Evil Putin and the historic back story about revenge

History nearly always has a back story to tell about every consequential event. This drill down analysis about why Vladimir Putin is demonically driven to destroy the innocent people of Ukraine may have deeper and unexpected motivation.

This David Ignatius essay echo discusses this is published in The Washington Post. 

When people try to comprehend the catastrophe of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, they often draw a straight line back to his apprenticeship as a KGB spy, his nostalgia for a fallen Soviet Union and his rage at NATO enlargement. And that may indeed be the way future historians read this tragic story.

The coat of arms of the Chechen Republic is the official symbol of the Chechen Republic. Approved by acting President of Chechnya Sergey Abramov on 22 June 2004.

But another, more complicated version emerges in some recently declassified documents from the George W. Bush administration. Bush had maintained a surprisingly close relationship with the Russian leader, centered on a counterterrorism alliance. The United States was battling al-Qaeda at the time; Russia was fighting Chechen separatists. But Putin came to believe that America was an unreliable, hypocritical partner — and that belief would curdle into the open feud that has deepened, year by year.

This view that Beslan marked a turning point is shared by many other senior officials from the Bush years. “Our relations with Russia were calm, even warm,” wrote Condoleezza Rice in her 2011 memoir, “No Higher Honor.” Rice, a Russian speaker, was Bush’s national security adviser in his first term and then secretary of state. She noted that Bush and Putin developed a “strategic dialogue group” and a “presidential checklist” to address common problems.

This “alternative history” doesn’t condone or excuse Putin’s horrific crimes in Ukraine. His invasion of his neighbor was the illegal, unjustifiable act of a ruthless authoritarian. But in assessing the roots of such a conflict, it’s useful to understand the mind of the adversary — and to see clearly the pathway to disaster.

So, here are some little-known facts: The Russian-American counterterrorism alliance ruptured after a Sept. 1, 2004, attack by Chechen separatists on a school in Beslan, in the Russian region of North Ossetia. When the Russian authorities regained control on Sept. 3, 333 people were dead, including 186 children, plus 31 attackers.

In the aftermath, Putin blamed the United States for encouraging the separatists by offering asylum to “moderate” Chechens and urging Russia to negotiate with them. A headline in Pravda argued: “How would Americans feel if Russia offered sanctuary to Osama bin Laden?”

Russian overreaction contributed to the slaughter at Beslan. The European Court of Human Rights found in 2017, that Russia had used tanks, grenades and flamethrowers to crush the hostage-takers, adding to civilian casualties. 

Russia’s brutal campaign against the Chechens was a foretaste of what was to come in Syria in 2015, and now in Ukraine. But in 2004, Russia and the United States were partners in a “global war on terror.”

Three days after the September 2004, terrorist attack at Beslan, Putin delivered a blistering speech from the Kremlin voicing his indignation at the West in language he hadn’t used before: “We showed ourselves to be weak. And the weak get beaten.” And then, in an unmistakable reference to the United States, Putin added: “Some would like to tear from us a ‘juicy piece of pie.’ Others help them … reasoning that Russia still remains one of the world’s major nuclear powers, and as such still represents a threat to them.”

“We never got back on track” after the Beslan incident, argues Thomas Graham, who was Bush’s National Security Council senior director for Russia at the time.

“Putin concluded — wrongly in the U.S. view — that the U.S. counterterrorism campaign was just a smokescreen to cover American geopolitical advance in Eurasia at Russia’s expense,” Graham wrote in an afterword to the Russia section of the new book “Hand-Off: The Foreign Policy George W. Bush Passed to Barack Obama,” a collection of declassified transition memos prepared for the incoming Obama administration.

From their first meeting, Rice wrote, Putin and Bush were “two men who enjoyed a certain degree of personal chemistry.” 

Bush expressed this in his now-chilling 2001 encomium: “I looked the man in the eye. … I was able to get a sense of his soul.” But beyond Bush’s overenthusiasm, there were real signs of partnership, as one of the declassified documents explains.

“Not only was Putin the first world leader to reach out to President Bush following the September 11 terrorist attacks, but he was also broadly receptive to President Bush’s initiatives, demonstrating early support for the War on Terror and U.S. operations in Afghanistan,” noted a January 2009, secret memo prepared by the Bush NSC’s Russia directorate.

To help the CIA organize its post-9/11 campaign against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, “Putin overruled his security people and said that Russia would not block U.S. efforts to find bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan,” Graham told me. Russia also provided the United States with intelligence from its network of agents inside Afghanistan.

One vivid anecdote from that time: Rice recalled in her memoir that when CIA Director George J. Tenet said he needed supplies for Northern Alliance allies fighting the Taliban, she called Sergei Ivanov, the Russian defense minister. Ivanov said his agents would find the Americans some donkeys that could traverse the narrow mountain paths.

Then came Beslan. Did Putin have any grounds for his claim afterward that America was aiding the Chechen separatists? According to a careful review of the evidence by the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School, Putin was “partially correct.” The Belfer report noted that the United States in 2004, granted asylum to Ilyas Akhmadov, who was foreign minister of a Chechen separatist government in exile. The Bush administration initially opposed Akhmadov’s asylum request but then changed position.

Chechen separatism was a popular cause among some conservatives. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) met with Akhmadov (foreign minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He currently resides in the United States) at least three times. The National Endowment for Democracy awarded him a federally funded fellowship. Chechen separatists also raised money in the United States to support their cause, Graham recalled.

Putin later made the extravagant claim that U.S. intelligence agencies had aided the Chechen separatists. The Belfer Center report, again after careful review, found “no evidence of the U.S. government’s direct support for armed groups operating in Chechnya and/or other parts of the North Caucasus.”

In late 2004, Putin’s anger at what he saw as the West’s machinations would increase when Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko won the presidency over the Kremlin-backed candidate, Viktor Yanukovych. Russia’s power was slipping around its borders, and Putin was unable to reverse the disintegration.

Although Putin argued that NATO expansion was the reason he felt betrayed, Bush administration officials say he didn’t express it at the time. “While displeased, Russia swallowed with little acrimony NATO’s admission of seven Central European states in 2004,” Graham writes.

From 2004, on, the movie begins to roll toward the nightmare scenes of today. In a 2007, speech at the Munich Security Conference, Putin denounced the West. “NATO has put its front-line forces on our borders,” he said. “We have the right to ask: Against whom is this expansion intended?” In 2008, he told William J. Burns, then ambassador to Russia and now CIA director: “Don’t you know that Ukraine is not even a real country?”

Putin’s turn away from the West may have been inevitable. The Russian leader is an authoritarian, and he wanted to protect Russian influence in the former Soviet space. But Graham poses an intriguing query in summarizing the classified record: “Did the United States and Europeans miss something fundamental in the Russian situation and psyche at the time? Did they misread the situation and fail to craft an offer of cooperative relations that adequately accounted for Russian interests and perspectives?”

Regardless, a current U.S. official who follows Russia closely argues that “2004, was a turning point, there’s little doubt about it.” 

By late that year, U.S. intelligence was gathering reports that Putin’s security chiefs were urging him to break decisively with Bush and adopt a more aggressive policy. And ultimately he did, with a vengeance.

Could Putin purposefully have put nearly all the Russian military far away from Moscow?

Surprising cracks, if small ones, appear in Kremlin support for Putin on Ukraine: Excellent echo opinion by David Igntius for The Washington Post.

File under, "Putinology 103"

Russian Revolution March 8, 1917 – June 16, 1923:
The Russian Revolution was a period of political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and adopt a socialist form of government following two successive revolutions and a bloody civil war.

Maine Writer's two cents: With a huge chunk of Russia's military positioned around the Nation of Ukraine, these hungry soilders do nothing but wait for their KGB "wizard of oz", to give the order to advance.  Obviously, the world is furious with Putin for risking war in Europe without any provocation from the Ukrainians.  

In my opinion, Putin's political veneer is peeling away. Therefore, putting the Russian military far away from Moscow keeps him safe from another Russian Revolution. Obviously, as 1917 proves, the Russian people know how to start and end revolutions!  

David Ignatius writes- Vladimir Putin presented a theatrical justification for war with Ukraine on Monday, but initial Russian military actions along the border were limited — and there seemed to be a few small cracks in Kremlin support for Putin’s obsession with regaining Russian dominion in Kyiv.

Putin appeared to be setting the stage on Monday for an all-out invasion. Under the dome of a grand state chamber in the Kremlin, he signed documents recognizing two Russian-backed enclaves in eastern Ukraine as independent “republics.” He then ordered some of the 150,000 Russian combat troops surrounding Ukraine to enter the breakaway regions in a (#FakeNews!) “peacekeeping” operation.

Putin may hope to provoke an armed response from Ukraine that would provide a pretext for a larger assault. But the initial “peacekeeping” move into Donetsk and Luhansk was limited, and a senior Biden administration official was careful to avoid describing it as an invasion, noting that Russian forces have been operating covertly in the two enclaves for nearly eight years.

In fact, Biden administration seemed to be calibrating its response, reacting less sharply to Putin’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk than did some other world leaders. The administration clearly wants to leave the door open for Moscow to stop short of an attack on Ukraine that is opposed not only by a unified NATO alliance but — perhaps more sobering for the Russian leader — by China as well.

Putin is “the ultimate political performance artist,” as Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy put it in a biography. Monday’s carefully staged events evoked both the majesty of imperial Russia and the pettiness and paranoia of its modern-day leader.

The day’s events began with a televised command performance of Putin’s security council in the ornate Kremlin chamber. 

Putin asked each of his ministers for their recommendations (??) about recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk. Many responses were dutifully on script, but there were several surprises.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia’s demands for security guarantees were “not an ultimatum,” and he seemed ready to meet Thursday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for more talks. Lavrov also conceded NATO’s unity, advising Putin that at this past weekend’s Munich Security Conference, “every Western representative declared their absolute commitment to a unified approach,” which “confirmed that we need to negotiate with Washington.”

Some of Putin’s other ministers fed his passion to subdue Kyiv. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Ukraine could obtain nuclear weapons and pose a greater threat than Iran or North Korea. And Nikolai Patrushev, head of the security council, said Western nations “are hiding their true goal — to destroy the Russian federation,” a favorite Putin theme.

But the big surprise came when Putin quizzed Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service. Naryshkin advised that threatening to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk would be useful leverage for implementing the 2015 Minsk agreements to settle the conflict in the eastern region. Russia has claimed to support Minsk, but Monday’s recognition of the two breakaway enclaves as independent will probably derail any chance for the agreement. In response to Naryshkin’s answers, Putin got antsy.

Russian official, politician, businessman and the Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service since 2016.

Sergey Yevgenyevich Naryshkin

What followed was a rare Kremlin moment of quasi-dissent. “Speak clearly, do you support recognition?” demanded Putin. “I will,” answered his spy chief. “You will, or you do?” demanded Putin. When Naryshkin waffled and said he would support “bringing them into Russia,” Putin shot back, “That’s not what we are discussing. Do you support recognizing independence?” To which the vexed spymaster answered, “yes.”

The SVR chief may have been rattled by the astonishing ability of U.S. intelligence to read (and publicize) Russian intelligence plans about Ukraine. Whatever the reason, Max Seddon, Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times who translated the exchange in Twitter posts, noted that the session was “like the finale of the Sopranos.”

White House officials see other signs of dissension within the Russian leadership. Retired generals have criticized the invasion plan. Prominent Russian intellectuals have publicly challenged Putin. And public opinion polls have suggested limited support for war.

Putin tried to woo the public with a solo television performance after the Kremlin meeting. It was a meandering, seemingly unscripted monologue from his office, with Putin sitting at a big desk surrounded by three phones, two computer screens and a potted plant.

Putin sounded like a man trying to sell his country on the need for war. He offered a long, rambling history lesson, the gist of which was that Ukraine had become, in his words, a Western “colony with a puppet regime” that didn’t deserve to be independent of Russia. He even offered a WMD rationale for taking action, repeating Shoigu’s warning that a future Ukraine could obtain nuclear weapons.

The omnipresent chip on Putin’s shoulder has never seemed heavier. “We are being blackmailed, they are threatening us with sanctions,” he said. “A new pretext will always be found or fabricated. Irrespective of the situation in Ukraine.” And why? “To keep Russia behind, to prevent it from developing. … Just because we exist.”

Putin is very far out on a limb with the huge invasion force he has assembled, poised for action. He runs a one-man show in Moscow. 

In the Ukraine confrontation, anything can happen, but that limb has never looked shakier than it did on Monday.

Donald Trump is dangerously unfit to lead - vengeful and disruptive

Echo opinion by David Ignatius published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, in Missouri

Donald Trump's mean, vengeful dismissal of the intelligence community’s inspector general was part of a relentless campaign — waged even in the midst of the pandemic — against people and institutions that can hold him accountable.

Critics often describe Trump as disruptive, erratic and poorly focused. But in concentrating on these weaknesses, opponents understate Trump’s success in using power aggressively to reward his friends and hurt his enemies, perhaps more than any president since Lyndon Johnson.

Trump is even gutting the monitors who are providing accountability for the spending programs to combat the economic effects of the coronavirus. His latest move came Tuesday, when he sacked Glenn Fine, the acting Pentagon inspector general who had been chosen by his fellow inspectors general to lead a panel overseeing the $2 trillion pandemic bailout effort.

Trump’s campaign against accountability has been especially heavy-handed with the intelligence community. That culminated in the abrupt dismissal of Michael Atkinson, a highly regarded government career attorney who since 2018, had served as watchdog of the 17 agencies that report to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Trump’s curt dismissal letter said he lacked “the fullest confidence” in Atkinson. Trump didn’t explain his reasons for firing him, but Atkinson said several days later that he was ousted as revenge for “having faithfully discharged by legal obligations” in supporting a whistleblower’s charges about Ukraine that eventually led to Trump’s impeachment.

With Atkinson’s dismissal, Trump has replaced every experienced, Senate-confirmed official at the national intelligence office. Intelligence is now overseen by acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, a Trump loyalist and former State Department spokesman.

These dizzying changes have startled key members of Congress. Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told me Tuesday that “both Republicans and Democrats on the … committee are united in our concern about the politicization of intelligence.” Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told me he thought Trump was seeking to “chill dissent and neuter any oversight of his conduct.”
The makeover at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is part of a broader degradation of accountability and oversight mechanisms across government. One little-noted facilitator of this demolition process is the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Once a respected source of legal guidance, the office has become a reliably pro-Trump advocate under Attorney General William Barr and the Office of Legal Counsel chief, Assistant Attorney General Steven A. Engel.

In an opinion last September that astonished many Justice Department veterans, Engel argued that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence couldn’t transmit to Congress the Ukraine whistleblower’s compliant. Engel opined that the complaint wasn’t an “urgent concern,” as defined by law. Atkinson responded with a blistering letter and the administration eventually relented.

Engel’s other controversial opinions include a June ruling that Trump didn’t need to release his tax returns and a May opinion that White House advisers had “absolute immunity” from testifying in the impeachment inquiry.

An invidious part of Trump’s campaign is his attempt to undermine the inspector general system itself. These officials serve in 73 agencies across the government and are supposed to provide independent, nonpartisan reporting of abuses to Congress and the executive branch. Fourteen inspector general positions are currently vacant, including those at the CIA, Defense, Treasury and Health and Human Services.

Trump on Friday nominated officials to fill five of these open positions, but many of his nominees have administration political ties. For example, Brian Miller, his choice for a special inspector general post to audit the pandemic recovery program, currently serves in the White House counsel’s office and helped manage document releases during the impeachment probe. He also formerly served as inspector general at the General Services Administration.

Peter M. Thomson, nominated to be the CIA inspector general, is a former prosecutor who in his recent private practice, according to his firm’s website, “defends owners, operators and crew members of motor vessels who have been charged with environmental crimes.” He’s a regular contributor to the blog of the conservative Federalist Society.

Perhaps the most shocking attack on oversight was Trump’s denunciation of Health and Human Services Deputy Inspector General Christi Grimm. A 20-year veteran of her agency’s inspector general office, Grimm helped prepare a survey of 323 hospitals dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. An April 3 inspector general’s statement said the hospitals reported “severe shortages of testing supplies and extended waits for test results” and “widespread shortages of personal protective equipment [that] put staff and patients at risk.”

Trump blasted Grimm on Monday and said the 46-state survey of hospitals “could be her opinion.” In a tweet Tuesday, he questioned whether she had audited Obama administration anti-flu efforts and concluded: “Another Fake Dossier!”

David Ignatius writes for The Washington Post

Donald Trump in lock step conflict with intel community ~ why?

David Ignatius: Another step closer to the abyss (and an Ignatius perspective on why Trump is determined to protect himself, rather than the Constitution he swore to uphold and protect.)  Trump's war with the inteligence community probably has an alternate motive.

(In Maine Writer lingo ~ what has happened to America?)

An echo opinion published in the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina.

Donald Trump will violate laws and ignore the Constitution for the purpose of saving himself from accountability. In so doing, his failed leadership is taking all Americans into a political abyss from which we may need decades to recover.

Wrote David Ignatius: What Donald Trump did Wednesday to John Brennan isn’t supposed to happen in a democracy. A president who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution carried out a personal political vendetta against a career intelligence officer.

In revoking the security clearance of former CIA director John Brennan, Trump took another step toward the abyss. He cited the “risk posed by [Brennan’s] erratic conduct and behavior,” a ludicrous charge coming from our unguided missile of a chief executive.

Brennan’s real crime is that he has been in Trump’s face nearly every day, trading insults on Twitter and cable television* (!). Brennan has taken to using words such as “high crimes and misdemeanors” and “nothing short of treasonous” to describe Trump’s behavior, and likened him to convicted fraudster Bernie Madoff. Stripping Brennan’s clearance was presidential payback, dressed up in national security language.

I wrote back in January that I wished Brennan and other former intelligence chiefs would resist slugging it out with Trump — not because their criticisms are wrong but because they risked tarnishing the credibility and professionalism of their agencies. As I argued, Trump supporters would “fume that the spy chiefs are ganging up on the populist president. Conspiracy theories about an imaginary ‘deep state’ will gain more traction, and the cycle of national mistrust will get worse.”

But let’s be honest: Brennan isn’t a guy who was going to back down in a bar fight, any more than Trump. He’s tough and stubborn, with a chip on his shoulder. He’s a guy who, if you write five positive things about him and one negative, remembers only the negative. Once Trump insulted Brennan’s integrity, as he did after he won the presidency, these two were going to end up in a cockfight.

The prevailing media explanation of the Brennan move was that Trump was trying to distract public attention from Omarosa Manigault Newman, a disaffected former staffer who just published a tell-all book about the president titled “Unhinged.” But I wonder if that was the real Brennan trigger.

Trump himself offered a clearer (and more damning) explanation in an interview Wednesday with the Wall Street Journal, suggesting that he punished Brennan because he was one of the original instigators of the investigation led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. “I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham. And these people led it! So I think it’s something that had to be done.”

With Trump, you always have to question what’s rubbing him so raw and driving him toward possibly illegal and unconstitutional actions. As prosecutors like to say: “We may not know what he’s done wrong, but he does.” Does a warped protective impulse drive Trump into these furies of defensive action?

With James B. Comey, ground zero may have been the briefing given by the then-FBI director to the president-elect in January, detailing the salacious sexual allegations contained in a now-famous (but unconfirmed) dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and funded partly by lawyers representing the Hillary Clinton campaign. Trump brought up this sleazy evidence repeatedly afterward and reportedly pressed Comey for a pledge of personal loyalty. When Trump didn’t get it, he fired his FBI director and, in a television interview, blamed it on Comey’s pursuit of the Russia investigation.

Brennan poses a similar challenge for Trump. It’s not that Brennan embodies the “deep state.” In truth, he disliked a CIA operations culture that he felt had rejected him as a young officer; while his modernization efforts at the CIA had supporters, I’d bet that many at the agency were relieved to see him go.

What was so threatening about the former CIA chief? Beyond Brennan’s sheer cussedness, I’d guess that Trump was frightened — and remains so to this day — about just how much Brennan knows about his secrets. And by that, I don’t just mean his dealings with Russian oligarchs and presidents, but the way he moved through a world of fixers, flatterers and money launderers.

Brennan, like Comey, was there at the beginning of this investigation. Trump must have asked himself: What does Brennan know? What did he learn from the CIA’s deep assets in Moscow, and from liaison partners such as Britain, Israel, Germany and the Netherlands? Does Trump think Brennan will be a less credible witness without a security clearance?

The Brennan episode is just one more warning of what may be ahead. Trump appears ready to take our country over the waterfall to save himself. Before it’s too late, Trump should realize: Even in his rage, he can’t fire everybody.

*MaineWriter opinion- I can't imagine John Brennan taking on such aggressive behavior without having a deep understanding about how Donald Trump is in collusion with Russia.

Root Cause Analysis on Libya - Teetering on Anarchy and Paralyzed by Benghazi

Senator John McCain has an alarmingly charismatic way of changing, or at least modifying, history. It's his "bridge to nowhere" that's caused roadblocks for legislation out of the US Senate and Congress, where "pork" spending is attached. Consequently, there are sparsely few bargaining chips hanging around to leverage passing dicey legislation. Additionally, McCain hired former Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin to be his 2008 Vice-Presidential running mate. Palin wasn't qualified for the job, but conservative GOP politics was forever changed by her imprimatur. 

And the list includes McCain's nearly hysterical attacks on the terrible incident in Benghazi, Libya. Again, he's impacted history.

McCain's relentless assault on the September 11, 2012, attack on the Benghazi consulate and the killing of 4 people including American Ambassador Chris Stevens, has had the potential for destroying any chance for the US to regain Middle East credibility. As a result of McCain's obsessive haranguing on the terrible Benghazi incident, the Russians are now gaining momentum in the Middle East, while American foreign policy is held captive to right wing ranting about any US involvement.

The Washington Post columnist David Ignatius is reprinted in the November 8, 2013 "The Week",  reporting how the bickering about Benghazi is now a double tragedy, because the Libyan nation is spiraling into anarchy, while the US is paralyzed to respond.

Does anyone remember Libya?, asks Ignatius. "Two years ago, the U.S. and its NATO allies spent billions intervening in the country's civil war to topple dictator Muammar al-Qaddafi, hoping to establish  Libya as 'a secure state'. Yet, Libya is now teetering on the edge of anarchy, with Islamist militias controlling much of the country. Libyan Prime Minister Ali Seidan can't even hold meetings for fear participants will be attacked. Seidan has asked for the U.S. help in training a security force to protect the democratically elected government and the delivery of essential services. But the Obama administration and Congress has been paralyzed. 'Congressional Republicans deserve much of the blame' for the inaction, because their 'near-hysterical attacks' about the tragic loss of four Americans in Benghazi have made Libya politically radioactive. 'Nobody wants to risk another Benghazi,' so the U.S. is simply doing nothing. But, it does not honor those who died in Benghazi to let Libya fall into anarchy and Islamist terrorism. 'It's inexcusable to keep sitting on our hands, bickering about Benghazi, while the country (of Libya) goes down the drain'."

McCain's alarming charismatic furor over Benghazi has marginalized our nation's Middle East foriegn policy strategies. Instead of forming policy based upon diplomatic expertise, McCain's siren has created, instead, a reflexive knee jerk reaction to buzz words.  

I can't imagine what our world would've looked like if the McCain-Palin dangerous duo had ever been elected. Thank God, they were both cut loose from ever being our nation's nightmarish political leaders. Nonetheless, they're both doing plenty of damage, every time they open their mouths to speak.

As for Senator McCain, although he's an American patriot based upon his military and public policy career, he often doesn't use good judgement. Unfortunately, McCain can't take back the damage he's done the Libyan people by his Benghazi screeching. Yet, if he really cares about our nation's Middle East foreign policy, he'd be humble enough to recall his pointless, wasteful, unproductive and hurtful statements made about the deadly incident. 

There hasn't been a single constructive outcome from the outrageous accusations made about the tragedy in Benghazi. Senator McCain has the power to, at least, retract some of his own collateral damage. Since McCain is identified with the root cause of the regressive Middle East policy against providing some U.S. aid to Libya, he should be responsible for leading us out of the foreign policy abyss he started on September 11, 2012.