Two Faces of Mac

31 May 2008 |permalink | email article

John McCain was passionately for the war in Iraq from Day One in 2003 long before he began to question its management three years later.

McCain’s fall guy then was former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who resigned in 2006. He said SecDeF would be remembered as one of the worst in history for not putting enough troops on the ground to succeed. 

On May 16 the war hawk made the startling declaration for the first time that he believes the Iraq war can be won by 2013 in a mystical speech, in addition to predicting Osama bin Laden would be dead or captured.

What surprised me was that neither Obama nor Clinton strongly challenged his time line – or that the national media failed to drill down on McCain for specifics.

I was also struck by a very recent McCain quote on Andrew Sullivan’s blog which implies that the senator is carefully trying to distance himself from Bush by criticizing his management of the occupation.

“I think that the very significant failing was to not question the course of the war in Iraq for too long. I’m told the president would say to the generals on the teleconference, ‘Do you have everything you need? ‘Yes, sir! End of conversation! I think General Eisenhower would have said, ‘Well, what about the casualties in Anbar Province? What about the suicide bombers? He’d go down the list of challenges we were facing’”

Has McCain, as a potential commander-in-chief, ever asked Gen. David Petraeus the same kind of tough military questions, whether troop strength has really been reduced to “pre-surge” levels, what constitutes “victory” in Iraq, or why it will take five more years?

Quote of the Day

“I . . .” - Hillary Clinton, not finishing her sentence in front of Mount Rushmore, when asked by a reporter if she could see her own face on the historic presidential monument one day. 

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