John McCain's reign of error

[babylonsister]

John McCain's reign of error
Dick Polman



It's lucky for John McCain that most politically-aware Americans remain riveted by the Hillary Clinton sideshow (more on that later), because he continues to make inexplicable factual errors without any willingness to acknowledge them. If more people were paying attention, they might well wonder whether this guy is as sharp about foreign policy as he purports to be.

The latest incident occurred last Wednesday, when he told a public gathering that things were going swimmingly in Iraq: "I can tell you that it (the Surge) is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it's succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-Surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet."

Well, we can look McCain right in the eye and remind him that, as a matter of fact, we have not drawn down to pre-Surge levels. It's just a matter of comparing the actual numbers. Before President Bush ordered his troop escalation in January 2007, we had 128,569 soldiers in Iraq; today, we have 155,000 soldiers in Iraq. In accordance with how math generally works, the latter number is larger than the former.

Putting aside MCain's claim that Mosul is "quiet," on the same day that Mosul reportedly suffered three suicide bombings, it's fascinating to hear how his spinners have sought to defend his tallying of the troops. They insisted that this is merely "a question of semantics," a silly quibble over "verb tense," because, after all, the Bush administration has begun the process of drawing down to pre-Surge levels, with the intention of fully achieving it.

The problem, of course, is that McCain was declaring the draw-down to pre-Surge levels as Mission Accomplished, whereas, in factual reality, it is no such thing. It may be the intention of the Bush regime to reduce those troop levels, but - given the ongoing fragility of the situation in Iraq - there is no way to know whether the goal of a full military drawdown can be achieved. So either McCain truly doesn't know how many troops are stationed in Iraq, or he is willfully twisting the actual troop numbers in order to cheerlead (again) for the Bush war team.

more...

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/americandebate/19455269.html