One of the interesting paradoxes of the McCain campaign is that you either have to assume he's a dedicated warmonger who prioritizes imperialist conquest over sensible analysis of the situation, or, as his campaign would have it, an inattentive reactionary who says warmongerish things because he's not really thought through the consequences. Conservatives, for instance, make a big deal about how unfairly liberals are treating McCain when they say he wants to be in Iraq for 100 years. What he actually said was that he wanted to be in Iraq for 100 years in a peaceful, friendly, strategic-partnership context, much like what we have in South Korea. It was 100 years of benign military occupation, not 100 years of war. This is apparently supposed to be exculpatory. But it doesn't make sense on a couple levels. In South Korea, you have a relatively homogenous population, with one government that's broadly recognized as legitimate, and facing an external threat from the north. Hence, Americans on the border are welcomed. In Iraq, the divisions are internal, and massing American divisions on the border isn't of much use. Worse, our presence is not seen as the protective presence of a friend, but the continuing humiliation of an occupier. Thus, it's entirely predictable that Grand Ayatollah Sistani, the most powerful cleric in Iraq, is saying that Iraq will not sign a "strategic partnership" with "U.S occupiers" as long as he has breath in his body. It wouldn't have been hard to predict that the nationalist clerics who largely control Iraq's societal stability would not support the permanent presence of a largely Christian army immune from Iraqi legal prosecution and loyal to another government. The best world interpretation of McCain's remarks is that he didn't think this would prove an impediment. Frankly, I felt safer when he was just being touted as a warmonger.
