Johnny, Johnny, We Hardly Know Thee

Senator John McCain’s wife, Cindy, once invited me into her bedroom. To those who are saying, “What!?” – I’m neither lying nor joking. I’m not ashamed to say that I’ve been there, done that, and enjoyed it. She was as beautiful and vivacious then as she is now. I dare say that very few men can lay claim to having had such an encounter.

I should add that Cindy McCain was Cindy Hensley at the time and she was about seven years old. Her uncle, Gene Hensley, was my uncle by marriage. So we were cousins-in-law or step-cousins or something like that. We lived within a few blocks of each other and went to the same elementary school and high school, albeit six years apart. Our families would visit each other from time to time.

Because I’m an Arizona native; because I was an officer and a gentlemen in the United States Navy; because I served at the Naval Academy with a number of former POWs (Bill Lawrence, Dick Stratton, Paul Galanti, Ned Shuman, Fred Purrington); and because I’ve shared hot chocolate with his wife, I have tried very hard to like John McCain and embrace his candidacy for the presidency. Unfortunately, he’s made that virtually impossible to do.

First, was the speaking engagement at Bob Jones University, a place so ultra-white and uber-conservative that it outlawed inter-racial dating until just a few years ago; then, the confessional love fest with Jerry Falwell and the resulting shift in positions on various social issues; and then came the breast-to-breast, mouth-to-ear hugging of President Bush on the war in Iraq. This last embrace led the good senator to a potentially disastrous appearance in Baghdad this last week, after which he pronounced the streets and marketplaces of Baghdad to be places worthy of a Sunday stroll for regular people like him. He declared that the American people are not getting the full story about what is going on in Iraq. He’s probably right, but not in a good way.

The senator, joined by Reb Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Reb Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, strolled through the stalls at Shorja Market, a place that in the two months before had been the target of a couple of car bombings that killed 78 people and wounded almost 200 others. The buildings around Shorja have also been a favorite hangout for snipers. These three dignitaries were apparently very impressed with how safe and secure they felt on the streets of Baghdad and declared the troop surge to be working as advertised.

As they gushed on the evening news, none of these visitors acknowledged that they were made safe and secure by the 100 U.S. troops that cleared the marketplace in advance and accompanied them throughout. Note: no Iraqi troops were invited to the clearing party. I wonder if there are trust issues there. There were also three Blackhawk helicopters and two Apache gunships circling tightly overhead watching every person in or around the market. And, the visitors were wearing the latest and greatest body armor, a fashion statement yet to be made available to most of Shorja’s Sunday shoppers.

President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair could spend an hour buying rugs and trinkets at Shorja if they had enough firepower around them. It was a ridiculous scene and the post-stroll pronouncements were a disservice to the American public. When the Iraqi merchants were interviewed after the visitors left, they uniformly heaped scorn on the idea that this visit represented daily life in Baghdad or that Shorja or its neighborhood was considered safe and secure by anyone, and they made it clear that they conveyed that message to the congressional visitors. Those messages were not relayed by the visitors to the American people, thereby confirming that, indeed, we are not getting the full story from Baghdad.

Five days before this visit the single worst bombing since the beginning of the war claimed the lives of 152 Shiites in Tal Afar, just north of Baghdad. 347 others were wounded. The bomb was hidden in a truck loaded with flour, a truck that supposedly had been searched by Iraqi security forces. Immediately after the bombing, reprisals by Shiite security forces killed another 47. Just two months before this bombing, American officials singled out Tal Afar as a symbol of a violent city turned peaceful. In Iraq, peace is something that can only be secured at any given place and time through the presence of overwhelming American forces.

The day after the McCain visit the snipers returned and struck again at the Shorja market. In the three days after this visit eight American troops died on the streets of Baghdad. Yesterday, the president announced that another 12,000 troops are being added to the surge so that Shorja can be made safe and secure enough for Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie to buy a few brass bobbles in Baghdad without the need for Blackhawk and Apache accompaniment.

When Senator McCain returned to the U.S. and was greeted with a firestorm of criticism for his stage performance in Iraq, he promptly delayed the official announcement of his candidacy and his staff indicated that he was preparing a formal statement on why he supports the president’s policies in Iraq. We can only hope that he has cleared his head and will not cite Shorja or Tal Afar as Exhibits A and B in the case he will present.

I tried, Senator McCain. But I don’t think it’s going to work out between us as well as it did between your wife and me.