For a self-proclaimed expert on Iraq, John McCain certainly spends a lot of time being wrong about it. Yesterday McCain made the laughable claim that troop levels in Iraq are back to "pre-surge levels." Said McCain:
I can look you in the eye and tell you it is succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels.
Wrong. There are currently more than 150,000 servicemen and women in Iraq, versus the 130,000 that were there before George Bush's "surge." And what was the McCain campaign's reaction when they were called out on this?
Advisers to Sen. John McCain said the flap over whether the senator was mistaken about the troop level in Iraq is nothing more than "nitpicking" about "verb tenses."
And on a conference call, McCain's foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann "refused to acknowledge that McCain had been mistaken," obviously following the Bush administration tradition of never being wrong, even in the face of pesky little things like reality and facts. And McCain advocate Senator Jon Kyl? His reaction to McCain's latest screw-up would make Donald "The troops are fungible" Rumsfeld proud:
"So what?" he asked. "What does that amount to?"
Only 20 or 30,000 people's lives.
Update: Great diary from beachmom on this subject here.