Do you remember the story of Lex? The Gathering of Eagles wrote about him a few months ago. He is a retired U.S. Marine. He was the faithful companion of Marine Cpl. Dustin Jerome Lee until Lee was killed in action in Iraq. Cpl. Lee’s family brought Lex to live with them in Mississippi.

Cpl. Lee’s mother brought Lex to meet Senator McCain today in Meridian, Mississippi. They even got to right on the Straight Talk Express. I’m sure that McCain and his family were honored to be in the company of a renowned warrior like Lex!!!

Read more about Lex at the Gathering of Eagles blog and more about his meeting with McCain here.

crossposted at Blue Star Chronicles

John McCain has been touring the country as part of his Service to America Tour. Today he was at Hope Village which is a home for children who have had to be removed from the homes of their primary caretakers. It is a place of safety and … well … hope. A place where the children can grow and learn in safety when other alternatives are not available to them. The home was started in 2000 by actress Sela Ward.

John McCain speaks at Hope Village about the importance of public service

Actress Sela Ward listens

crossposted at Blue Star Chronicles

I listened in on the blogger conference call today and was glad to hear Hugh Hewitt ask about a statement that had been made about an upcoming announcement from John McCain that there will be ‘a significant increase in the Army and Marine Corps’ under his administration. I was so happy to hear that he would build our military back up that I didn’t make the connection that he didn’t mention the Navy. I guess I just made the assumption he meant the military as a whole.

Hugh Hewitt, on the other hand, did make that connection and asked what McCain’s intentions are in terms of the Navy’s involvement in that military increase. I thought the response to that question was interesting.

In the blogger conference call today, McCain Senior Advisor Steve Schmidt outlined next week’s “Service to America” tour. Senator McCain will be making speeches from McCain Field in Mississippi, Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, Annapolis, Maryland, Jacksonville and Pensacola, Florida. Each stop will underscore some aspect of the senator’s life story, as well as the McCain family’s many-generation commitment to the country’s safety.

At the Jacksonville stop, the GOP nominee will call for a significant increase in the size of the Army and Marine Corps. I asked if the Navy would be part of the call for an expanded military, and Schmidt demurred until the senator speaks next week. It seems to me that a naval power needs more than the 280 ship Navy we are headed for.

Expansion of the military is a crucial issue for the fall campaign. The Jacksonville speech will thus be a very significant milestone in Campaign 2008.

I will look forward to hearing McCain speak on this next week. With his legacy of connections with the Navy I suspect there will be a significant increase in the strength of our military … Navy included. I certainly hope so.

On Monday John McCain will embark on his Service to America Tour. This tour is an opportunity for McCain to introduce himself to Americans through stops, speeches and interactions throughout America. His speeches will be on a more personal level than we have ever heard from him before.

…. he will introduce himself to the nation through a series of speeches and visits that trace the life of a man indebted to his nation, humbled by the opportunity to serve his country, honored by his family’s love and deeply moved by his fellow Americans’ courage and sacrifice. The tour will highlight the events and figures that shaped his views of right and wrong, forgiveness and grace and the tradition of service and sacrifice ingrained in him from generations of McCains. This “Service to America” tour will fundamentally be about the future of America and the change John McCain will bring as president, informed by the values that have guided his life.

John McCain is scheduled to speak on foreign policy later today in Los Angeles. In his speech he will address his feelings regarding war.

“When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, and a Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed. I rarely saw him again for four years.

My grandfather, who commanded the fast carrier task force under Admiral Halsey, came home from the war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day.

In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home to the country they loved so well.

I detest war. It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation’s finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict.

Not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.”

The men in my life have been familiar with war. My father was a veteran of World War II, my husband is a Vietnam Veteran and now my son is a veteran of the Global War on Terror. I have never heard one of them talk about loving war. I have heard my husband say that no man who has been to war would ever want there to be a war. None of them are the ‘war mongers’ as they are categorized by the left. They simply understand the awful necessity of war. They understand history and the nature of the world. They know that appeasement is not the answer to the aggression of our enemies and they have the courage to face the harsh realities that we are faced with in this world.

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crossposted at Blue Star Chronicles

Senator Lindsey Graham was on Hannity and Colmes last night and responded to the dems repeatedly distorting John McCain’s statement that the United States will have a presence in Iraq for up to 100 years.

The liberals are very good at sound byte politics. They knowingly distort and take statements out of context, repeat their sound byte repeatedly until many in the public start believing that their version of events is true. If you don’t keep close tabs on politics and depend on the old media for your information there is no reason that you wouldn’t believe that John McCain expected our troops to be fighting the Battle of Iraq for another 100 years. In reality, we need to remember that we’ve had troops all over the world for many years. Troops have been in Japan and Germany since World War II (over 60 years) an no one seems concerned about that in the least.

One of John McCain’s strengths is his strong grasp on the conflicts that our country is currently faced with and his understanding of how to deal with conflict. He certainly knows that pretending conflict is not there doesn’t make it go away.

While John McCain has been touring the Middle East this week he has visited King Abdullah II of Jordan and Israel. He has voiced his support of Israel as well as hope for peace in the Middle East as a whole.

The Jerusalem Post

“If Hamas/Hizbullah succeeds here, they are going to succeed everywhere, not only in the Middle East, but everywhere. Israel isn’t the only enemy,” Arizona Sen. McCain said, in the only interview he is giving to the Israeli media during his visit here.

“They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for. So America does have an interest in what happens here, far above and beyond our alliance with the State of Israel.”

McCain calls Israel a partner, not a client. He says as partners it is not our place to tell Israel how to handle the conflicts they have with their neighbors. While he would not recommend that Israel not talk to Hamas he said that he is personally against it.

“Someone is going to have to answer me the question of how you are going to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extinction,” McCain said in a lounge in Jerusalem’s David Citadel Hotel, as Lieberman and Graham listened.

~ clip ~

“I really think that we should understand that the US and Israel are partners. Israel is not a client of the United States,” he said. “If you are partners, then you don’t dictate what you think the terms of the survival of a nation should be.”

Asked whether Israel was using the right tactics in trying to quell the rocket fire on Sderot and the western Negev, McCain praised Defense Minister Ehud Barak - terming him “one of the great military people” he has met - and added, “I can’t give you a good answer as to how you respond to these rocket attacks.”

But, he then said dryly, “I can tell you that I believe that if rocket attacks came across the border of the United States of America, that the American people would probably demand pretty vigorous actions in response. I think I know my constituency in the state of Arizona, and they would be pretty exercised if rockets came across our southern border.”

And what did he have to say about Iran ….

“I think Iran is a threat to the region,” McCain said, adding that not only were the Iranians “obviously pursuing nuclear weapons,” they were also arming and training extremists to send into Iraq, supporting Hizbullah and influencing Syria.

“At the end of the day, we can still not afford to have Iran with nuclear weapons,” he said. “We know they have ambitions that are not just aimed at the State of Israel.”

These ambitions included “destabilization of the entire region upon which the United States’ national security interests rest,” he said.

McCain is in the region with his close friends, fellow Senators, Joe Lieberman and Lesley Graham. Here are some photos from their trip. You can click on the photos to make them larger.

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