Presidential candidate John McCain appeared at a town hall meeting in New Mexico today. And, for some reason, tacitly endorsed the draft.
It all went down when an audience member turned the topic toward veteran’s rights and said, quite astoundingly, “If we don’t reenact the draft I don’t think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.”
To this McCain replied, “Ma’am let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said and thank you and I am grateful for your support of all of our veterans.”
So McCain would rather force America’s young men to serve in the military than lift Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which has deprived our military of an estimated 12,000 able soldiers? That’s simply mind boggling.
Watch the video above. We’ve included a transcript after the jump…
Audience Member: Senator McCain I truly hope you get the opportunity to chase Bin Laden right to the gates of hell and push him in as you stated on your forum. I do have a question though. Disable veterans, especially in this state have horrible conditions, their medical is substandard. They drive four hours one way to Albuquerque for a simple doctors appointment which is often canceled. Our VA hospital is dirty it is understaffed, it is running on maximum overload. The prescription medicines are ten years behind standard medical care we have seven hundred claims stacked up at the VA office in Albuquerque some of them are ten and seven years old waiting to be processed in the mean time these people are homeless. My son is an officer in the Air Force, and I am a vet and I was raised in a military family. I think it is a sad state of affairs when we have illegal aliens having a Medicaid card that can access specialist top physicians, the best of medical and our vets can’t even get to a doctor. These are the people that we tied yellow ribbons for and Bush patted on the back. If we don’t reenact the draft I don’t think we will have anyone to chase Bin Laden to the gates of hell.
How about we take this to the next level?
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McCain: Ma’am let me say that I don’t disagree with anything you said and thank you and I am grateful for your support of all of our veterans.
Little one
It’s pretty clear that John McCain is being groomed by the government/corporate media to be the next president of the United States.
Obviously, this is bad news.
The man is half-deranged and can’t even get his lies straight. He’s worse than what most of us hoped would be the worst president of the last 100 years.
Why do the controllers want this guy?
Because he will be easy to manage.
He’ll be their guy.
Brave New Films has generated over 2 million views of its McCain reality check videos so far.
Impressive when you consider that “Crossfire” the bogus right/left discussion program on CNN had only 100,000 viewers.
Watch this SHORT clip:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/325.html
David
Here is McCain saying he is against the draft.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BxXsZMlyXM&feature=related
The lady was rambling on and on and McCain didn’t hear every word she said.
This is totally taking McCain out of context.
McCain has said many times he is against the draft.
McCain has open town halls all the time. Obama doesn’t have open town halls. So you use McCain’s openess with the public to use the public’s words against him.
McCain is a navy man. He hates war. He is an internationalist. He has two sons in the military. McCain wants to close gitmo. McCain wants to sign kyoto. McCain voted against keeping our troops in Lebanon. McCain said our troops can come home from Iraq in two years.
By the way the president has nothing to do with the draft. Congress is the only body that can order a draft.
mark
young men and women just said…OH HELL NO to Mcsame
Darren
The funniest part about reenacting the draft is that it would force gay men to serve…in which case “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” wouldn’t work; it would entirely contradict the draft (if they were to draft absolutely everybody).
McCain looked like he was just trying to hold himself together and certainly doesn’t look like he was listening.
Lucas
This is a classic case of double talk — the meaning of what the lady is said is clear, but McCain’s reply leave some room for “maneuver”. I’m sure McCain’s camp would argue, that McCain said he would not disagree with her, but that does not mean he necessarily agrees with her or endorses a draft.
The right would probably praise McCain for his “wit”; while if it were Obama, they would have criticized his “flip-flopping” and blown this issue out of proportion, causing certain uproar.
Timothy Kincaid
The woman’s meaning was clear… if we don’t start treating our troops better the only way we will have troops is through a draft.
Of course McCain haters can translate that into “McCain supports the draft” if they want but it only discredits those who do.
If you don’t want to vote for McCain, don’t. There are plenty of reasons not to give him your vote. You don’t have to fabricate more.
Kevin
It looks like McCain formulated his response before she finished her comment (he kept trying to raise the mic and then lowered it as she kept talking), and then tuned out the rest of her comment. That said, can he really backtrack and say he didn’t pay attention? If he just said “I agree with you and thank you for supporting our veterans,” he could backtrack to say he just agreed with the veterans care portion. Adding “I don’t disagree with ANYTHING you said” (emphasis added) makes that a little trickier.
That said … isn’t this the same McCain that voted *against* increasing benefits for veterans?
I think it would have more traction to capitalize on that as hypocrisy, and just throw in the draft element, because otherwise focusing on the draft piece can be explained away as taking the comment out of context and makes us sound petty.
mark
Not just gays/lesbians, any future draft would include all women too.
Mr C
Wait David@ #2
You said:
.Really? To stay in Iraq 1 day after Jan 1,2009 is TOO DAMN LONG
Yes he has 2 sons in the military and as they say.Like Father, Like Sons
If you really think McCain doesn’t want to go to war. Just listen to his comments this week and last week regarding the situations in Georgia.
He’s a strong>HOT HEADED TEMPERED MANand will be ready to strong>GO OFF THE DEEP END
at any given time. And we cannot afford this.
At least Obama is willing to mediate issues before going to the strong>Fifth Element McCain made it strong>PLAIN AND SIMPLE he doesnt plan to talk to any of these governments. And you cannot come any agreement without strong>Talking…right? So to say he doesn’t want to go to war. I respectfully disagree with you on that.
And one thing you’re right about it is Congress who would reinstate the draft and pass other laws we need in our country including issues that concern the LGBTcommunity.
It’s just McCain is noFriend of ours!
Mr C
Wait David@ #2
You said:
Really?
To stay in Iraq 1 day after Jan 1,2009 is TOO DAMN LONG
Yes he has 2 sons in the military and as they say.Like Father,Like Sons
If you really think McCain doesn’t want to go to war. Just listen to his comments this week and last week regarding the situations in Georgia.
He’s a HOT TEMPERED MAN
and will be ready to GO OFF THE DEEP END at any given time. And we cannot afford this.
At least Obama is willing to mediate issues before going to the FIFTH ELEMENT
McCain made it PLAIN AND SIMPLEhe doesnt plan to talk to any of these governments. And you cannot come any agreement without talking…right? So to say he doesn’t want to go to war. I respectfully disagree with you on that.
And one thing you’re right about it is Congress who would reinstate the draft and pass other laws we need in our country including issues that concern the LGBT
community.
It’s just McCain is noFriendof ours!
ousslander
Well than that would put him in step with Democrats like Charles Rangel
Jason
There won’t be a draft. The GOP set out to break our military and they are doing a great job in doing such. That way, they can hire private contractors to do the job and corporations can make more money and have more control over this country.
todd
He will kill more people than even Bush. He loves the war, and when he’s done – he will just go back to one of his 10 houses…
ksu499
This is being taken completely out of context and blown up into a story that does not exist. I could not believe that Keith Olberman also fell for the “OMG, McCain wants to reintroduce the draft” line. If you watch the whole exchange, the woman says if A, B, and C continue, we will have to start drafting people again in order to have enough troops to pursue Bin Laden. McCain says he can’t disagree with anything she just said. This means that McCain agrees that if we don’t fix these things — A, B, and C — we will indeed run out of troops. It doesn’t mean McCain wants to reintroduce the draft. McCain is long opposed to reintroducing the draft. He knows that the days of six weeks of basic and shove rifle into their hands is long over. Being a soldier is too complicated.
Brendan D.
Eh. I’m no fan of McCain, but I do think the headline provided here is a little misleading. I suppose you could argue that his comments MIGHT indicate support for the draft, but I think it’s more accurate to surmise that he was responding to her comment about treating veterans better (and getting in a sidelong shot at immigrant rights) as a whole, as opposed to the specific issue of the draft. These bullshit “town hall meetings” are usually stuffed with plants. It’s meant to be a softball question. Why would they let anyone ask about the draft, considering it’s virtually no option for the GOP if they don’t want to breed a Vietnam-era subculture of resistance.
Kevin M
I’d like to remind us (myself included) that Senator McCain is an honorable man who served his country in the military and then, after enduring being a POW, came back to his homeland and served his state and his country as an elected official. He has supported policies which have been unpopular both with the left and with the right at various times in his career; I argue that this shows his allegiance to principle and not to party platforms.
If you disagree with Mr McCain on his policies, great. That’s what the political process welcomes: dissent and discussion. But we should be careful not to demonize or use hyperbolic statements (I’m looking at you, Mr C) in describing our feelings on Mr McCain.
Let’s also stop taking his statements out of context and attributing absolute policy positions based on comments made on or off the campaign trail. If I were held to the same standard, I’d be on the other side of the abortion issue, I’d pray every night to Jesus, and I’d be a voracious bottom (hey, we all exagerate inside chat rooms).
Mr McCain is not a bad person. So let’s stop treating him like one. Let’s focus our criticism on policies, on ideas, and not on characters that the ratings-driven media (such as Mr Olbermann) construct to enrage their viewers.
We, as an American people, with as much education and experience as we have, are smarter than that.
ChicagoJimmy
I agree with Kevin and Kevin M.
We shouldn’t be upset because he seems to be endorsing the draft, which I would say he didn’t. We should be upset that he says he supports veterans but doesn’t vote for legislation that actually supports veterans.
Mr C
OK Kevin,
Then maybe you like him. But I don’t putting aside military military issues.
He’s not good for Gays PERIOD!