(Between Tim C. and YouTube and Bill Duncan, John McCain might do better here just avoiding this state altogether. - promoted by Dean Barker)
McCain's "We are gonna withdraw; we will withdraw" quasi-surrender to reality has gotten some coverage, but the massive, ground-shifting -- and, as far as I can tell, entirely unnoticed, -- switcheroo comes about a sentence later:
"If I thought that al-Qaeda was completely defeated, I would say all of us should come home right away."
That's right: without so much as a press release, John McCain has announced that the sole purpose for our remaining in Iraq is the defeat of al-Qaeda.
Not stability. Not democracy. Not peace. Not a friendly government. Not a non-Iranian-proxy government. Not a non-radical-Shia-Islamic-extremist government. Just the defeat of al-Qaeda. Period.
(I do feel obliged to note that this is the same al-Qaeda in Iraq that wasn't there before we invaded. And which is already fairly thoroughly marginalized and defeated, since pretty much everyone in Iraq hates them, since they managed the extraordinary feat of so out-incompetencing and out-misstrategerizing the Bush-Cheney administration that they lost a PR battle to a crusading redneck xeno-ignoramus in a war-torn Muslim country. Turns out cutting your countrymen's and coreligionists' heads off on TV and blowing up vast numbers of innocents as a matter of policy alienates folks more than staggering incompetence, officially approved low-level torture, the occasional murder or accidental large-scale killing, and a scorn for anything that smacks of cultural sensitivity. Who'd a thunk?)
Then he confuses himself about Czechoslovakia, for what, the fifth, sixth time? (Really, he ought to have this down by now; the only time he ever mentions it is to hit the exact same talking point: Russia is a bully for cutting off their oil for cooperating with the US on missile defense, and the fact that I know stuff like this proves that you should trust my knowledge of foreign affairs.) And catches himself and struggles to explain it away:
Oh, and if he'd leaned on veterans any more they'd have been carrying him on a litter. He always gives a politically calculated and heartfelt shout-out or two to vets, which is nice to see, but after the first few episodes in Rochester it slipped from earnest boilerplate into cheap hackery. The first couple of times, yeah, he was giving them well-deserved props. After that, he was just leeching off the generated applause. And maybe stalling for time to think what to say next.
Then he invented a verb, which is okay, because conjugating "make sure" as two words is elitist anyways.
Cute, huh? Except for the part where he morphed from Grandpa Simpson into Joe McCarthy:
