Hammer’s column (“Time running out for McCain,” Oct. 8-15) noted McCain’s growing desperation. Cindy McCain would have us believe that Barack Obama’s vote against one particular form of troop support legislation sent a chill down her spine? Did her husband’s no vote on that particular form of the bill and/or other troop and veteran support bills send the same chill down Mrs. McCain’s spine? Should have! For a nine page summary of John McCain’s lack of troop support, go to VoteVets.org. In part here is what you will find in addition to John McCain’s votes against additional body armor for troops, funding for Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome and Traumatic Brain Injury. Disabled American Veterans gave John McCain a 20 percent rating. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America  gave McCain a “D” grade for his poor voting record on veterans’ issues.

McCain’s supposed war expertise is called into question by his own words. McCain, the supposed advocate of the recent Iraq “surge” tactic, told Face the Nation (9-15-02): “I think we can go in (Iraq) with much smaller numbers than we had in the past.” McCain told CNN (9-29-02): “We’re not going to get into house-to-house fighting in Baghdad.” McCain told MSNBC (1-22-03): “...we will win this conflict. We will win it easily.”

McCain told Hannity & Colmes (2-21-03): “We’re going to win this victory...it will be brief. We’re going to find massive evidence of weapons of mass destruction.”

On Osama Bin Laden, the man McCain now says he will capture or kill, McCain told Mother Jones magazine in November, 1998: “You could say, Look, is this guy, Laden, really the bad guy that’s depicted?”

McCain apparently did not know the history of Iraqi sectarian violence when he told MSNBC’s Hardball (4-23-03): “There’s not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shias. So I think they can probably get along.”

Cindy McCain, Sarah Palin, and McCain supporters should ask themselves: “Who is John McCain and why is he passing himself off as the expert candidate on war, the supporter of troops, when history and his record tell us different?