UPDATED: Speaking of rumors: McCain plans “Truth Squad”
Here’s a little bit from this conference call. Sen. John Warner:
“Let me start back in 1973, I was Secretary of the Navy under Nixon and then Ford and worked with John McCain when he was released from the prison camps and returned to resume his career in the United States Navy actively. I’ve also spent the last 17 years as either Chairman or Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and during that period of time I got to know General Clark quite well, worked with him professionally and actually travelled with him to the Balkans and Kosovo and frankly had a regard for his military capabilities. And I was utterly shocked when I saw this yesterday, knowing Clark as I have, that he would in a disrespectful way attack one of his fellow career military officers. I also have served in the Senate with Barack Obama, we have a good friendly relationship, and to the extent that he had knowledge of this I find it an exercise of poor judgment to allow individual like Clark with t he least experience in politics of all of them, trying to come in and do this attack…
As I have said, I have been on this Committee now 30 years and John has been on roughly 20 or a few more. We have been working side by side. I have been in the Oval Office with I think, I just ran a calculation, five presidents when matters of national security were discussed and the president sought the advice of Members of Congress. And I know on one or two of those occasions John McCain was with me. And as I draw on my own experience dealing with the White House many years and been on the Committee, John has gotten experience that Obama simply doesn’t have.”
Original post 11:03 a.m.:
Even as Sen. Barack Obama has launched a web site — www.fightthesmears.com — to combat the rumor mill that has swirled around his campaign, Sen. John McCain is announcing plans to launch his own “Truth Squad” to ”set the record straight about John McCain’s military service in the face of recent attacks on his record.”
McCain has a conference call ongoing as I type with Sen. John Warner, retired Air Force Col. Bud Day, retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Orson Swindle and retired Navy Reserve Lt. Commander Carl Smith. All are vouching for McCain’s credentials after Wes Clark took a jab at McCain’s war record.
Can we bring his first wife out to set the record straight on how many times he cheated on her and whether or not it was after she was in a disfiguring car accident?