Crossposted from Flopping Aces

Incredible…..incredibly stupid that is:

Feminist icon Gloria Steinem took to the stump on Hillary Clinton’s behalf here last night and quickly proved that she has lost none of her taste for provocation.

“Suppose John McCain had been Joan McCain and Joan McCain had got captured, shot down and been a POW for eight years. [The media would ask], ‘What did you do wrong to get captured? What terrible things did you do while you were there as a captive for eight years?’” Steinem said, to laughter from the audience.

McCain was, in fact, a prisoner of war for around five-and-a-half years, during which time he was tortured repeatedly. Referring to his time in captivity, Steinem said with bewilderment, “I mean, hello? This is supposed to be a qualification to be president? I don’t think so.”

Disregarding the disgusting nature of her attack on his experience as a POW lets look at her argument. That being the fact that someone’s military experience is not a qualification to be Commander in Chief.

Fair enough.

But being the wife of a President does give someone qualification? Is she for real? Hillary’s experience as First Lady and her few years in the senate do NOT make her more qualified then someone with military combat experience AND 24 years in the Senate.

Really no reason to bring up Obama since he has no qualifications to be President anyway, other then the one bill he was able to get passed.

Then we have Wesley Clark saying McCain doesn’t have the “right” kind of experience:

In the national security business, the question is, do you have — when you have served in uniform, do you really have the relevant experience for making the decisions at the top that have to be made? Everybody admires John McCain’s service as a fighter pilot, his courage as a prisoner of war. There’s no issue there. He’s a great man and an honorable man. But having served as a fighter pilot — and I know my experience as a company commander in Vietnam — that doesn’t prepare you to be commander-in-chief in terms of dealing with the national strategic issues that are involved. It may give you a feeling for what the troops are going through in the process, but it doesn’t give you the experience first hand of the national strategic issues.

If you look at what Hillary Clinton has done during her time as the First Lady of the United States, her travel to 80 countries, her representing the U.S. abroad, plus her years in the Senate, I think she’s the most experienced and capable person in the race, not only for representing am abroad, but for dealing with the tough issues of national security.

You can’t make this stuff up. McCain responded:

Wes Clark should be ashamed of himself. John McCain’s 24 years in the US Senate, serving as Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and leadership on every major national security issue over the last two decades has prepared him to lead as commander in chief from day one.

If this is how they are going to go about attacking McCain then Hillary’s minions really aren’t that smart after all.

also:

Chavez Threatening War With Columbia

We knew this kind of action was inevitable. Not who the action would be directed against but the action itself has been apparent for sometime. Hugo Chavez is a power hungry nut:

President Hugo Chavez on Sunday ordered thousands of troops to the border with Colombia after Colombia’s military killed a top rebel leader.

Chavez told his defense minister: “Move 10 battalions for me to the border with Colombia, immediately.” He also ordered the Venezuelan Embassy in Colombia closed and said all embassy personnel would be withdrawn.

The announcements by Venezuela’s leftist leader pushed relations to their tensest point of his nine-year presidency, and Chavez warned that Colombia could spark a war in South America.

What precipitated the action was the killing of the second in command of the Marxist terrorist group FARC by the Columbian army. According to Time Columbia had received lots of money from the US to help stem the tide of cocaine and they used some of that to buy some state of the art communications technology which ultimately allowed them to find Raul Reyes and then kill the bastard:

His real name was Luis Edgar Devia Silva — and his satellite phone apparently gave away his location in remote southwestern Colombia, near or across the Ecuadoran border.

Critics might still complain that Plan Colombia — which has made the South American nation the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid outside Iraq — is ignoring its original purpose. But the Bush Administration would argue that by beheading the FARC, Plan Colombia is actually fulfilling its anti-drug mandate — because at least half of the between $500 million and $1 billion the FARC is believed to earn each year is derived from protecting Colombian cocaine trafficking. The other half is made via ransom kidnapping — the FARC currently holds more than 700 hostages in its jungle redoubts, including three Americans — which is the other reason the U.S. State Department placed the rebels on its list of international terrorist groups a decade ago (as does the European Union today).

Although todays report says it was an informant, not a satellite phone as Time printed, that allowed them to find him:

Colombia’s military tracked Reyes’ location through an informant and bombed a camp on its side of the Ecuadorean border, where Reyes was thought to be, Santos said. Ground troops moved in but came under attack from another camp across the border in Ecuador. When the military overran that camp, they found Reyes’ body, Santos said.

Either way, Chavez is a bit miffed about the killing and, being his usual crazy self, had the gall to call the Columbian government a terrorist state.

Hilarious.

“We pay tribute to a true revolutionary, who was Raul Reyes,” Chavez said, recalling that he had met rebel in Brazil in 1995 and calling him a “good revolutionary.”

Chavez said he had just spoken to Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa and that Ecuador was also sending troops to its border with Colombia.

“The Colombian government has become the Israel of Latin America,” an agitated Chavez said, mentioning another country that he has criticized for its military strikes. “We aren’t going to permit Colombia to become the Israel of these lands.”

This comes on the heels of his address to the Venezuelan people which included his demand that FARC be considered a legitimate army instead of the terrorists they are:

In a four-hour address to the Venezuelan Congress, Mr. Chávez described the FARC and another Colombian group, the Army of National Liberation (ELN), as “not terrorists” but “genuine armies.” He claimed that they possessed “a Bolivarian political project that is respected here,” a reference to his own, half-baked “socialism for the 21st century.” And he demanded that they be recognized as lawful belligerents by the United States and Latin American and European governments that now classify them as terrorist organizations. In short, Mr. Chávez was endorsing groups dedicated to violence and other criminal behavior in a neighboring Latin American democracy, and associating his agenda with theirs.

Now if he was smart he would wait this out another seven months until we see who the next President will be. If its one of the Socialist twins then he knows he can pretty much do what he wants without worrying that we will help out an ally in the region. Jimmy Carter did it to the Shah. Jimmy Carter version 2.0 will do it to Columbia.

But if he thinks Bush won’t do anything to protect an ally he is even more crazier then I would have imagined.