Chilling. No wonder Pat Buchanan's afraid.
WASHINGTON — Sen. John McCain arrived late at his Senate office on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just after the first plane hit the World Trade Center.
"This is war," he murmured to his aides. The sound of scrambling fighter planes rattled the windows, sending a tremor of panic through the room.
Within hours, McCain, the Vietnam War hero and famed straight talker of the 2000 Republican primary, had taken on a new role: the leading advocate of taking the American retaliation against al-Qaida far beyond Afghanistan. In a marathon of television and radio appearances, McCain recited a short list of other countries said to support terrorism, invariably including Iraq, Iran and Syria.
(snip)
Within a month he made clear his priority. "Very obviously Iraq is the first country," he declared on CNN. By Jan. 2, McCain was on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt in the Arabian Sea, yelling to a crowd of sailors and airmen: "Next up, Baghdad!"
Now, as McCain prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination, his response to the attacks of Sept. 11 opens a window onto how he might approach the gravest responsibilities of a potential commander in chief. Like many, he immediately recalibrated his assessment of the unseen risks to America's security. But he also began to suggest that he saw a new "opportunity" to deter other foes by punishing not only al-Qaida, but also Iraq.
"Just as Sept. 11 revolutionized our resolve to defeat our enemies, so has it brought into focus the opportunities we now have to secure and expand our freedom," McCain told a NATO conference in Munich, Germany, in early 2002, urging the Europeans to join what he portrayed as an all but certain assault on Saddam Hussein.
.jpg)