Israel Matzav

Mccain and Lieberman slam the Iraq Study Surrender Group Report

US Senators John McCain (R - Az.) and Joe Lieberman (D? - Conn.) are here in Israel visiting. (The question mark was intentional - the Jerusalem Post is calling Lieberman an Independent, but I thought he had decided to join the Democratic caucus). According to 'officials present at the meeting,' they told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Monday that they are against the recommendations of the Iraq Study Surrender Group Report that the US 'engage' with Syria and Iran.

Lieberman said it was as if former secretary of state James Baker, one of the heads of the committee and an architect of the Madrid conference, re-cycled 15-year-old ideas.

McCain, touted as one of the leading Republican presidential hopefuls in 2008, alluded to Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's current trip to Damascus, when he told Olmert that he was opposed to fellow senators visiting Syria.

It is a mistake, McCain was quoted as saying, added that these visits not only made Damascus look legitimate but gave the impression that the US was not united vis- -vis Syria.

McCain and Lieberman were part of a five-person congressional delegation that arrived in Israel on Sunday for two days of talks after visits to Afghanistan and Iraq. The other members of the delegation were senators Susan Collins (R-Maine) and John Thune (R-South Dakota), and Representative Mark Kirk (R-Illinois).

...

The senators, according to the officials at the Olmert meeting, also criticized the Baker-Hamilton report for linking the current instability in the Middle East to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Collins was quoted as having told Olmert that it seemed ridiculous to say that Sunni-Shi'ite fighting has anything to do with Israel and the Palestinians.

...

McCain, who spent five grueling years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, met with the families of captive soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser on Sunday, sharing his own harrowing story of survival behind enemy lines and promising to work for their release.

Hizbullah abducted Regev and Goldwasser on July 12. Their captors have not provided any signs that they are alive.

"I don't know if I was able to bring comfort, but we certainly said we would do everything in our power to bring attention to the situation and see that Geneva Conventions are observed," McCain said.

McCain was shot down over North Vietnam during a bombing run in 1967. During his five years in captivity - two spent in solitary confinement - McCain was frequently tortured and thought to be on the verge of death.

Speaking of Kerry, you may want to check out a report of his meeting with the chinless ophthalmologist here:

And if not for the votes of about 2 million of you in 2004, this might be a picture of the Sitting President of the United States meeting with an inbred thug who is acting in the role of a cheap suited, chinless Mussolini to Irans Hitlerian regime.

Do you know how many showers I would need to take to get the stink of sitting in the same room with Assad off of me?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:59 AM