{"id":960,"date":"2008-06-30T12:16:09","date_gmt":"2008-06-30T19:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=960"},"modified":"2008-06-30T13:29:17","modified_gmt":"2008-06-30T20:29:17","slug":"john-mccains-truth-squad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=960","title":{"rendered":"John McCain’s Truth Squad"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Face the Nation<\/a> this weekend, Gen. Wesley Clark made the obvious observation that John McCain’s captivity in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp was not a qualification to be president. McCain’s ordeal was certainly horrific, but not leadership training. Clark’s comments will no doubt be controversial, but the reality is that living in a hut for five years, far removed from any management or policy development responsibilities, does not prepare one for executive leadership positions. McCain has other experience to promote, like his tenure in the Senate, but if he is considered to be qualified to be president solely on the basis of his time spent in jail, then Martha Stewart is qualified to be his Attorney General and Snoop Dogg his Secretary of State.<\/p>\n

McCain’s response to the matter is to set up a “Truth Squad.”<\/em> Leaving aside for the moment that nothing Clark said was untrue because it was merely his opinion, there are serious problems the new McMod Squad. The principle members include folks like Orson Swindle and George “Bud” Day.<\/p>\n

Lt. Col. Swindle has a long and infamous resume<\/a>. He is the McCain campaign’s veterans liaison as well as a board member of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), an independent advocacy group that has long backed McCain. CAGW has also been associated with unethical, if not illegal, activities on McCain’s behalf, and is tied to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Swindle himself is also a Senior Policy Advisor at the big DC lobbying firm of Hunton & Williams. All of these duties violate McCain’s own policy of not allowing people working for “independent entities”<\/em> from serving on his campaign staff.<\/p>\n

Col. Day was a member of another organization that misused the word “truth”<\/em> in their name, the Swiftboat Veterans for Truth<\/em>. He is now the director and president of the Vietnam Veterans Legacy Foundation, a group comprised of former swiftboaters and the owner of the rights to “Stolen Honor,”<\/em> the crocumentary featuring the swiftboat liars. It is interesting that McCain now employs Day to speak on his behalf. In 2004 he called Day’s slandering<\/a> of John Kerry “dishonest and dishonorable.”<\/em> Apparently those qualities are required by the McCain of 2008.<\/p>\n

Now McCain is criticizing Barack Obama for comments made by Wes Clark. Obama has already rejected Clark’s statements, but that hasn’t stopped McCain from demagoguing the character issue. McCain himself, not a surrogate, said Saturday<\/a> that “Obama’s word cannot be trusted.”<\/em> Will McCain now condemn himself for engaging in dirty politics?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Face the Nation this weekend, Gen. Wesley Clark made the obvious observation that John McCain’s captivity in a North Vietnamese prisoner of war camp was not a qualification to be president. McCain’s ordeal was certainly horrific, but not leadership training. Clark’s comments will no doubt be controversial, but the reality is that living in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[152,1,8],"tags":[183,333,103,314,201],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-election","category-general","category-propaganda","tag-barack-obama","tag-george-day","tag-john-mccain","tag-orson-swindle","tag-wesley-clark"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-fu","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1033,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1033","url_meta":{"origin":960,"position":0},"title":"Vote For John McCain For A Prison-Tested President","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/27\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Running for president requires great strength and stamina. The race is long and treacherous. John McCain has been forcefully pushing his argument that he is better qualified for the job than his opponent, Barack Obama. In fact, McCain contends that Obama is not qualified at all. The latest McCain ad\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art\/Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Art\/Culture","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=9"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1054,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1054","url_meta":{"origin":960,"position":1},"title":"The John McCain Experience","author":"Mark NC","date":"9\/13\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Much of the focus of John McCain's campaign for president has been on his reputed experience (and just as often, the alleged lack of same for his opponent). But there has been sparse actual examination of how that argument should be measured. Is spending five and a half years in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1028,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1028","url_meta":{"origin":960,"position":2},"title":"Barack Obama Picks Joe Biden – So Does John McCain","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/23\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"It didn't take long for news of Barack Obama's selection of Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate to stir John McCain's campaign PR machine. The first comments from McCain's people were released quickly and contained a fair measure of respect for Biden himself. In fact, they relied wholly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":812,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=812","url_meta":{"origin":960,"position":3},"title":"The Myth Of Maverick McCain","author":"Mark NC","date":"2\/27\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"John McCain's image, as propounded by his spinners (aka: the Media) is that of a maverick who shuns political opportunists and slaps the hands of greedy, special interest self-promoters. It's an image that gets projected repeatedly by pundits and lazy journalists whose writing seems to be on auto-pilot. They reason\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1014,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=1014","url_meta":{"origin":960,"position":4},"title":"John McCain’s Fear Of The Internets","author":"Mark NC","date":"8\/13\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Last month John McCain said that Americans are tired of the Internet. It's highly unlikely that he was actually speaking for all Americans, or even anything more than a small brood of Luddites. It is more likely that he himself is tired of the Internet, or perhaps just tired, period.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Big Media"","block_context":{"text":"Big Media","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=12"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":852,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=852","url_meta":{"origin":960,"position":5},"title":"John McCain’s Ad: Connecting The Dots","author":"Mark NC","date":"3\/30\/2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Upon closer examination of John McCain's new campaign ad, some interesting messages become apparent... Announcer: Keep that faith. Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong. Do not yield [...] we'll never surrender. Was that McCain or Jim Jones? No matter. The ad goes on to ask, \"What must a president\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election"","block_context":{"text":"Election","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?cat=152"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}