Josh Mankiewicz Tells Obama and McCain To Stop Apologizing for Speaking Uncomfortable Truths

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, John McCain, 2008 election

Man, this needed to be said, and I haven't seen anyone else say it until now:

Barack Obama and John McCain have several things in common. They’re both U.S. senators, they’re both running for president, and now they’ve both had to apologize for saying the same thing.

What they both said was that the lives of the more than 3,100 U.S. troops lost in the Iraq war were wasted.

Both had to quickly pull back and say that’s not really what they meant.

Well, it’s pretty clear to me that that is exactly what they meant. But saying that soldiers’ lives have been wasted is hard for some people to hear.

It turns out that political correctness knows no party or ideology. Both politicians now say they should have used the word “sacrifice.”

It’s really unbelievable. Even when you’re running for president you are not allowed to say what you really think.

Obama, a Democrat, has opposed the war from the start. It’s pretty hard to believe he thinks those lives were anything but wasted.

McCain, a Republican, has supported both the war and the new surge in troops. But he’s talked a lot about the mistakes made in Iraq. And he clearly feels that those errors have led to some needless deaths...some of our best and brightest who went long before their time.

And just as amazing, both of these guys like to claim that they’re a different sort of politician—that they believe in straight talk, that they’re not part of the Washington spin cycle.

Here’s what they should apologize for: that after four years, with the nation clearly hugely conflicted over the war, our leaders can’t even discuss it honestly.