http://www.youtube.com/v/PdJUCU1UH2w&hl=en&fs=1…

“In all the discussion of John McCain's recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.” – http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily…

JOHN MCCAIN this week had a choice between his principles and propping up a failed president. He chose the latter – McCain drops the torture ball – http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008…

And what of McCain’s first wife Carol? Many don’t know the history of “The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind” His infidelities put strain on his first marriage, and he was divorced from Carol McCain, his wife of 15 years, in 1980. He married Cindy a month later.

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.’

Ross Perot: ‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ he said. ‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’
- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10249…

And we continue with the rest of the history. John McCain is no more moral than John Edwards, and Cindy makes a $300 hair cut look like nothing. Who is Cindy McCain? Aside from their 7, or is it 11 properties, Cindy is known to spend as much as $7,000 in one month…on just one American Express card. So they are rich, out-of-touch Republicans. What’s new? The real story of interest goes a little further back.

“In 1989, following two back surgeries, Cindy McCain became addicted to the painkillers Vicodin and Percocet. To keep up with her daily need of 10 to 15 pills, she used other people's names for prescriptions and stole drugs from the American Voluntary Medical Team, a mobile surgical unit she'd begun in 1988 to provide emergency medical services around the world. A 1993 DEA audit of the amount of painkillers her charity had obtained quickly uncovered her thefts.”
- http://www.snopes.com/politics/mccain/cindy.asp

Her drug addiction isn’t the story, but rather how John McCain tried to cover-up the illegal activity with his political power. And if that’s not enough skeletons in the closet to worry about, in trying to link Obama with Rezko, McCain has re-opened the door to yet another scandal in his past.

“The problem with this attack? Aside from being thoroughly misleading — Obama has not been seriously alleged to have done anything unethical in his interactions with Rezko — this ad is a serious strategic blunder by the McCain campaign. Why? It blows wide open the door to talk about McCain's all-too-close relationship with Charles Keating and well reported on though somewhat forgotten charter membership in the so-called “Keating Five.”

…In the end, the crash of Keating's savings and loan — which had been shielded by some of his best friends in the United States Senate — cost billions to the American taxpayer, as mentioned above, and all told the federal government ended up on the hook for close to $125 billion in the fallout of the crisis that befell the underregulated industry in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Does McCain really want to have to talk about all of this? About the Bahaman vacations he took paid for by Keating? Probably not. But he may soon have to as a result of the shortsightedness of his campaign advisors. Nice move team McCain!”
- http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/8/21/185928/267

Conservatives claim morals are just as important as criminal behavior—you know, like perjury (no, I'm referring to Scooter Libby). But once again we see the hypocrisy as Republicans choose another candidate with questionable character.

In the meantime “my friends,” not only has McSame voted with Bush 95% of the time, let’s not forget that McCain is to the right of Bush in regard to war-mongering. We’ll have to get out the old bumper stickers: “Four More Wars!” and “Drop McCain Not Bombs”

Recall, he was the guy who went to an Iraqi fruit stand surrounded by 100s of American troops and declared the streets safe.

He is living in a fantasy world.

Actually that, I could excuse.

But in this instance, McCain wasn't living in a fantasy world. He was lying to the American public about the situation on the ground in a blatant attempt to gin up support for continuing the occupation of Iraq.

On the subject of Iraq John McCain has been consistant. Consistantly dishonest with his constituents and Americans in general.

No, it's a rejection of what is presented as data, based on facts.

1. I'm no fan of GWB's
Well, no one is, now.

2. I think you protest too much.
We didn't ask you to buy into stupid right-wing rhetoric. You did it all on your own. Why shouldn't we protest a libel against the people who have sinned (in your eyes) by being honest and correct?

Polimom–
Nice try. Clinton was attacked for many, many made-up “scandals” about his Presidency and one true one about his sex life. Bush has been attacked for being incompetent and malfeasant in his Presidential duties, which is long past the stage of being proven. It's not “derangement” if one's statements are true.

The most common symptom, shared by all sufferers of these various *DS's, is “an outright rejection of data based on source”.

i.e.: If Bush / Clinton said it, it's wrong. If you agree with what Bush / Clinton (/ Reagan) said, you're wrong.

I suppose I could update that long-ago post to add another symptom — that PDS sufferers cannot recognize the symptoms in anyone but their political opposites — but there's probably not much point.

1. I'm no fan of GWB's

2. I think you protest too much.

“Bush Derangement Syndrome” is the nonsense term used to describe anyone who thinks Pres. Bush should be held responsible for trashing the U.S. Constitution and centuries of bedrock concepts of basic legal and human rights, for aggressively invading a country that posed no threat to the U.S. and thereby creating a massive threat to our security that did not exist before, for being the reason that just under 4,000 American men and women have died in a totally unnecessary and pointless war, and tens of thousands wounded in body and mind and soul, for politicizing science, for bringing this country into real and serious danger of becoming a fundamentalist Christian theocracy, for stifling dissent — both among the general public and in his administration, for making personal loyalty to his own personal ideology more important than loyalty to the law and for that matter more important than loyalty to the Republican Party and larger party interests.

The word “deranged” is more appropriately applied to people who believe that one should accept and support a president who has committed and encouraged as much evil and who has harmed the United States as much as this one has. Or perhaps we can recognize the existence of another syndrome — Bush Delusional Syndrome.

I have to agree with Paul. Yes, McCain is hawkish, most Republicans are, but I also think it's unfair to call him a “warmonger.” His essay in Foreign affairs is remarkably similar in tone to Obama's, with a few differences, of course.

Do you have a daughter?

He has bought into the whole 'we're winning in Iraq meme, even though we've barely returned the level of violence to the unacceptable levels it had in early 2006. Recall, he was the guy who went to an Iraqi fruit stand surrounded by 100s of American troops and declared the streets safe.

He is living in a fantasy world.

The war, and those who want more of it, is a stand no sane person, R or D, can support.

That is warmongering at its core.

Also I don't characterize him as a war monger. I suspect that he would be extremely careful and reluctant to put troops in harms way. But once they are in harms way, as in Iraq, he wants to honor their sacrifice by finishing the intended job. I personally do not agree with that POV, but I respect it.