McCain Tries To Bamboozle Us On Iraq

Every day that passes, McCain has a new position on Iraq. One day it's 100 years, another day it's 2013, and today he said Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan is a "pretty good timetable".



Here is Josh Marshall's take:

Sen. McCain's made a series of pretty extraordinary statements on his interview on CNN. First, apparently Maliki didn't really mean what he said. Second, Wolf Blitzer read back to McCain his repeated claim that Obama would rather lose a war if it helped him win a political campaign. This is close to an accusation of treason. So Blitzer asked him whether this wasn't an attack on Obama's patriotism. McCain said 'no' that he was only questioning Obama's judgment. In any rational world the maverick label wouldn't survive a fib of that magnitude.

Perhaps best of all McCain appeared to embrace Maliki's timeline for withdrawal, but said there was no conflict with that also being Obama's timeline for withdrawal, because Maliki's was based on conditions and Obama's wasn't.

Last but not least, Blitzer asked McCain if it didn't make sense to scrutinize McCain's judgment in going to war in the first place if he's placing so much emphasis on scrutinizing Obama's judgment on the surge. McCain's answer, in so many words, that's old news.

Although dissecting a statement by McCain is like shooting fish in a barrel, let me concentrate for one second on his statement that once he withdraws from Iraq, "we will never have to go back". How does he know this? Does he know that Al Qaeda in Iraq and around the world will be fully destroyed, and that no future leaders of Iraq might turn out to be worse than Saddam? What if Iran invaded Iraq? And exactly what steps will McCain take to pacify Iraq to the point where we never have to go back?

Is he going to bomb the country back to the Stone Age, as we tried to do in Vietnam? Everyone knows that McCain is trying to replay Vietnam, so I'm guessing that's exactly what he has planned. He's making up stuff about how he'd love to withdraw troops, but Joe Lieberman said the same crap while running for reelection in 2006 and look where he stands now. You can't trust anything McCain says on this -- he's in general election mode and knows which way the wind is blowing. Post-election, he won't give a damn what voters think.

Here is McCain's real plan:

1. Get elected.
2. Tell Maliki we aren't going anywhere until we've "won", and if he's not happy about that too bad.
3. Increase the size of our armed forces by 150,000 and send most of those extra troops to Iraq.
4. Sadr will end his cease-fire, knowing that McCain has no plans to leave, so bloodshed will return to 2006 levels.
5. The U.S. will still have at least 150,00-200,000 troops in Iraq in 2013, and only then would McCain's ass be shown the door. Too bad for the extra $500 billion dollars and, oh, maybe 3000 more Americans lives that will be lost by that point.

And let's not even talk about Iran. In that scenario, McCain reinstates the draft, declares that we are in World War III, and begins firebombing noncompliant Mideast cities. You think things are bad now? Just wait.

That's the McCain plan. It's what he would have done in Vietnam -- double down -- and that's what he wants to do here if we give him the reins of power. You can put money on it.