There was a time I thought John McCain was a pretty good guy for a Republican. Of course, there was also a time when I thought playing with little green Army men was the best thing ever. I’ve long since changed my opinion on both subjects.
On Sunday morning, McCain told CNN host Candy Crowley that the five Taliban members swapped for American POW Bowe Bergdahl were responsible for the 9/11 attacks. I admit that reading that headline made me blink. Seriously, John?
He told Crowley straight up that those five Taliban members were “hardcore military jihadists who are responsible for 9/11” and should have been put under the jail at Gitmo for the rest of their born days. The five were, he said, “evaluated and judged as too great a risk to release.” He admitted that he had supported exchanging Bergdahl for Guantanamo prisoners, but not these five. Why not them?
“… I believe we should keep these people because they are hardcore jihadists who are responsible for 9/11. Of course, nobody wants to release people who are responsible for 9/11, and these people that are released that were Taliban governing worked hand-in-glove with al Qaeda.”
Hmmm. Time for some of John’s vaunted “straight talk.” For seven years, I wrote for the non-partisan History Commons, whose most exhaustive project was an examination of the 9/11 attacks and all the issues, events and incidents surrounding it. I worked with some of the most knowledgeable 9/11 experts out there. I read the 9/11 Commission Report (and can tell you just how inadequate and incomplete it was). I read dozens of books and articles on the subject. And I can tell you without a doubt that those five Taliban members had squat to do with the 9/11 attacks. As Vyan at the Daily Kos notes in his article on the McCain interview, Osama bin Laden and the top-shelf al-Qaeda leadership shared their plans for the 9/11 bombing with no one, including the Taliban leadership.
Moreover, no one before now has indicated that those five prisoners had any knowledge of 9/11. They weren’t Abu Zubaydah or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any of the al-Qaeda operatives who have been grilled, waterboarded, roasted and toasted for information about the attacks.
Wrong, John. So very wrong.
And I’m not the only one to say so. Retired Colonel Morris Davis, the former top prosecutor at Guantanamo, said the day before that he never heard of those five guys during his time at Camp Delta, and there has never been enough proof against them to prosecute them for anything. (Then why, you may ask, are they still in detention? That’s another story.) They were so low-level, Davis says, that
“[w]e prosecuted Osama bin Laden’s driver, and we couldn’t even bring charges against these guys. … When I saw the names of the five individuals, when they were reported last weekend, my first reaction was who are they. I never saw the names before, which means there was not enough information to even make it on our list of potential prosecution.”
Davis calls the trade “a pretty good deal.”
Let’s remember a few other times that McCain has proven himself to be a poor excuse for a lawmaker and a human being:
- Singing “Bomb Iran” to a crowd of supporters.
- Telling the country that the US economy was “sound” as it was hurtling into the Bush Recession of 2008. He said this on the same day that Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and analysts predicted the collapse of Wall Street.
- Proving that he didn’t know the difference between Sunnis and Shi’ites, a central issue in understanding the fundamentals of US foreign policy towards Iraq and every other Middle Eastern country.
- Flip-flopping from being a Qaddafi supporter to a Qaddafi critic within nanoseconds.
- Falsely claiming that Iran was training al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq.
- Meeting with al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria, then criticizing Obama’s meeting with Cuban leader Raul Castro.
- Failing to remember that Czechoslovakia was divided, fifteen years after the fact.
- Choosing to publish an editorial in Pravda, and thus giving Russia and Vladimir Putin a huge propaganda coup.
- Trying to “turn out” his wife Cindy at a biker rally in Sturgis, where the expectation was for the ladies so designated to expose themselves to the crowd.
- Referring to Barack Obama as “that one” during a presidential debate.
- And of course, the cherry on the sundae: introducing Sarah Palin to the national stage. Thanks for that one, Johnny.
Final thought regarding McCain and Bergdahl: Do we need to be reminded that McCain himself was a POW in Vietnam, and was brought home via a prisoner exchange? I would hope he hasn’t forgotten about that one.
But as unreliable and irrelevant as McCain has proven himself to be, he continues to be everyone’s favorite Sunday morning news show guest. Like George Burns being booked in Las Vegas for his hundredth birthday, I expect McCain to have his appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press already booked for his centennial celebration. Or CBS’s Face the Nation. Or ABC’s This Week. Or CNN’s State of the Union. Or Fox News Sunday. Or, most likely, all of ’em.
Let us know your thoughts at the Liberal America Facebook page.
H/T Vyan at the Daily Kos. I’ve followed his work for a long time; he’s one of the best writers and researchers on that site.
Published writer since 2001, focusing on politics, history, Web development, and other topics. First book is coming soon.
