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It's been interesting to watch the McCain camp's evolving line on Maliki's support for Barack Obama's withdrawal plan. This morning, they were in disarray. A prominent Republican and occasional McCain anonymously confided to Marc Ambinder:
"We're fucked."A few hours later, they were attacking Maliki's credibility and arguing that voters wouldn't care anyway:
"His domestic politics require him to be for us getting out," said a senior McCain campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "The military says 'conditions based' and Maliki said 'conditions based' yesterday in the joint statement with Bush. Regardless, voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders."By this evening, they'd figured out a real quote, and even put this one on the record. Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy adviser, said:
"The difference between John McCain and Barack Obama is that Barack Obama advocates an unconditional withdrawal that ignores the facts on the ground and the advice of our top military commanders. John McCain believes withdrawal must be based on conditions on the ground. Prime Minister Maliki has repeatedly affirmed the same view, and did so again today. Timing is not as important as whether we leave with victory and honor, which is of no apparent concern to Barack Obama. The fundamental truth remains that Senator McCain was right about the surge and Senator Obama was wrong. We would not be in the position to discuss a responsible withdrawal today if Senator Obama's views had prevailed."And we really wouldn't be in a position to discuss withdrawal today if Senator Obama's original views had prevailed and we hadn't invaded Iraq. Meanwhile, the crucial determinant of withdrawal is "victory and honor?" Seriously? Our strategy in Iraq should be based on how good it makes us feel? Yikes. Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is going to have some trouble worming away from this 2004 Council on Foreign Relations transcript. In it, McCain is asked, “What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there?" He answered:
Well, if that scenario evolves than I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave because — if it was an elected government of Iraq, and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government then I think we would have other challenges, but I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.”Of course, Brookings only started measuring "victory and honor" in late-2005 or so...
