Imus and Sen. McCain Talk Guantanamo, Libya, and the Underworld

Unlike, say, Charles, Bernard, Lou, Rob, Tony, Connell and Dagen, Senator John McCain professed his profound hope that Imus, who was congested this morning, would continue breathing during their chat today.
 
Buoyed by McCain’s encouragement, Imus forged ahead on this difficult morning, and wondered what McCain, a Republican from Arizona, thought about President Obama’s decision yesterday to resume military trials for detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay.
 
“It was a recognition of the reality of the situation,” McCain said. “We simply cannot move them to the United States.”
 
McCain has full faith that military commissions will adequately prosecute the prisoners at Guantanamo, but was markedly less supportive of Rep. Peter King’s decision to hold hearings this week on the radicalization of Muslims in America, and their supposed lack of cooperation with law enforcement officials.
 
“There is a problem we have with ‘homegrown’ Muslim extremists, and how they are recruited, how they are motivated,” McCain acknowledged, then expressed his hope that the hearings do offend American Muslims, the vast majority of whom are “good, loyal” citizens.
 
Moving on to talk of Libya, where innocent civilians rising up against leader Muammar Gaddfi are being violently attacked, McCain supports NATO instituting a no-fly zone over the country, so that Gaddafi cannot continue to massacre his people.
 
“If you told the Libyan pilots that, sooner or later, if you fly you’re going to die, you’re going to find very few of them willing to fly,” McCain said. “They have no loyalty to Gaddafi.” Though Obama has stated his desire to see Gaddafi removed from power, the President has been less insistent on the no-fly zone issue.
 
“[Gaddafi] is brutally repressing them without any regard for human life, and they are struggling for freedom and independence,” McCain said of the Libyan people. Stripping Gaddafi of the air superiority he currently enjoys would, in McCain’s view, also prevent him from attacking Libya’s oil refineries. 
 
For the record, McCain does not support putting troops on the ground. “I think it could turn the Libyan people against us, and clearly American public opinion would not support such a thing,” he said. “But there’s a lot of ways we could help them—with intelligence, with trying to get them the proper weapons, if it becomes necessary.”
 
But it sounded like McCain might in need of some help of his own this morning. Asked where he was calling in from, McCain said he was heading over to his office.  Or, as he put it, “I’m driving back to the Capitol to try to do the Lord’s work in the city of Satan.”
 
And all while talking to the Devil!
 
-Julie Kanfer