McCain: I was "tested" in the Cuban Missile Crisis

[Miroslav]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081021/ap_on_el_pr/mccain#full

Republican John McCain told voters in this key electoral state Tuesday he was personally tested by the same kind of crisis that Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph Biden warned Barack Obama will almost certainly face if elected president.

McCain recalled being ready to launch a bombing run during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which Biden said over the weekend tested a new President John F. Kennedy and was the template for the kind of "generated crisis" the 47-year-old Obama would face within six months of taking office.

"I was on board the USS Enterprise," McCain, a former naval aviator, said in the capital city of Harrisburg. "I sat in the cockpit, on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, off of Cuba. I had a target. My friends, you know how close we came to a nuclear war."

Yes. It's little stories like these that really help the American people feel comfortable that John McCain is ready to make those tough calls. Because clearly, if history tells us anything, it is that a bombing run or two would really have gone a long way towards address the escalating tensions of the time. It's just too bad that someone (probably a Freedom-Hating Democrat) decided to "negotiate with our enemies" instead (were there proper preconditions??). Dammit! But hopefully a McCain administration could help us avoid this same mistake again in the future, starting with Victory in Iraq.

I was feeling a little shaky on McCain's "shoot from the hip" Maverick style of judgment before, but now I feel GREAT.

My comfort only grows ever greater with the knowledge that if it's not his finger on the nuclear triger, it will be Sarah Palin's.