made perfect sense. We could’ve easily quashed State Sponsored Terrorism. We’d done it in the First Gulf War. We could do it again.
But McCain was joining Bush and Cheney in drinking the Koolade coming out of the American Enterprise Institute at that time – from the mouths of John Bolton, Michael Ledeen, Laurie Mylroie., etc. State Sponsored Terrorism ERGO bring down the States. He was part of the miscalculations that lead us down the garden path in 2001. What’s to say he’s not still on that path? Nothing! John McCain was not informed then. He’s not informed now…
This really makes me angry all over again. I am so sick of their false intelligence and using it to further their agenda items. “By any means necessary” politics for big business gains has taken over our political system. This proves, yet again, that McCain is Bush Redux. It just makes me sick.
I just saw the headline on the huffingtonpost.com saw that the hosts of the ABC the View asked McCain today why his campaign ads say lies and McCain said everything his ads says are true. I think people are going to get that McCain and Palin are LIARS.