McCAIN: APOLOGIZE TO SUSAN RICE

Few seem to want to say it but I will. John McCain, with your remarks about Susan Rice, you have milked his ancestry and the hero cows dry. You acted in a heroic manner during 5-1/2 years of imprisonment as a severely wounded pilot in Hanoi. An examination of your credentials, reveals that an entire career both before and after Vietnam was marked by nastiness. For years, that nastiness has been hidden. You have tied your entire career to your father and grandfather’s reputation, both of whom had been outstanding Admirals. Now, not only yours but their reputations are at stake.

The people of Arizona, a very conservative state, elected you to the House of Representatives and then to the Senate based on his heroic record as a prisoner of war and association with the Military Admiralty. You graduated near the bottom of his class—perhaps not a reflection of your intelligence—in Annapolis Naval Academy, which has engineering and not a military strategy or diplomacy curriculum. Now, in the Senate, your colleagues look at you as an expert in military affairs from an extremely hawkish point of view—the tough guy, who knows the answers always hinge on beating the other guy to a pulp. Now look at what you are doing. You have suddenly re-instituted your reputation for nastiness. Totally out of character, you are using your reputation and power to attack Susan Rice the U.N. Ambassador. It is below the dignity of your office. It is cowardly. It is a partisan attack on a President who beat you and your party twice and you are doing it by attacking what you seem to perceive to be a weak a surrogate. You owe her an apology; it is the honorable thing to do.