If Bush's 2003 Iraq policy upset McCain so much, why didn't he seek the GOP nomination in 2004?

[victoryparty]

http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/1440996-surge-worked
excerpt from column:

If McCain felt so strongly about the need to send more troops to Iraq as early as 2003, why didn’t he challenge Bush for the 2004 Republican nomination? That would have been the mark of a true maverick. It wouldn’t have been easy, but if McCain felt so strongly about amping up operations in Iraq for so long, why did he wait another four years to take his views before the American people? Simple: He put George W. Bush’s re-election efforts and the Republican Party first, and the well-being of America’s combat troops second.

Rather than take his case to the American people, McCain hit the campaign trail to help Bush get re-elected. In the first two years of Bush’s second term, more than 1,500 American troops were killed in Iraq.

With a month to go before Election Day, McCain and his surrogate Palin cynically hide behind political phraseology, repeating that the surge worked, the surge worked and oh, by the way, did you know that the surge worked? I suppose that depends on who you talk to.

To borrow from Ernest Hemingway, “Ask the infantry and ask the dead.”

Full column:
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/1440996-surge-worked

[victoryparty]

1. remember the Iraq Study Group?

A brief history lesson is in order here. It wasn’t until after the 2006 midterms, when the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress, that Bush fired Rumsfeld and embraced the “surge” idea McCain had been pushing. In his rush to take credit for greater stability in Iraq, McCain fails to acknowledge that things might have been even better there if Bush had followed the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group and had withdrawn most troops by 2008 instead of surging in 2007.

[No Elephants]

2. If McCain ever had a soul, McCain sold it after his primary loss to Bush.

[victoryparty]

3. Absolutely

I just don't get how Mac can be so adament in saying he opposed Bush's Iraq war policies as early as 2003, yet he hit the campaign trail for Bush in 2004. Somtething just does not compute. McCain is sooooo the "maverick of convenience."