Good thing Republicans don't have consciences or memories, otherwise this election cycle would be so boring. I think they hope we don't either.

If at first you don't succeed, smear, smear again.

descent?
There's nothing decent about this crew.

You're missing the point. Obama was unfit for the presidency 15 months ago and he's still unfit. He said what he said -- there's no debunking of the fact that he disparaged the efforts of American troops, regardless of the fact that there have been civilian casualties. Nothing Palin said is false. This attack by Palin in still relevant.

This is about more than just misrepresenting a quote. It's about a McCain/Palin worldview. They see the world in terms of pure good and evil. We versus they. They have no sympathy for innocent victims, unless those victims are Americans. And that brings us back to an unfortunate fact. Republicans use religion as a tool to promote nationalism, not morality.

You've got this all wrong. This actually demonstrates the McCain/Palin campaign's commitment to green campaigning.

They've reduced the number of facts they employ to get their message across.

They reuse any talking point they think will gain them some traction. Truth is not a valid test of a talking point's infinite reusability.

And they recycle old discredited attacks on Obama. Remember, it takes less than half the energy to recycle an old lie than it does to create a new one.

Shame on all of you who won't give credit to the McCain/Palin campaign for pioneering this exciting new path to a more sustainable political environment.

This reveals the utter moral bankruptcy of the Republican ticket, does it not? McCain professes to love his country, but he pollutes its political discourse because it's his own ass he really loves. And Palin the supposed Christian lies up a storm and thereby gives Christianity a bad name. Add in the outlet for this filth the aptly named "Drudge Report" and you have the makings of Republican Sewer Politics, The 2008 Edition.

Palin is irrelevant. Her only social purpose now is to provide comedic fodder for SNL.

It's the economy stupid.
It's the middle class stupid.

That's so transparently obvious, only a republican could fail to see it.

there's no debunking of the fact that he disparaged the efforts of American troops, regardless of the fact that there have been civilian casualties.

"May have been?!

I, for one, think it's pathetic that supposedly tough republicans go hiding behind "the troops" when the conduct of the war is being questioned. Not surprising, though -- some low-critical-thinking voters (hi, Red State Mike!) bought this line of attack against Kerry, so why not roll the dice again?

But again, this line of attack will resonate with the base, but McCain's in no position to try to peel off one or two percentage points of low-information voters. Obama's margin is too great for this tactic to make any sense -- except

Country First, my ass.

God, country, flag and family. That's what Americans love.

Republicans know that. Liberals don't. That's why John McCain will be the next president.

Al's especially stupid today.

Once again, both the words and actions taken by our Secretary of Defense and the commanders on the battle field, openly acknowledge our collateral killing of civilians by aerial bombing has been a big problem in advancing the mission in Afghanistan. Smearing the political messenger for saying such obvious and open truths is more of a revelation of the weakness in the McCain/Palin ticket than anything else. Rather than working diligently on a plan to make the future better the McCain team is spinning their wheels in the low and muddy track.

Woo....HTML failure.

The third paragraph read: "....except to rile up the conservative base so much as to make the country ungovernable.

They lie amd the MSM repeats their lies and makes them truths. They know that the MSM is controlled or they would be afraid of being exposed for the whores they are.

If the truth is embarrassing, it must be revised.

Obama: "We've got to get the job done [in Afghanistan] and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there."

after citing AP's half-baked defense of obama, Benen chimes in: "In other words, what Obama said was right."
i know you are so far up obama's butt you owe back rent, but this is ridiculous... seriously what does ap's ad hoc calculation of civilians have to do with obama essentially labeling the US military killers.

"just" is the operative ridiculous, naive, dangerous word in obama's faulty statement. you may think the rebuilding efforts have failed, but they are not nonexistent. to imply the military 'just' kills is a level of hostility and dismissiveness that an asspiring commander in chief should not display. the propaganda and recruiting value of such a statement is immeasurable: 'even their future president believes...'

john mccain and sarah palin aren't responsible for barack obama's (and steve benen's) poor grasp of the english language.

steve benen. needs. to. stop. being. full. of. *it.
washington monthly, bring back kevin drum.

A question for bloggers here (and on other sites)...do you folks send on pieces like this one to others in the media? Or do you count on those of us who read/comment on them to do that? It concerns me that neither the campaigns nor the large outlets providing "information" to the public seem to have people that monitor or deal with the compilations put together by yourself/Josh Marshall/KOS (for example) and others to provide themselves with a background of fact checked ammunition to have available in their interviews and other spoutings. Yes, it might just be a beginning for them as it often should be for us to follow the links and see if allegations are supported but the fact that, especially with McShame's campaign, ANYTHING can be said, not fact checked, and have it's life expanded by people picking it up and passing it on. The frustration of not being able to counter the shots as quickly as they come out is wearing me out...this last month is going to be NASTY because it's all McShame and Scarah have left and they have no honor about HOW they want to win...because in America it's all about the WINNING!!!

To Rock, Al and other assorted trolls
OOPS
http://voanews.com/english/2008-10-04-voa6.cfm
The "collateral" damage is always "unavoidable" . I wonder how you would feel if every day you were faced with the prospect of becoming collateral damage

"john mccain and sarah palin aren't responsible for barack obama's (and steve benen's) poor grasp of the english language." nitish

Lets certainly hope not! They got their hands quite full in coping with their own misuse of the language.

Just saying.

Picking a nit off the elephant's ass to reveal the elephant should qualify you to work on the McCain team. So, nitish, please reveal to us how much real campaigning you have done for McCain.

Danp @ 8:35,
... unless those victims are Americans

Is this a misprint? Unless those victims are Republicans, surely.

nitish @ 9:24,
"just" is the operative ridiculous, naive, dangerous word in obama's faulty statement.

Okay, let's apply your standards to both tickets. And you answer is ... turning a cold shoulder to Spain and forcing ourselves into a ground war against Russia are nifty ideas? Why don't you run with those, I'm sure they'll prove very popular among the ranks of the unemployed.

McCain and Palin are going to go even more on the offensive (and be offensive themselves) because McCain is starting to fall dangerously behind in the polls. The conventional wisdom - at least in the GOP/Rove playbook - is to go on the attack. And their method of attack, as seen by Palin's comments here, is to make choosing Obama seem like a reckless choice.

While that might work in some situations - and it certainly helped McCain in August before the conventions - the political dynamic has changed. Obama has spoken at the Dem convention and performed well at the debate. McCain is trying to convince people of something - that they should vote against Obama because he is "dangerous" - that they have already come to believe is not true. Obama seems steady, even, smart and...presidential.

So the attack perspective of getting voters to vote against Obama will not work. McCain has to get voters to want to vote for him. But voting for McCain is like voting for Bush and he knows that won't work either in this political climate.

So which road does McCain choose since neither seems to be a great option for him? We have our answer...

"forcing ourselves into a ground war against russia"
i'm guessing Jassalasca Jape refers to the 'if georgia were a member of nato and russia invaded we'd have to to defend nato allies just like nato allies joined us in aghanistan when we were attacked' scenario.
i guess in the big dumb liberal rulebook, a public abrogation of nato obligations is less of a slap in the face to allies than not saying one way or the other whether you'd meet some world leader after possible election.
"Biden wrongly claimed that McCain had said "he wouldn't even sit down" with the government of Spain. Actually, McCain didn't reject a meeting, but simply refused to commit himself one way or the other during an interview."

back to obama, certainly karzai and gates are correct that civilian deaths ['collateral damage' is a whitewashing term that should be abolished along with 'ethnic cleansing'] during airstrikes remains a problem to be addressed. but obama implied that is all the military is doing with that poorly placed "just".

this is similar to the youtube meet with rogue leaders response. obama's sentiment is not that far off, but the wording was a bit off, but obama steadfastly refuses to back off, thus solidifying the 'off' nature.

my suggestion to nitish:

if you hate this blog so much, and love kevin drum so much - go away from this blog and follow kevin.

we certainly won't miss you here.

There is no guerrilla war in Iraq! We will find the WMD that Saddam had! He was involved in 9/11! And when we capture Saddam and his sons, everything in Iraq will be hunky dory, you betcha!

How many wedding parties have we taken out with missiles and bombs in both Afghanistan and Iraq? I seriously have lost count over the years.

Apparently the Republicans actually believe that the only qualification for POTUS is that you don't ever think or saying anything negative about the US, regardless of the actual truth. It explains a lot about the Bush administration.

"essentially labeling the US military killers."

Hey Nitish, if you want to do some word-play, then what exactly do you think the US military does ? They kill people. That's what they do. You can argue all day about intent, but the end result in Afghanistan is that they have killed innocent civilians in the process of trying to kill enemy combatants. No amount of changing the subject on your part is going to change that fact, or bring those innocent people back. The sooner this idea of American exceptionalism disappears from our collective minds, the better off we'll be. It will mean that we can finally start seeing the world without those stupid rose-colored glasses that we've been using for the past 50 years.

You want people to stop talking about civilian deaths ? Start pressuring your government to use their military resources responsibly and with a mission of severely reducing and, hopefully, eliminating civilian deaths. That means no more indiscriminate bombing, more troops that are properly trained and know how to interact with the local populace, and more investment in the areas that we're trying to keep the enemy out of.

""just" is the operative ridiculous, naive, dangerous word in obama's faulty statement"

Oh, come on. You left out "so" and "that". What are you, some kind of double-agent Obama troll plant? Make the full case for the smear or we'll report you!

wow, there's alotta willful ignorance or stupidity here. i admitted that airstrikes have caused civilian deaths when i stated "certainly karzai and gates are correct that civilian deaths during airstrikes remains a problem to be addressed"

besides a much larger force which will lead to increased near term casualties which the public does not want, i personally have no idea how to target these extremist - terrorist types who wreak havoc then scurry back into the cover of civilians.

but that ridiculous next crazy step reduces the military to bloodthirsty killers like when OhNoNotAgain remarks "what exactly do you think the US military does? They kill people. That's what they do."
- the US military doesn't kill people in germany, japan, korea...? arguably their presence has been a deterrent, a stabilizing force.
- the US military doesn't kill people during humanitarian missions like tsunami aid

back to obama, an aspiring CIC should never get remotely close to these statements due to the propaganda value [and besides, supporters have to contort themselves to explain the bogus sentiment, like when bush said 'bring em on' and rummy said 'old europe']

If you don't want our military labeled as killers of civilians, they should probably try and kill fewer civilians.

Jesus fucking christ ... the right wing actually revels in its ignorance.

I would be willing to bet that the "someone" who gave her the talking point was Sean Hannity. He interviewed her on Wednesday and played the interview on his radio show on Thursday. He brought up the airstrikes in the interview, and he has been pushing for weeks for someone to use it in a debate.

From Hannity's mouth straight to Sarah Palin's -- now that's a scary thought.

"He [Obama] said what he said -- there's no debunking of the fact that he disparaged the efforts of American troops, regardless of the fact that there have been civilian casualties. Nothing Palin said is false. This attack by Palin in still relevant."
Posted by: Rock on October 4, 2008

I feel certain the front line troops have been great. If there were more Abu Ghraib's we would have heard of them.

What Obama was OBVIOUSLY talking about was the lack of a humane and winning strategy and the downside of that tactic (strafing). There was probably a disastrous strategy put in place by a Bushie in the White House.

Speaking of which, if the Surge in Iraq was aimed at quelling violence, so a political settlement could be reached by the Sunni, Shia and Kurds, then maybe McCain can explain what a Surge in Iraq would be aimed at.

I suspect all John McCain knows (or more properly, remembers) is how he loved to strafe and 'suppress fire' in Vietnam. He just wants to go kill brown people in far away places.

A real strategy has to have at it's core a focus on getting rid of Al Qaeda. A McCain Surge has nothing to do with that.

Once you set the goal properly (not getting Saddam, not random killing) then a lot of information gathering can point the way and the military commanders can utilize whatever tactics they need to execute the mission. There's no McCain Surge involved in that.

We can't trust John McCain with the military since all he knows is how to repeat Vietnam.

>They got their hands quite full in coping with their own misuse of the language.

You betcha!!

For example, the only thing that "disqualifies" anybody for POTUS is being under 36 years of age and being born in a foreign country.

Otherwise, We The People (which includes but is not limited to dumbass Palin, despite her enormous self-regard) get to sort thru what we think is important. As best as the Electoral College lets us, anyway.

I'm afraid people ARE just stupid enough not to notice. Those who remain solidly behind McCain/Palin, anyway. Those famous "God, country, flag and family" lovers will not notice repetition of old (and debunked) smears, because they're not listening. They're just anxious to vote. Forget about counting on them for bipartisanship afterward, too; it's just a multi-syllabic word they like to throw around so they can appear inta-leck-shoo-al.