Just back to LA, catching up here but I saw some of Barack's VFW speech on the plane where I was pleased to see him get tough with McCain, particularly this passage:

But one of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can't disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. I have never suggested that Senator McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America's national interest. Now, it's time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same.

Let me be clear: I will let no one question my love of this country. I love America, so do you, and so does John McCain.

Barack proves with this speech that taking the high road and getting tough with McCain are not mutually exclusive. More of this, please, Senator.

TPM's video of it is below:

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    At the VFW convention, Mr. Bush proved once again why reading and studying is overrated. In a desperate attempt to build support for his Iraq War policy in front of a friendly crowd, Mr. Bush drew comparisons between the Iraq War and other wars of the past. Remember, this is the administration that lambasted anyone that had previously tried to compare this quagmire with the one in Vietnam just months ago. Now, this war has parallels to the Korean, WWII, and the Vietnam Wars. Not only did this president not serve in Vietnam, he obviously didn't study it either. This just shows how desperate this administration is for reasons to continue this debacle.

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Yesterday, in her speech in front of the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, Hillary Clinton said the following:

We've begun to change tactics in Iraq, and in some areas, particularly in Al Anbar province, it's working.

We're just years too late changing our tactics. We can't ever let that happen again. We can't be fighting the last war. We have to be preparing to fight the new war.

Was this an endorsement of the "surge?" Her campaign says no. From Talking Points Memo:

...the word "surge" didn't appear once in Hillary's speech, and her aides have been on record all day today saying that the tactic she referred to as "working" was not the surge but to reports of increased cooperation between Sunnis and U.S. troops.

Except that she didn't make that distinction in the speech. At the very least, it was an acknowledgment of nominal support for one aspect of the president's escalation policy and while she doesn't shirk from calling for withdrawal from Iraq elsewhere in the speech, the fact that she projects this apparently supportive view to a pro-war audience yet, as we well know, quite another to a more conventional Democratic base audience, plays into the widely held belief that she walks safely down the middle and plays both sides of each issue. In fact, on the war, polling has borne out the success of this strategy and John Edwards for one is sick of it.

In a statement released today, the John Edwards campaign calls her out:

Senator Hillary Clinton's view that the president's Iraq policy is 'working' is another instance of a Washington politician trying to have it both ways. You cannot be for the President's strategy in Iraq but against the war. The American people deserve straight talk and real answers on Iraq, not double-speak, triangulation, or political positioning.

...even as it goes on to concede Clinton's main point:

Our military's hard-won progress in Al-Anbar province should not distract us from the fact that pouring more military resources into Iraq is no substitute for the comprehensive national political solution that will ultimately resolve the situation in Iraq.

Now, I much prefer Edwards's position on the war generally and his framing of the "surge" more specifically, but let's not pretend it's a terribly substantive disagreement. There's plenty of having it both ways to go around. My larger issue with Clinton is when she chooses to reinforce right-wing talking points, whether it be her oft-repeated refrain "we're safer but not safe enough," or when she suggested that some Democrats don't think we face a real threat from terrorism, or elsewhere in her VFW speech where she clumsily transitions from talking about 9/11 and fighting terrorists directly into her praise for the new tactics in Iraq as though they're related. Talk about Bush/Cheney light. The more I hear her say stuff like this, the more Obama's accusation rings true.

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I see where the VFW chose to endorse a Republican candidate who has never served in the military and repudiate a Democratic candidate who is not only a Vet but lost both legs in the Occupation of Iraq. If the local VFW comes calling to recruit me into membership, they need to send someone like Bill Moyer, a 73-year-old vet who wore the "bullshit protector" in his ear while at the VFW convention.

The apparent thinking as voiced by the VFW endorsing entity had to do with the Repug's track record of cheap talk and votes in support of military and or veteran issues ... as if a Veteran in Congress would not vote with an even greater wisdom.

There is a horrendous naiveté in this action in that VFW veterans who have been there and done that have taken a coward's route perhaqps voting more their pensions and benefits than a veteran's genuine desire for national well-being. If so, this in a way makes of the VFW, the same corporate capitalists as jokers like Norquist and others who accept money from business in exchange for votes and endorsements.

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