The question is on the table.

John McCain truly needs to explain to America about just why he is running for president, based on quotes from his book. Additionally, there also seems to be a valid question about whether John McCain was ever in Waziristan. Simply because he says it, without proof, some people will believe it, and reporters print it. Where is the documented proof of his trip to a terrorist stronghold?

It hasn't been safe to navigate by air. It hasn't been safe to travel on ground. Our troops have had issues there since 2001. But there have been congressional visits to the southern part of the region. It is the northern region, at the Afghanistan border, where the true problems reside.

The Pakistan Times lists others who have visited South Waziristan. McCain is not on the list.

He discussed it before last week. In the republican primary.

Dan Balz, December 27, 2007

    "It may serve to enhance those credentials or make people understand that I've been to Waziristan, I know Musharraf, I can pick up the phone and call him. I knew Benazir Bhutto. I know the area. But I hate for anything like this to be the cause of any political gain for anybody," he said.

The First Presidential Debate at Ole Miss, Friday, September 26, 2008

    I've been to Waziristan. I can see how tough that terrain is. It's ruled by a handful of tribes.

Waziristan is a deadly region within Pakistan at the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Some controlling faction is not big on visitors, outsiders or journalists. Their issues have been going on literally for years.

Osama Bin Laden, or a high-ranking member of the Taliban or Al Quaeda is thought to have roots there. Pakistan is just letting them have the place to themselves. A peace agreement was signed in 2006, but so much for that.

BBC, March 4, 2004

    ...so far no senior al-Qaeda or Taleban figure has been caught in this semi-autonomous area where the Pakistani army beefed up its presence after the US intervention in neighbouring Afghanistan in October, 2001.

We've been sending drones to check the place out. Could he have flown over? That is not the same as walking the soil in the least. Again several searches turn up nothing to support his claims from the two quoted debates.

If McCain had been there, it would seem we would have seen something describing such a treacherous trip.

Yet we haven't.

It may have never taken place.

Our own very agile troops, note again, have been run out of Dodge, so to say. How exactly could McCain have been there? He may have been to Afghanistan, and gotten the location wrong. It appears highly unlikely he was physically in the northern area considered so especially unsafe for our own troops. Think Tuzla one more time.

Pierre Tristam, September 28, 2008

    There is no record of John McCain having been to Waziristan. No newspaper reports about it since 1982, when McCain got to Congress. I'm not talking about just the national papers, but through Newsbank, the world and national newspaper archive of a few thousand newspapers, newswires, magazines and other sources. Checked it all. No record of McCain in Waziristan before 2001, certainly no record of him there since. How could there be? North and South Waziristan are controlled by al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The last time Americans wandered in there, which was last week in a couple of helicopters that dropped special forces in South Waziristan, they were repulsed after a firefight. The last time an unmanned American Predator drone went in there--last Tuesday, near Angoor Adda in South Waziristan, the same day that Bush was flattering Zardari face to face about "Pakistan's sovereign right and sovereign duty to protect your country," the Pakistani military shot it down. The next day, Pakistani troops fired at two U.S. helicopters violating Pakistani air space.

Michael Rovito, who questioned Sarah Palin in the sandwich shop, is correct. The place is a mess.

CNN, Sept. 27, 2008

    Rovito wasn't finished. "Waziristan is blowing up!," he said.

    "Yeah it is," Palin said, "and the economy there is blowing up too."

Christina Lamb, The Sunday Times, September 21, 2008

    Waziristan is America’s new front line in the war against the Taliban. The last British officer to have served there, now 81, tells it cannot be tamed by force alone

    Overlooking the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, from the Paktika province of eastern Afghanistan. The outpost, only 800 meters from the border, is frequently attacked by Taliban forces, many of whom cross over from the South Waziristan tribal area of Pakistan

April 03, 2007

    PESHAWAR: Ten more people were reported dead and scores of others were injured in renewed fighting between the warring sides, as the Ahmadzai Wazir tribe on Monday gave a call to all the tribesmen to go after the foreign militants and their local supporters to purge the area from outsiders.

    The foreign militants, locals informed, also publicly executed Juma Khan alias Haji Jimak in Azam Warsak area of South Waziristan Agency to punish the family of a tribal journalist, Din Muhammad, accused of leaking information about the fighting to media from the troubled tribal region.

So it won't be confused with any tarmacs in Bosnia.

Besides the mentions above, Bill O'Reilly asked about the region May 12, 2008. Oddly enough, McCain does not say he was ever there. To a friendly audience who would have appreciated such a statement. He didn't make it. Who did he go with? What was the flight or journey like? No mentions. And you know how he likes to tell war stories. Has he made one up for this yet?

    O'REILLY: One of the questions that Hillary Clinton had difficulty with last week with me was Afghanistan and Pakistan.
    MCCAIN: Yes.
    O'REILLY: I asked her and I'm going to ask you: Do you know where command and control is for the Taliban right now?
    MCCAIN: Oh yes. In a place called Waziristan.
    O'REILLY: OK. But it's a little further south in Quetta. Quetta is not up in the northwest provinces.
    MCCAIN: Could I just say that there are areas of Waziristan that you know that the Pakistani government, Musharraf, made a "bargain" with.
    O'REILLY: But Quetta, you can get them, and the Pakistani government won't. How are you going to make them?
    MCCAIN: I think that our relations with Pakistan are in a very dicey situation today with a new government. I know that our relations with Pakistan are vital.
    O'REILLY: As long as the Taliban can hide and have those safe harbors, Afghanistan will never be stable.
    MCCAIN: And I agree with you about Quetta, but I also will tell you that Waziristan is hard to govern.
    O'REILLY: The Pakistani government has got to help us. That's the key to that.
    MCCAIN: They have to help us.

John McCain said he is running for president not because he is putting his country first. He is running for president because he is ambitious.

    McCain and Salter wrote "Worth the Fighting For" (the title is taken from a line of Robert Jordan's in the Hemingway novel ), which gave McCain an opportunity to confess his shortcomings:

    "I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president. . . . In truth, I'd had the ambition for a long time."

He talks a big game about truth and honor. He could not define 'honor' recently to Time. And he did indeed fight to keep the truth from other POW families whose loved ones were left behind in Vietnam. Have his desires overtaken his sense of reality? It appears so. Will this be his last of three successive runs for the presidency? It may not.

"When I am no longer busy with politics, and with my own ambitions, I hope to have more time to examine what I have done and failed to do with my career, and why."

He may never give up, because he will never accept that he ever failed.

Maya Angelou said 'when someone shows you who they are, believe them.' So we know this part of the headline.

Mr. McCain, all we are asking for now, is the proof you actually touched ground in Northern Waziristan.

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||

For the quoted links, visit the original Daily Kos posting. This page adds the Pakistan Times link not over there. Yet.