It appears that John McCain would rather lose his reputation for foreign policy expertise than lose the election. Unfortunately, on Iraq, John McCain is losing on both counts, demonstrating on numerous occasions that he doesn't know anything about Iraq.
John McCain is now a joke, even to usually reliable Republican media proxies like David Gergen.
Perhaps, in stressing Iraq, McCain's campaign was trying to follow the alleged Rovian maxim: first, take away your opponent's strength. Being right on Iraq from the beginning was Obama's strength during the primaries. And, for a time, when you'd asking McCain about anything, say the economy, McCain would change the subject back to Islamic extremists. McCain would balance the budget by means of a victory he somehow still can't define.
DANGER!!! DANGER!!! MOST LINKS ARE VIDEO LINKS!!! DESTROY!!!
That was the strategy: everyone has to come crawling to kiss McCain's Surge® ring or they're not honest/hate America/can't admit they were wrong. This is how they change the debate from the facts to personal attacks. If you won't knuckle-under, Republicans will say there's something wrong with you.
And this is why the McCain campaign alleged that Obama was purging his website of criticism of the Surge® when it wasn't, it's why they accuse him of wanting a Surge® in Afghanistan when he doesn't, and why they claim the Surge® has achieved our every goal in Iraq when it hasn't. The same people who brought you "WMD in Iraq" are pushing "the Surge® worked," and the same dishonest hacks are pushing it.
But it's been a disaster for John McCain for one simple reason: his campaign staff utterly failed to prepare their candidate to execute their strategy. Time and again, John McCain has demonstrated that he doesn't know the first damned thing about Iraq.
First, John McCain challenged Obama to go to Iraq, because only by going to Iraq, the argument went, can you know about the facts on the ground. Then, when Obama met McCain's challenge, the senior senator from Arizona whined that his opponent was getting too much coverage.
Then, when McCain finally got some TV time, both stories blew up. Yout all know the story as of today: you can't say that the media is favoring Obama when CBS is editing its "news," Soviet-style, to protect John McCain from himself. And you can't say that McCain has an advantage over Obama in foreign policy when the senior senator from Arizona doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground when if comes to Iraq.
But CBS is only hiding the latest example of John McCain's incompetence. All along, John McCain has shown that he is a master of the rhetoric of Iraq, which means he doesn't have to know anything about the real, you know, Iraq.
John McCain went to Iraq and still got everything wrong. Go ahead, look: there's John McCain getting corrected on Iraq on national TV, because John McCain doesn't know anything about Iraq.
For that matter, if John McCain is going to talk about Iraq all the time, shouldn't he know where it is?
If al Qaeda are in danger of taking over in Iraq (they aren't), shouldn't McCain know the relative places of Iraq and Afghanistan in the war on terror? He doesn't. For that matter, McCain doesn't seem to think that Iraq is part of the war on terror: is he being honest here or just senile?
Perhaps more in ignorance of America than Iraq, John McCain doesn't think bringing home the troops is important.
If Iraq is part of the war on terror, shouldn't John McCain know what we're up against? Here, he manages to mangle the "facts" that:
-al Qaeda supported by Iran
-doesn't know Sunni from Shi'ite
-or does, but thinks it doesn't matter
John McCain, having been exposed as a complete and utter moron on Iraq by John McCain, canceled his press availability for the week (then re-added one brief Q&A). He's gone into hiding.
From John McCain's cave in his Own Private Afghanistan, the campaign issued the following goal-post moving:
Democrats can debate whether the awakening would have survived without the surge ... but that is nothing more than a transparent effort to minimize the role of our commanders and our troops in defeating the enemy
Well, no it isn't because
- that's not what Democrats are saying, and
- the commanders and troops, mostly Marines, who assisted in the Anbar Awakening had nothing to do with the Surge® ... they were already there.
So now, the McCain campaign is having to clean up its own mess. Having blown their chance to upstage Obama on the issue that had been his strength in the primaries, now they have to cover for their own hapless candidate, who has demonstrated again and again that he doesn't know anything about Iraq, by changing the subject and accusing Democrats of treason and troop-hatred. In other words, they're back to square one. John McCain just pissed away his own advantage.
And the stupid, she is spreading. There you see Joe "dead intern under my desk" Scarborough saying that even if John McCain was wrong about the al Anbar Awakening, Democrats can't argue that said Awakening could have survived without the Surge® because Joe "dead intern under my desk" Scarborough can change the subject faster than any coward on TV. Of course, someone needs to tell Joe "dead intern under my desk" Scarborough that, during the Surge®, the leader of the al Anbar Awakening was blown sky-high, which makes it hard to say that the Surge® was responsible for the success of a movement it couldn't protect, unless you're Joe "dead intern under my desk" Scarborough, in which case it's time to avoid a debate you can't handle.
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UPDATE:
Jed has found a wrinkle to this that I hadn't. McCain rhetoric of the Surge® has also been away to push McCain's war-fluffing from 2002 - 2006 down the memory-hole:
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