{"id":9703,"date":"2007-01-23T11:10:22","date_gmt":"2007-01-23T16:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9703.html"},"modified":"2007-01-23T11:10:22","modified_gmt":"2007-01-23T16:10:22","slug":"mccains-iraq-position-becomes-even-less-coherent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccains-iraq-position-becomes-even-less-coherent\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain’s Iraq position becomes even less coherent"},"content":{"rendered":"

To help kick-off a new Capitol Hill newspaper, The Politico<\/a>, Roger Simon interviewed John McCain (R-Ariz.) about his take on the war in Iraq. Given McCain’s countless recent comments on the subject, you’d assume this is well-tread ground, but Simon caught a few gems<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With his presidential hopes tied to an administration whose Iraq policy he supports but cannot control, John McCain for the first time blamed Vice President Cheney for what McCain calls the “witch’s brew” of a “terribly mishandled” war in which U.S. forces are on the verge of defeat. […]<\/p>\n

Although McCain had once lavished praise on the vice president, he said in an interview in his Senate office: “The president listened too much to the Vice President . . . Of course, the president bears the ultimate responsibility, but he was very badly served by both the Vice President and, most of all, the Secretary of Defense.”<\/p>\n

McCain added: “Rumsfeld will go down in history, along with McNamara, as one of the worst secretaries of defense in history.” Donald Rumsfeld served as President Bush’s secretary of defense from January 2001 to December 2006.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 2004, McCain described Cheney as “one of the most capable, experienced, intelligent and steady vice presidents this country has ever had.” Apparently, McCain now knows better. I’m just entirely sure what changed McCain’s mind. As he sees it, Cheney’s biggest mistakes came in 2002 and 2003, after<\/em> which McCain sung his praises. Now, Cheney and McCain seem to agree on policy — so when did the VP “badly serve” Bush?<\/p>\n

But the real jaw-dropper of the interview came when McCain “opened the door to the possibility of a U.S. troop pullback to the borders of Iraq should the president’s planned troop surge fail.”
\n<\/p>\n

…McCain also said a withdrawal of troops to the borders of Iraq could be an option if the troop surge fails.<\/p>\n

“If this strategy doesn’t succeed, we will have to devise another strategy,” McCain said. “But I have to hasten to add there are no good options.” One of those options, McCain said “is to withdraw to the borders (of Iraq) to try to keep other countries from interfering. Maintaining our bases in Kuwait and other places. There are a lot of scenarios.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wait, McCain is now open to some form of redeployment? He’s spent the last couple of years suggesting that supporters of redeployment are advocating retreat and defeat, but now he’s open to a position he’s rejected as completely untenable?<\/p>\n

Taking a step back, the broader debate seems to now have three groups:<\/p>\n

* Redeploy U.S. troops now — Escalation hasn’t worked the previous four tries, and it won’t work now. It’s time to redeploy and get our troops out of the meat grinder.<\/p>\n

* Never redeploy — No matter how long it takes to achieve some hard-to-define “victory,” U.S. troops need to stay right where they are. An open-ended commitment lets the world know we’re there for the long haul, no matter the cost.<\/p>\n

* Redeploy sometime — A category McCain seems to have invented for himself, this suggests this new so-called “surge” really is the last try. If (after?) it fails, redeployment might make sense.<\/p>\n

If you’re starting to think McCain is just flailing around, struggling<\/a> to forge some kind of coherent approach to the war, panicking<\/a> about his political future, and failing on both counts, we’re on the same page.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To help kick-off a new Capitol Hill newspaper, The Politico, Roger Simon interviewed John McCain (R-Ariz.) about his take on the war in Iraq. Given McCain’s countless recent comments on the subject, you’d assume this is well-tread ground, but Simon caught a few gems. With his presidential hopes tied to an administration whose Iraq policy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9703\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}