DREAM Act Portal Forum - Palin has foreign policy experience???

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Palin has foreign policy experience???

McCain said that Palin's position as Governor and her role as her Commander-in-Chief of the Alaskan National Guard qualifies as "enough" foreign policy experience.

Quote:

McCain touts Palin on foreign affairs

Touting the credentials of his running mate, John McCain and his campaign suggest that Gov. Sarah Palin’s role as commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard qualifies as foreign affairs experience.

It’s been a familiar argument this election cycle, one made by other governors ranging from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican, to Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat.

“You're the commander in chief of your National Guard and, in this context, many of us have been to Iraq and Afghanistan. We've been deploying guard over there. We talk to the families of those who have died over there,” Napolitano told The Associated Press in July. “So I think the current crop of governors has more relevant foreign policy experience perhaps than our predecessors.”

That may be true, but there’s a caveat: governors don’t have any command role in overseas deployments, or in the national security and foreign policy decisions surrounding them. That’s the prerogative of the president.

Governors are commanders of their state National Guard units, but their roles are restricted to deployments of soldiers and airmen within their states, said Randy Noller, a spokesman for the National Guard Bureau, the federal defense agency that oversees the Army and Air National Guards. But that hasn’t stopped the McCain campaign from claiming Palin’s role with the state Guard, and her visit to Alaska Guard members in Kuwait last year, as foreign policy experience.

“She’s been the commander of the National Guard, of Alaska’s National Guard, who’s been deployed overseas,’’ said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds during a heated exchange Monday night with CNN anchor Campbell Brown, adding: “That’s foreign policy experience.”

A day earlier, on "Fox News Sunday," McCain defended Palin’s background with a similar explanation.
“The point is she has been to Kuwait. She has been over there,” he said. “She has been with her troops, the National Guard that she commands, who had been over there and had the experience. I’m proud of her knowledge of these challenges and issues.”

Responding to a question about the link between stateside command of the National Guard and foreign policy experience, Ben Porritt, a spokesman for the McCain campaign on vice presidential matters, took aim at the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama.

“We will stack Palin’s foreign policy credentials against Obama’s any day,” Porritt said. “She understands the surge in Iraq is working. She supports our troops on the front lines. Barack Obama voted against them.” Porritt added that being a governor — who handles budgets and bureaucrats, among other many other things — has long been considered qualification to be in the White House.

Palin herself mentioned her role with the Guard when the Republican senator from Arizona first introduced her as his vice presidential running mate in Dayton, Ohio.

“It was Sen. McCain who refused to hedge his support for our troops in Iraq, regardless of the political costs. And you know what?” the governor said. “As the mother of one of those troops, and as the commander of Alaska's National Guard, that's the kind of man I want as our commander in chief.”

Palin’s son Track enlisted in the Army a year ago and is headed to Iraq later this month.

In Alaska, the Guard's adjutant general, Maj. Gen. E. Craig Campbell, said Palin has been "very supportive" of the National Guard. Before she was even sworn in as governor, she traveled to welcome soldiers returning from Iraq and Kuwait, he said.

The Alaska National Guard, which has about 3,850 members, has units regularly deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan and recently had a small presence in Louisiana, helping with Hurricane Gustav relief, said Alaska Guard spokeswoman Kalei Brooks. The Alaska Guard dispatched a C-17 cargo jet with two HH-60 Pave Hawk search and rescue helicopters in response to a call from fellow Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana.

Only about 18 members of the Guard currently are deployed overseas, but another “large” group is preparing to leave this month, she said. Another small group from the Alaska Air National Guard is returning from Kyrgyzstan, where they guarded air strips.

The state always retains enough of a presence to respond to disasters that come with springtime flooding, wildfires and earthquakes, Brooks said.

“Never at any time do we have soldiers out of Alaska that can’t fulfill that homeland defense role,” she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/200...politico/13222

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Wowww..unbelievable. If that counts as foreign policy experience, then no wonder the rest of the world hates us.

I've lived in three different countries in my lifetime. That must make me over qualified in foreign policy to the Republicans.

She is an absolute insult to all the soldiers to even suggest that she has foreign policy experience. Gov. Bill Richardson has foreign policy experience. Joe Biden has foreign policy experience. If these are the standards, then Hillary Clinton has more foreign policy experience. Sarah Palin doesn't have shit.