No Vetted Questions? Iraq and Draft Questions...

Mary Katharine Ham | December 03, 2007 7:13 PM

Gideon Yago makes a point of saying the questions haven't been vetted at all (but Chris Cillizza is picking the questions from online...). So far, we've had a global warming and an education question from a homeschooler.

What are you doing to bring the troops home?

"I argued against it and I said I had no confidence in Sec. Rumsfeld...I can tell you that this new strategy is succeeding but it's still at great cost...al Qaeda is not defeated. They're on the run, but they're not defeated...The men and women fighting over there believe it's imporant to fight them there or we will have chaos here. This success needs to be met with caution, but a little optimism...

There are no Thomas Jeffersons in Iraq. For a long time, Saddam Hussein killed everyone who put his head up...Many of us are divided in the war...It has divided our nation very much, but it has divided none of us in our love and support for those who are fighting. Thank you for supporting them."

Would you reinstate the draft? (Geraghty wins the pool with "under 20 minutes" 'til a draft question.)

McCain touches on how great the volunteer force is and wonders why we would do away with that model. He notes that we can increase recruiting and points out that the draft during the Vietnam War asked poor folks to fight while the rich folks who could get out of it stayed home.

Chris Cillizza, who is taking possibly the worst hits in the room-- from McCain himself, who razzes him for using pie charts and asks, "who invited you?" when he's introduced-- follows up with more about opinion polls on Iraq. He asks, "how do you convince people who are so set against the war after what we've been through with this war?"

"The facts on the ground is that we are succeeding..." He mentions that Truman was not swayed by opinion polls during the Korean War and should not have been.