McCAIN’S CAMPAIGN….Was the troop surge in Iraq responsible for the Sunni Awakening? Of course not: the surge wasn’t even a glimmer in George Bush’s mind until several months after the Awakening started in Anbar province and was showing strong signs of success.
Yesterday I was complaining about conservatives who try to pretend otherwise, but random pundits are just an annoyance. The Republican candidate for president is another. Here’s John McCain talking to Katie Couric on the CBS News:
Colonel MacFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.
This isn’t a slip of the tongue, it’s John McCain deliberately trying to rewrite history for an audience of millions. Luckily for McCain, CBS covered for him by editing out his answer so that they wouldn’t have to correct him on the air. Nice guys.
Then, later the same day, McCain let loose with this:
This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.
Joe Klein says, “I can’t remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate,” and I guess he’d know.
McCain is pretty obviously doomed this year, and it looks like he’s decided that his only slim hope of winning is to wage a brutally negative and misleading campaign and hope for the best. My guess is that this is just a warmup. Yesterday’s antics were a taste of much more to come.
