Arizona senator John McCain disappointed the audience at Tuesday’s GOP presidential candidates debate when he refused to support the use of torture against terrorism suspects, but he may have repaired some of the damage when he promised to personally take the fight to terrorists in Iraq.
McCain became the first of the GOP presidential hopefuls to volunteer to take up arms in the conflict when he said that the U.S. “must succeed, and we cannot fail, and I will be the last man standing if necessary.”
At age 72, the senator would be a decade past mandatory retirement age when he took office, but as Commander in Chief, he would have the authority to waive the regulation on his own behalf. He would not, though, be the oldest officer to serve in the Central Command theater; that honor would appear to belong to a retired Army Reserve flight surgeon, Col. William Bernhard, who was 75 when he volunteered for duty in Afghanistan last year after serving there and in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. McCain would have to enter combat in the first year of his second term to top Bernhard’s record, but he would almost certainly be the oldest combat troop to serve in the occupation.
