Via Reuters:
After a meeting with former President George H.W. Bush, McCain was asked whether it was conceivable for U.S. troops to be fully pulled out of Iraq in about two years.
"I think they could be largely withdrawn," the Arizona senator replied, citing the success of the "surge" strategy of increasing U.S. troop levels in increasing security in the country.
"As I've said, we have succeeded. This strategy is not (just) succeeding, we have succeeded. And of course as we all know it has to be based on conditions on the ground."
McCain said U.S. military success had made it possible for troops to return. "When you win wars, troops come home. And we are winning," he said.
In fact, confused McCain surrogate Heather Wilson in a conference call seemed to claim her man might do Obama even better, bringing the troops home in less than 16 months--but she back-pedaled a bit on that later in the call, with McCain foreign policy advisor Randy Scheunemann returning to serious vagueness under eager questioning.
But as we all know, when Obama says it, he's wrong, McCain is right, and hey, look over there, gas prices are high because of Obama and please ignore the fact that I'm making shit up!
And now rumors are starting that Obama's tour of the war region is so chewing up media attention that the McCain campaign is flirting with the idea of naming its vice presidential choice this week in order to steal some of Obama's thunder. (The best commentary spotted thus far on McCain VP choices has got to be Josh Marshall's observation about Fred Thompson: "But a combined age of 140 during the first year of office is probably unconstitutional.")
Guess that taunting of Obama for not visiting Iraq isn't quite working out as expected, eh? Of all the observers of Obama's tour thus far, few capture the blockheadedness of the McCain camp's urging the Democratic presidential candidate's taking of this trip quite as well as Dave Weigel at Reason:
I don't see any of this redounding to the benefit of John McCain. McCain's goading Obama to make this trip stands tall and proud as one of the dumbest blunders of the campaign. He couldn't have helped the Democrat more if he'd challenged him to a slam dunk contest.