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Don’t take this as an attack, but I think you’re dreaming when you suggest McCain is going to do the right thing by the military.

Just judging by his voting record on the Senate Armed Services Committee, he's the a stalwart and consistent support of all things military...Look, former Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia was a Democrat so was for Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson. But both were pro-military types...and that comes first with me because nothing will ever trump the protection of this nation, IMO.

I agree that the military is of prime imporatance. If Hillary or Barack were to propose something we didn't like, we could at least raise our objections as a unified front. The RNC would vilify them. The Republicans in Congress would loudly oppose them. Senators could filibuster certain actions.

What happens if McCain proposes anything entirely unappropriate? Who disagrees? Who rises in unified voice against him? The RNC sure won't. The Republicans in Congress who want continued access to and cooperation with the White House won't. And down below here, you have given me a fine example of what would happen in the ranks of cosnervatives. There would be people to support whatever McCain wanted to do.

You have come up with reasons to support him on Guantanamo and waterboarding. He is indefensible on those subjects in my opinion.

He wants to close Guantanamo.

What's wrong with moving the prisoners there here? And, what's the use of keeping it as Raoul is on his last legs and Fidel is just about ready to croak (if not dead already)? Though, I will grant you that Cuba makes fine argument for a 100 year Iraqi stay because we've been in Cuba exactly that long.

Guantanamo is important as a place to house terrorists, because it is a military compound. It is isolated. It is very difficult for those who object to Guantanamo to raise hell over it, because of it's remote isolated status.

Within weeks of those prisoners being relocated to the lower 48 states, there will be massive protests outside of their location. Leftists will be out there demanding fair trials. They will also be out there demanding freedom for them. Prison guard families will pay the price. Elevated security will have to be mounted. And the media will play all this up to give the terrorists the upper hand.

Candle-light vigils will become the norm. You'll have code pink out there pleading for fairness and playing up the Geneva Convention issue.

He doesn’t support water boarding.

Sleep deprivation works just as well.

Even if true, it doesn't make any difference. Water boarding doesn't cause long term injury. It gets results quicker and that contributes to saving lives. It's a non-issue, and yet McCain chose to come down on the same side as the Democrats and the terrorist sympathizers.

He wants those terrorists to get a trial...

The Israeli government gave Adolph Eikman a trial...he still lost.

When that trial was conducted, there wasn't an ongoing hot war with methods and contacts on the line. McCain has been around long enough to realize you don't conduct these types of trials in open court.

That he doesn't understand some of these dynamics causes me grave concern for what else he doesn't quite get.

And yet folks tout him as a man who is going to be the consumate conservative leader of our military.

Well, at least he gets points on backing the right people in the military to get the job done: (liek Petraus). "Mission Accomplished" Bush let 5-time draft deferred Dick Cheney and no-combat, extremely brief time-as-a-Navy-flight instructor Rumsfeld run the war. And, look what happened.

I don't believe going in that anyone thought we were going to get mired down into the terrorist haven that we did. Had Iran, Syria and Suadi Arabia kept their nationals home, we would have been a lot better off. We probably wouldn't have experienced anything near what we did.

That being said, a course correction was required. McCain did call for it before it was initiated. That's hardly surprising. Those who administer policy are generally going to adhere to that policy while others criticize. In this instance McCain was right. I believe he actually waffled a bit on some of his criticisms over time though. His support for what Bush finally did gets wide play, but his other suggestions that weren't adopted and were weak, didn't.

I remain very skeptical that John McCain will rule from the right as a CIC. It would be totally out of character for him to rule that way, when he has failed to show that he has that inclination in just about any other area in the past.

Thanks for your opposing view. I do appreciate the response.

You're proposing and assuming a lot of hypotheticals..."what if". I go chiefly by one's track record on all things military, and on all things military I find no fault with John McCain. My senior Senator (John Warner) is called a RINO too, but he's been damned consistent in backing military issues and I appreciate that...

Speaking of track records, I had little to judge "Missioned Accomplished" Bush on in his run for the office in 2000 but I had seen what "Read My Lips" Bush did when he held office and called a halt to the most successful military operation in history (the 100-hour drubbing of the Revolutionary Guard). I was totally perplexed; it made no sense to me why we didn't go all the way to Baghdad (I understand that we had "coalition" A-Rab partners who were "sensitive" and "sympathetic" to the whipping we were giving their Islamic brothers, but, if we had used the same philsophy in WWII, we'd all be speaking German now, IMO).

Succinctly, I voted ~~for~~ against both 41 & 43 Bushs's opponents on four occasions, yet was never really happy with the outcome.