As we all know on, Tuesday night during a CBS interview with Katie Couric, John McCain lied, or was mistaken about The Surge/Sunni-Anbar Awakening timeline in Iraq.
Unfortunately, as we found out CBS News, removed McCain's incorrect answer, kept the original question, then substituted the question, with a different answer.
Yesterday, in response (during the end of McCain's town hall meeting in Pennsylvania), he gave one of his most convoluted/confusing answers yet, on the Surge, Anbar Awakening (and I cried about it on Kos all day yesterday)
Fortunately (for us), McCain repeated his bewildering explantion, in front of the Cheese Case (during a unscheduled interview), at the King Supermarket, in the Westgate Mall, in Bethleham, PA.
Remember (probably in embarrassment), he had cancelled a scheduled Press Conference.
I wasn't planning on posting anything today, have to much to do and other thoughts on my mind.
But yesterday I watched, as many have seen by now, someone who should have a much better understanding, above that of it's citizens, what this countries policies are and their implementation.
McClatchy has a couple of reports that hit on a couple of the Points of the 'surge':
Katie Couric proved in her interview with Obama that she's really in over her head and ought to return to the happy fuzzy realm of the Today Show. Her asinine attempts to get Obama to admit to being wrong on the surge really demonstrated a lack of thought in the name of trying to make headlines by hopefully getting O to back down on his position.
But this is part of a bigger issue--that is, how our leaders think about foreign policy, and which really highlights why Obama will make a much better C-in-C than McCain.
You've probably read how John McCain explained yesterday that he wasn't wrong about the timing in Iraq, because
"First of all, a surge is really a counterinsurgency strategy," Mr. McCain said in Bethlehem, Pa. "And it’s made up of a number of components. And this counterinsurgency was initiated to some degree by Colonel MacFarland in Anbar Province, relatively on his own. And I visited with him in December of 2006. He had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in, and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counterinsurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is quote ‘the surge,’ part of the surge, would be, would be, successful."
Implied, of course, is that the Surge would have been the Surge even if it had involved no increase (what the uninformed would call a 'surge') in troops.
John McCain was right about the surge after all. He can't help it if you don't notice his emphasis on the SURGE and Counter-InSURGEncy, can he? Follow me after the jump so I can lay it out for you....
Yesterday, John McCain made millions of people crosseyed while listening to him trying to clarify his statement regarding the surge and the sunni awakening. This is what he said:
Yesterday I said to myself, "If they say one more time that the surge is working, I’m gonna’ gag up a lung." Then they went and said it again and again and again. I'm now on a respirator.
Defying the apparent (and rare) wisdom of his advisors to cancel press appearances today, McCain clarified his statements about the relationship between the surge and the Sunni awakening...
With John McCain representing that all that is good and just comes from "The Surge," It'd be a good idea to take a step back and focus just on the Basics.
Iraq has calmed down for the moment, but is John McCain dishing out straight talk on just why?
On Countdown, KO played a hilarious response from John McCain regarding the surge-Anbar Awakening timeline in front of the cheese aisle at a supermarket in Pennsylvania.
The surge in Iraq-Nam didn't work. In fact, it failed pretty spectacularly. This isn't to deny that the violence is down in Baghdad (at least, violence against US forces). But if you remember, the purpose of the surge was to create sufficient security for the Iraq-Namese politicians to work out details on power-sharing, disbursement of revenues and a general overall settlement. Just today, the world has been given more proof that the politicians in the Green Zone regime are unwilling or unable to make use of the breathing space the surge brought them. Just like before the surge, they remain prepared to fight to the last American. President Talabani has rejected the legislation needed to hold provincial elections on October 1. The Speaker held a secret vote to ram through part of the legislation (which has never happened since the parliament was seated) and the Kurds walked out in protest.
A major part of the surge strategy is that the Iraqi government pass certain legislation that is supposed to produce national reconciliation amidst the newfound security. Some of those laws got passed, others stalled, as a result of a contining standoff between the US backed parties, and this is the big news in Iraq right now, not Obama's visit or the empty promises of the colonial masters.
Follow me after the flip for Byzantine, or rather Babylonian, intrigue and machination.
Believe it or not, the McCain Campaign, as reported by MSNBC, has just released a statement claiming that John McCain's timeline on the Iraq Surge vs the Sunni Awakening is the correct one.
"McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said late Tuesday, ‘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, because to credit them would be to disparage the judgment of Barack Obama and praise the leadership of John McCain.’"
Are you kidding me? It doesn't minimize our troops, McCain is minimizing the efforts and success of the Iraqis, because if they're remain "incompetent" he can have his glorious 100 Year Occupation. Problem is, they aren't incompetent and the everyone has started to realize that would be Emperor McCain isn't wearing a stitch.
Following what has been going on in Iraq and trying to follow Afghanistan, with the little, until recently, we get about that theater, I've had a growing uneasy feeling.
We all know that the bush doctrine has been a total failure and I need not go into the whole extreme mess these power hungry idiots have made. There is one thing I do see they succeeded in, creating an enemy and building that into a fear for Perpetual Conflict, replacing the Cold War Mentality to justify Huge Defense Contracts, Huge Profits, and the needed fear factor in the populace of not only the U.S. but the western world, the rest already have their problems from the wests continuing failed policies towards them, of which helped create this enemy.
It's has been rather hard to follow the news on Afghanistan, but it can be done if following overseas reporting.
Halfway around the world, the Obama campaign machine appears as sprawling and seamless as it is on its home turf. As the presumptive Democratic nominee tours five countries in five days, he brings an entourage that would make a pop star envious.
From the saturated media coverage to the one-on-one meetings with heads of state, the trip already had a White House feel. The scope of the traveling staff simply adds to an aura of a president-in-waiting. On Tuesday, aides attempted to invoke White House rules and traditions by requiring reporters to withhold the names of senior advisers who brief the press. But they were reminded twice by reporters that they were not in the White House and that Obama was not the president.
Ok. I apologize for the "breaking" but I made the mistake of reading the Tom Friedman column in this morning's NYT. I won't link to it, since that just encourages the editors of the NYT to think that this drivel is work printing.
The gist of it is:
McCain is being unfairly treated, because he was right to support the surge, but that the best policy now toward Iraq is a timed withdrawal (a la Obama) with flexibility (and in Friedman's world that "flexibility" is McCain's position).
I don't recall when Obama said that he wouldn't be flexible if it's needed so I read this as throwing a sop to McCain.
Katie Couric in a speech before the National Press Club, September 2007:
Couric took Rather to task for his reporting. "There were things in there that were quite egregious in terms of how it was reported," she said. "And sloppy work is sloppy work...They did not dot their I’s and cross their T’s when it came to that story...And our job is to get [it] right."
It's hard to figure out whose credibility is sinking faster: John McCain, who's apparently as unaware of recent history as he is of geography, or CBS, who covers up his ignorance for him.
First, a short primer:
2006----> The Anbar Awakening, in which Sunni tribes unite to resist Al Qaida.
2007----> Bush's troop surge
Enter Katie Couric, interviewing John McCain yesterday:
Couric Senator McCain, Sen. Obama says, while the increased number of U.S. troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that?
McCain: I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane (phonetic) 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.
Well, it's just a matter of history if you live life in reverse, I guess. And yes, it's tough indeed to figure out how to respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened, Senator McCain. But CBS figured out how to do it: just cut the inconveniently false portion out, as Keith Olbermann caught CBS doing last night.
Here's some masterful evidence presented by masterp2323:
Remember this is the same Katie Couric who confessed in the 2007 speech to the National Press Club to feeling "uncomfortable," and that somebody--certainly not her, but somebody with ... oh ... say ... a national media platform--ought to do something about the inevitable march to war back in 2003:
And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring The Today Show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this? And is this being properly challenged by the right people?’
One thing's become crystal clear: Couric isn't one of the "right people." And sloppy work is sloppy work. And oh, yeah. Someone once said it's your job to get it right.
