John McCain and why to avoid making idle threats

By David Ignatius Commentary by Thursday, August 21, 2008 It was February 2006 in Munich, and John McCain's eyes were flashing with the mischievous spark that comes when he's about to fire a verbal rocket. "I've got a zinger coming," he told me, referring to a speech on Russia he would give a few hours later at the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy. And McCain did indeed deliver a zinger. He blasted Vladimir Putin for "the pursuit of autocracy at home and abroad" - and then urged that Russia be excluded from the Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations. For good measure, he included a call for Georgia, already a thorn in Russia's side, to join NATO. McCain's 2006 speech made news, as he knew it would. So did an address in Munich the night before from Georgia's emotional president, Mikheil Saakashvili. He... [read full story]