(Looks like the same old Bush rhetoric by McCain) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/25/mccain-says-us-succeeding_n_93251.html?view=print CHULA VISTA, Calif. â Fresh off his eighth Iraq visit, Sen. John McCain declared Monday that "we are succeeding" and said he wouldn't change course _ even as the U.S. death toll rose to 4,000 and the war entered its sixth year. To underscore his view of the stakes in Iraq, the certain Republican presidential nominee twice referenced a recent audio tape from Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaida leader urged followers to join the al-Qaida fight in Iraq and called the country "the greatest opportunity and the biggest task." "For the first time, I have seen Osama bin Laden and General (David) Petraeus in agreement, and, that is, a central battleground in the battle against al-Qaida is in Iraq today. And that's what bin Laden was saying and that's what General Petraeus is saying and that's what I'm saying, my friends," McCain said. "And my Democrat opponents who want to pull out of Iraq refuse to understand what's being said and what's happening _ and that is the central battleground is Iraq in this struggle against radical Islamic extremism," he added. McCain also said Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton were naive and "dead wrong" to want to withdraw troops. "We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground," the Arizona senator insisted a day after a roadside bomb in Baghdad killed four U.S. soldiers and rockets pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone there, and a wave of attacks left at least 61 Iraqis dead nationwide. The events transpired as bin Laden called on the people of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia to "help in support of their mujahedeen brothers in Iraq, which is the greatest opportunity and the biggest task." Despite all that, McCain told reporters: "I don't think I would change the strategy now unless General Petraeus recommended it. I think he's trusted by the American people, the president and by me. And General Petraeus again showed me facts on the ground where the surge is succeeding." Democrats took issue with his remarks and cast his candidacy as a repeat of President Bush's tenure. "As Americans mark another somber milestone in the war in Iraq, John McCain continues his pattern of parroting the Bush administration's misleading rhetoric on the war," Democratic Party spokeswoman Karen Finney said in a statement. In the midst of a western fundraising swing after a week abroad, including visits to Iraq, the Middle East and Europe, the Arizona senator didn't mention the grim casualty milestone or the last weeks fifth anniversary of the conflict as he spoke to veterans and others at a stuffy Veterans of Foreign Wars building during a town-hall style campaign event outside of San Diego. "I've commented on hundreds of occasions of the sacrifice the great and brave young Americans have made in Iraq and elsewhere in the world in the struggle against radical Islamic extremism," McCain told reporters afterward. He said a bracelet he always wears with the name of Matthew Stanley, who was killed in Iraq, is a symbol not just of his sacrifice but also of Stanley's 4,000 fallen comrades. "My thoughts and my prayers go out to those families every day," McCain added. Also left unsaid during the event was the fact that 2007 was the war's deadliest year with 901 American troop deaths. That was when Bush took McCain's advice and sent thousands more U.S. troops to Iraq to quell violence in Baghdad. McCain long had called for such a strategy shift, and he effectively linked his presidential candidacy to the war last year even as public support for it plummeted. "I'm not painting to you the most rosy scenario but I am telling you, compared to a year ago, before we started this surge, and with this great general, one of the great generals in American history, General David Petraeus, that we are succeeding in Iraq," McCain told his audience. Asked later if he was offering the war-weary public any different path forward in Iraq than Bush, McCain reached back to the past. "I'm offering them the record of having objected strenuously to a failed strategy for nearly four years. That I argued against and fought against and said that the secretary of defense of my own party, and my own president, I had no confidence in. That's how far I went in advocating the new strategy that is succeeding," McCain told reporters.
I feel better with a president taking his advice from Gen. Patraeus rather than Jeremiah Wright. Who knows what obama might do, other than raise the white flag?
Back to the old neocon you have always been... More "stay the course" from those who voted in Bush... Really, nothing new here as the klannish support another "ass kissing little chickenshit." http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/12/webb-fallon/
So you think it's a good idea to have a commander in chief whose longtime mentor hates America and thinks we deserved 9/11? This isn't about Bush. We both agree he has been a terrible president. He stuck us in Iraq, and the question now is how best to manage the situation.
It never ceases to amaze me how the Zzzztroll's only retort to these common sensical observations is to fly off the handle and spew ad hominem prattle.
And the answer in Iraq is what? Maybe if we close our eyes it will all go away. BTW: What is Obama's plan in Iraq? At least McCain is honest. Obama is full of the same disingenuous crap on Iraq as he is on most every other issue.
The plain truth is that Americans are war weary. Regardless of the arguments of going to war, it is so. McCain may or may not win the Presidency (it's way too fluid to call, and the economy is really volatile right now), but if he does, it will be despite, and not because of, his Iraq position.
You manage the situation by bringing in new leadership. Clearly Bush fucked it up, and given the continuation of troop levels, we are not any closer to Iraq being able to defend their own country. Look, if America were invaded and Bush overthrown by a superior military power, do you really think 5 years later that Americans would continue to want an occupying force to take care of them? Or would Americans in five years be trained and able to take care of our own country? What on earth brings you to the conclusion that continuing troops in Iraq will make their people stronger and more motivated to care for themselves? Aren't you the same klannish neocon that is continually harping on the elimination of entitlement programs in America? So why support the continued entitlement programs for Iraq, when you reject them for Americans? You have no coherency on this issue, no credibility after years of defending Bush and Cheney's flawed and failed policy....but after all I guess this fits with your own stupid mind, you did support Bush from day one...and now have no solution, but to vote for McCain? Give the Iraqi people a damn deadline, and keep to it. That's what we do here in America...right? We demand people meet deadlines, or they are fired. We don't hold the Iraqi people accountable...what a stupid idea...promote our democracy, then don't hold people accountable for it.
That would be a sound policy if we didn't have an interest in the outcome. The fact is though, it is in our vital interests to prevent terrorists or their supporters from taking control of Iraq. That is the sole justification for having troops there, Bush's incoherent blather notwithstanding. Pulling out in a snit because the Iraqi government didn't meet out deadlines would hurt us far more than them.