The Republican National Committee has been sending out the following article written by Zachary Roth from the Columbia Journalism Review.  Now, I know I for one have taken issue with statements attributed to Prez hopeful John McCain in regards to the length of time troops could wind up staying in Iraq, but at the same time, many of us have been a bit misdirected in how exactly he said it, read on-

Ever since John McCain said at a town hall meeting in January that he could see U.S. troops staying in Iraq for a hundred years, the Democrats have been trying to use the quote to paint the Arizona senator as a dangerous warmonger. …

But in doing so, Obama is seriously misleading voters — if not outright lying to them — about exactly what McCain said. …

Here’s McCain’s full quote, in context, from back in January:

Questioner: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years…

McCain: Maybe a hundred. Make it one hundred. We’ve been in South Korea, we’ve been in Japan for sixty years. We’ve been in South Korea for fifty years or so. That’d be fine with me as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. Then it’s fine with me. I would hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

It’s clear from this that McCain isn’t saying he’d support continuing the war for one hundred years, only that it might be necessary to keep troops there that long. That’s a very different thing. …

Nevertheless, back in February, Obama said: “We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another hundred years.” …

Today, for instance, he said: “We can’t afford to stay in Iraq, like John McCain said, for another hundred years.” … In other words, he’s gone from lying about what McCain said to being deeply misleading about it. Progress, of a kind. …

To be clear, if Obama wants to take issue with McCain’s willingness to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for a hundred years in any capacity, that’s obviously his right. But that’s not the same as misleading voters about what McCain is proposing …

True.  McCain isn’t saying he wants to stay in Iraq for the next hundred years.  Just that he’s willing to do so.

Glad we’ve got that cleared up.  Semantics are wonderful fun aren’t they?  I for one am not swayed to McCain’s side by this.  Because not only do I not want to see our troops (self included) in Iraq for the next hundred years.  I’m not willing to vote for a man who’s willing to have that happen, regardless of the capacity.

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Answer- Someone needs to step down and they all need to learn how to fucking get along!

You’ll have to excuse me here for getting a little worked up, but seriously, WTF is going on?  It’s a wretched time to be an American.  We’ve got recession on tap, joblessness (can’t say unemployment because most jobless people have given up on looking for new job and filing for unemployment, so the numbers are going down) never-ending war, and the people we all hoped might be able to drag us out of this won’t get out of each other’s shit, unite, and try to actually do something good for the country and it’s people.  Like Bill Clinton said recently- “Chill out.”  (Only, he said it for the wrong cause.  Bill buddy, your wife is losing.  Get over it.)

Democrats… someone either stop Hillary, or tell Obama that he’s good, the people like him, but the machine wants him to wait his turn.  Because right now, the more the two candidates drag this out and go back and forth with each other, the longer McCain gets to be largely ignored by the media and come into the actual elections looking relatively good- as he’s spent months letting the Dems do the work of tearing themselves apart for him.

And Iraq… oh Iraq.  We need to talk.  There’s something that’s been bugging us lately, and it’s mostly got to do with the fact that you all really don’t want us around.  Well guess what?  We don’t really want to be there either, but unless you can get all your religious factions to unite around common love for your state, we’re not going to be allowed to leave because someone somewhere thinks we’re keeping the peace or something.  I don’t give a rats ass if you’re a sunni or shiite or kurd, or if the whole damn country decides to convert to scientology.  Don’t care.  But guess what, I don’t agree with what the psycho-right-wing-conservative-christian-led government we’ve got here is up to 99% of the time, but shooting up the joint isn’t really the best way to go about these things.  Especially where you’ve got psycho-right-wing-conservative-christian-cowboys like Dubbya involved in the show. 

Ok, militias, the top dog wants you all to lay down your arms.  Got it.  Welcome to every backwoods NRA member asshole’s compound up in the forests of bumfuck USA.  “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hand”.  If you want to keep your guns, go hole up somewhere, shut up, and if you keep yours asses out of trouble, people will ignore you.  Then you can set up target practice ranges and fire off all the weapons you want.  al-Maliki, al-Sadr, you two need to sit down and work something out, or one of you has to take your people and go somewhere else.  It’s that simple.

And hey, we’ll accept blame.  We came into Iraq, we fucked it all up, factioned you guys up worse than before, and then played you all against each other so that we could claim we were working with the people to fight extremists. 

Look, we’d love to make things better for you guys, but haven’t you realized?  We can’t even figure out the relatively simple issue of our own country, which largely sits within the same political and religious spectrum, with a few easily workable differences (”in god we trust” is on the money, guess what- money IS the god we’re putting our trust in.  It’s got nothing to do with Jesus.  So atheists, I feel for you, but currency is the god we’re all kneeling to, you included.  Get over it.)  so how in the blue hell do you think we’re gonna be able to figure you guys out?  You all need to fix your damn country so we can pretend we had something to do with it, and leave feeling proud that we “stayed the course” or “accomplished the mission” or some other bumper sticker nonsense.

Which brings me back home…  Dems.  If you really want to fix America, start with yourselves.  If you’re not going to pull troops out, then say it.  Stop all the bullshit about pulling “combat forces” from Iraq, meaning you’ll be leaving just about everyone who’s over there now, because a large brunt of the forces are either support, or “peace keeping” or training.  And stop pretending you’re anything but politicians.  You’re not preachers, you’re not working class, you’re not heroes or victims… you’re politicians.  You’re walking talking scum sucking pieces of trash that unfortunately we need to run our country without us because the public that was supposed to be keeping tabs on things- decided to watch The Simple Life with Paris Hilton instead of caring about what’s going on in the economy (wish you’d paid atttention now don’t you?).  And for the love of god (read: $) settle down and pick just one person to run for President, because as bad as a Democrat might be in office… at least it wouldn’t be another Republican promising continued war and having no ideas in regards to domestic policies.  Sorry John, I can appreciate your past and all, but Iraq is a money pit, and we’re not really set up to “win” anything without sinking our country so deep it’ll never recover.

I know I’ve gotten off on a bit of a rant here today… but let’s face it, if you’re not pissed off- you’re not paying enough attention.

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