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McCain, Obama and the facts on the ground (stubborn retype edition)
Ok. I may not be patient, but I am stubborn. Pasting from Word has been a total fiasco, so I'm just going to retype the section that I can't post. Wish me well.
In any case, despite any possible shortcomings, Mr. McCain's recognition of the need for continuing self-education on the facts of the Iraq situation is admirable, given the implicit recognition that sometimes politicians must leave Washington to gain knowledge of the wider world. It provides such a refreshing contrast with the arrogant officiousness UN Inspectors in Iraq found amoung U.S. officials in Washington in the run-up to the Iraq War, a bubble mentality that assumed superior pre-existing knowledge. These officials, who I'm sure Mr. McCain would today renounce and condemn, when offered first-hand reports on Sadaam's "dual-use" factories, didn't bother accepting the reports, even out of simple courtesy, but proceeded instead to lecture the inspectors on what the factories these officials had never seen were in fact being used for.
So when a recent author states bluntly that "[t]o foreigners, American officials seem clueless about the world they are supposed to be running", he can't possibly be referring, even indirectly, to experienced, vetted politicians like Mr. McCain.
With his years of intensive study, his wide-ranging contacts and direct personal experience of global events, it just isn't possible that a distant, complex and alien country could exist in a form Mr. McCain doesn't already understand.
Comments (1)
On your formatting problems, I have seen some clever posters use solution of typing up a short introtext in the entry box, then writing "continued in the first comment" and putting the paste of their full text in the first comment immediately after their entry posts. The comment box needs html for italics, bold, and the fancier stuff but it should take your basic paragraphs and spacing in paste from Word.
June 1, 2008 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
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