TruthDig: Georgia War a Neocon Election Ploy?

[populistdriven]

McCain has clearly surrounded himself with all the hardcore Neocons.

http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Georgia_War_a_Neocon_Election_Ploy

By Robert Scheer

~snip~

Before you dismiss that possibility, consider the role of one Randy Scheunemann, for four years a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government who ended his official lobbying connection only in March, months after he became Republican presidential candidate John McCain's senior foreign policy adviser. Previously, Scheunemann was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

~snip~

McCain gets to look tough with a new Cold War to fight while Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, scrambling to make sense of a more measured foreign policy posture, will seem weak in comparison. Meanwhile, the dire consequences of the Bush legacy that McCain has inherited, from the disaster of Iraq to the economic meltdown, conveniently will be ignored. But the military-industrial complex, which has helped bankroll the neoconservatives, will be provided with an excuse for ramping up a military budget that is already bigger than that of the rest of the world combined.

What is at work here is a neoconservative, self-fulfilling prophecy in which Russia is turned into an enemy that expands its largely reduced military, and Putin is cast as the new Josef Stalin bogeyman, evoking images of the old Soviet Union. McCain has condemned a "revanchist Russia" that should once again be contained. Although Putin has been the enormously popular elected leader of post-Communist Russia, it is assumed that imperialism is always lurking, not only in his DNA but in that of the Russian people.

~snip~

For McCain to so fervently embrace Scheunemann's neoconservative line of demonizing Russia in the interest of appearing tough during an election campaign is a reminder that a senator can be old and yet wildly irresponsible.

[Bok_Tukalo]

1. If it is, it's a poor one

McCain doesn't look "tough." He looks like an impotent, blustering fool shaking his fist at the air to a nation that is tired of war.

[populistdriven]

2. My thoughts are that all they have to do is scare Americans. The Russian army would provide.

If Americans are scared all of their old game plays will work again.

[Bok_Tukalo]

6. Russia only scares Europeans

I do not think you can scare Americans except by acting as if you want to take Russia on militarily.

[bdamomma]

3. desperate men doing desperate things.

they will do anything to get McInsane in there, I hope the citizens of the US do not take the bait.

[populistdriven]

4. Well they executed poorly, Just look at Faux News crappy performance...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3796202&mesg_id=3796202

[DailyGrind51]

5. Playing the "fear card" is all they have left, the "economy" is Obama's issue,

as is "health care" and "energy", despite the "off-shore drilling" thing.