Transcript: The John McCain Interview
For those who have not had the opportunity to listen to the podcast of the John McCain interview yesterday, or for those who want to excerpt it for debate, the transcript is now ready at Heading Right. Even in the transcript, one gets the sense of McCain's offended sensibilities from Harry Reid's publicity stunts this week, calling the suspension of the defense authorization bill "unconscionable" and noting that the Senate has more comedy than comity in the 110th Congress. For instance, McCain made his point plain in this exchange:
But then he pulls the bill down after not getting 60 votes, and guess where we are? The military does not get a three and a half percent pay raise, we don’t authorize these new types of equipment to fight IED’s, the wounded warrior legislation, the wounded war legislation was to try to fix this terrible scandal out at Walter Reed, and other aspects of our treatment of the men and women in the military and our veterans. That all gets pulled out, that all gets pulled out and I think its unconscionable, I think it’s absolutely unconscionable, and by the way with the full and certain knowledge, whether I happen to like it or not, that a month and a half from now in September, guess what? We’re going to take up Iraq again after General Paetreus is required to make a report to the Congress and the nation. So what was this all about? It was exactly what this guy who is one of the major people in moveon.org said it was, it was about putting pressure on Republican senators to get them to come out to withdraw from Iraq, and so at the expense of the security of this nation, the welfare of the men and women who are serving our nation, we bring up the Department Of Defense authorization bill, fight about it over Iraq, a publicity stunt to stay overnight, and then they pull the bill. Now I don’t know, I can’t recall something that is quite of this nature. I’ll try to restrain my rhetoric here, but have we forgotten, have we forgotten that our first obligation is to these young men and women who are serving our nation and give them the equipment, the training and the quality of life that they deserve. Instead he used that as a vehicle to for their own political agenda of the Democrat party, who by the way, quote Sen. Schumer, we will pick up seats as a result of this war. And pulled it down without us acting on what’s a vital ingredient in determining and assisting the national security of this nation. That’s the end of my tirade, Ed.
But it wasn't -- and it was fascinating. Be sure to read the entire transcript, and listen to the podcast as well.
UPDATE: John Kerry asserted that the stories of bloodbaths following the fall of South Vietnam were nothing but myths, in an appearance yesterday on C-SPAN:
Sen. John Kerry said during a C-SPAN appearance that fears of a bloodbath after the US withdrawal from Vietnam never materialized. He says he's met survivors of the "reeducation camps" who are thriving in modern Vietnam. An award-winning investigation by the Orange County Register concludes that at least 165,000 people perished in the camps.
That's breathtaking idiocy. I lived in Orange County, California, when hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese came to this country in rickety boats, victimized by piracy and the sea, just to escape the bloodbath that followed. The number that The Register published may be low; other estimates put the total closer to a half-million. Even at that number, it's three times the number of American men and women who died trying to prevent it. Shame on Kerry for his despicable fronting for the Communists in Southeast Asia.
Kerry's statement didn't get publicized until after I spoke with John McCain, but the subject came up anyway:
We said, if we left Cambodia, everything would be fine. Stop the bombing in Cambodia. I can find you the quotes in the Congressional Record. Stop the bombing in Cambodia, they’ll sort these things out. And they’ll have a nation that’s free from interference and killing by the Americans. Well, yeah, they got it. Three million people slaughtered in genocide. Three million. And everything was going to be fine in Vietnam if you might recall. It was going to be workers paradise. Thousands executed. Millions – hundreds of thousands put in re-education camps. Millions of people risking their lives to get in boats to get the hell out of there. Because of the incredible oppression that existed. And I don’t mean to keep revisiting another war, but if we ignore the lessons of history, the consequences are obvious.
If we keep electing idiots and enablers like Kerry to office, we'll wind up rewriting history instead.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on July 20, 2007 6:13 AM | Comments () | TrackBacks (1)
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