McCain's on the campaign trail......again

(Looks like this could be an ongoing piece.)

I reported on September 22 about McCain's "stand" against torture, which basically allowed the White House to continue its practices of torture - only now, it's legal. Anyway, he brought up the big, bad ACLU, saying that they didn't get what they wanted, yada yada, spin spin, lie lie.

Well, in what I believe is his continuing media presence to gain support for an '08 Presidential run, he appeared on NBC's Today show this morning.

During the interview, Meredith Vieira asked McCain about comments he made yesterday, in which he called the Clinton administration's policies on North Korea a "failure."

From CNN.com: "Republican Sen. John McCain on Tuesday accused former President Clinton, the husband of his potential 2008 White House rival, of failing to act in the 1990s to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons."

McCain said, "I would remind Senator [Hillary] Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush administration's policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated was a failure...The Koreans received millions and millions in energy assistance. They've diverted millions of dollars of food assistance to their military."

McCain was then called out by Senator John Kerry, "He must be trying to burnish his credentials for the nomination process." Kerry added, "The truth is the Clinton administration knew full well they didn't have a perfect agreement. But at least they were talking. At least we had inspectors going in and we knew where the [nuclear fuel] rods were. This way, we don't know where the rods are. The rods are gone. There are no inspectors. Ask any American which way is better"

During the interview on Today, the fearless McCain backed down on his statements like a kitten in front of a pit bull, saying something about how this is not the time to be pointing fingers - even though that's exactly what he did the previous day.

Here is the point that McCain is missing - when the Bush administration was selling the idea of attacking Iraq, there were some people who pointed out that North Korea was a much bigger threat. Saddam Hussein's regime claimed they didn't have any weapons of mass destruction while North Korea openly admitted that they were pursuing nuclear (or "nucular" if you are the leader of the free world) weapon technology. And now we have a situation where we've been in Iraq for over three years and still have not found all those WMD stockpiles and animated mobile weapons labs that Colin Powell told us about, but Kim Jong Il has told the world that he just tested a nuke.

The Bush administration's policies have not made this country safer, and no matter how many congressmen you put on television to play the "Let's Blame Clinton" game show, it doesn't change that fact.

more info:
CNN: "McCain: Clinton's North Korea policy 'a failure'"