Panthera

Worked for it? You are seriously excusing the horribly soft treatment he received in 2000 because he "earned it?" Or am I reading this wrong and you really do condemn the entire practice of allowing personal feelings and bias to sway how a candidate is portrayed?

BTW, the only reason we heard about McCain's "independent appeal" was because his main rival was Bush. It is sometimes hard to spot which candidate reporters like but it is extremely easy to spot the ones they hate.

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Illuminator

Russia was ready to take up the Soviet mantle at any time and the apparent successor for a decade has clearly been China. The only people who haven't seen that are the people who willfully ignore it. Bill Clinton was well-practiced in that.

He's saying that the cutbacks between this war and Gulf War 1 should have never happened, but did anyway because the powers-that-be were hopelessly naive. With the next conventional (and unconventional) cold war looming on the horizon with China, are they going to be naive again and continue forward with Rumsfeld's "mini-force" philosophies, which generally caused the early fuckup in Iraq?

You may not like this new cold war, you may kick and scream that we shouldn't quietly invest in an air force of F-22's to hold conventional superiority, but that isn't going to stop it from happening.

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Bow down before the one you serve. You're going to get what you deserve.

Otis

QFE

You're not supposed to be able to "earn" favorable coverage based on past perceptions any more than you are by offering VIP seating to journalists who "earn" it.

How does a journalist "earn" preferential treatment, anyway?

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Otis

Here's where you confuse me for a liberal. I was against those cutbacks and I'm for a strong military.

I just think it needs to be at the disposal of someone who knows what the fuck they're doing.

Call me crazy.

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Rothrek

Krontak you're such a silly retard.

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Illuminator

Then I would venture McCain has a more practical grasp of the military than Obama, who is evidently "learning as he goes".

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Bow down before the one you serve. You're going to get what you deserve.

Deson

Reading it wrong. I deplore bias of all types and find it does a disservice to all public discourse. McCain had independent appeal not because he was against Bush but because incidents like in 1998 on a tobacco bill have surprised his everyone by shaming his party on the Senate floor for acting inadequately to combat cigarette addiction and made a point of the government's need to act. he also schmoozed with the press his entire campaign and routinely ran the press out of questions.
No argument. just making the point of McCain's bias being cultivated verses the anointing of Obama.

China was never the successor to the Soviet Union because it lacks the type of aggression the Soviets had. We aren't in a Cold War with China and won't ever be. What is coming is far, far worse than the Cold War because of the muddled market and international economic situation. China has learned it can win wars without firing a shot and intends to press that advantage. The worst part though is the rise of regional powers in such capacity to destroy the near universal morality imposed by the Western powers.

Rumsfelds plans were solid, he was just too stupid to realize when to go with them and when to dump them. He was prepping for a future still likely to come, one of hotspots that need rapid deployments and engagement ability that conventional warfare lacks. Had he not been an ass while SecDef and actually engaged allies both within our government and foreign, Iraq still could have gone well.

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Otis

If being a bad pilot and a discipline problem gives one a practical grasp of setting policy and using/not using the military as an instrument with which that policy is carried out, I'd like to know how.

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Otis

You're choice of words says otherwise.

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Illuminator

We are absolutely going to be in a cold war with China, and arguably we're already entering a clandestine "information war" with them. You've only seen the early phase with the buildup of conventional forces just to reach parity (but in a nuclear age, conventional proxy conflicts are the name of the game). Soon they'll work above and beyond to accomplish a blue water fleet, to secure oil shipping between China and the Middle East against U.S. Navy interference. To say nothing in all of this about their designs on Taiwan. They're modelling their military as an eventual direct competitor to ours.

And you better believe they'll do what they can to infiltrate Latin America and the Carribean. Because if I were them, God knows if I sure would.

The President doesn't get to decide when to use the military as an instrument, Congress does.

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Bow down before the one you serve. You're going to get what you deserve.