McCain: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

On Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, John McCain called for Barack Obama to retract the "air raiding" comment he made in 2007 saying, “that’s so insulting to the men and women who are serving in the military.”



The McCain camp, of course, has distorted Obama's words. Obama's statement was a criticism of U.S. military strategy, and not of American troops.

Obama in August 2007: "We’ve got to get the job done there 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."

According to FactCheck.org, The Associated Press concluded: "As of Aug. 1 [2007], the AP count shows that while militants killed 231 civilians in attacks in 2007, Western forces killed 286. Another 20 were killed in crossfire that can't be attributed to one party." Even President Bush admitted that there were too many civilian casualties, saying: "The president [Afghan president Hamid Karzai] rightly expressed his concerns about civilian casualty. And I assured him that we share those concerns."

Here's the kicker. Think Progress notes that McCain made virtually identical remarks about the U.S. military’s conduct in Kosovo during his 2000 presidential bid:

McCain: In the most obscene chapter in recent American history is the conduct of the Kosovo conflict when the president of the United States refused to prepare for ground operations, refused to have air power used effectively because he wanted them flying — he had them flying at 15,000 feet where they killed innocent civilians because they were dropping bombs from such — in high altitude.

The McCain camp, yet again, is preaching "Do as I say, Not as I Do." I think we all remember when McCain's camp cried sexism over the "lipstick on a pig" comment Obama made. People in glass houses should not throw stones, especially when they are caught on tape.