As we reported earlier today, Senator McCain was caught reinventing the Anbar awakening time line during an interview with Katie Couric Tuesday — an interview CBS inexplicably edited to cover up for McCain.
Well, today HuffPo’s Seth Colter Walls has dug up even more proof that the awakening’s most important progress occurred before the surge plan was publicly announced — let alone implemented — including remarks from John McCain and Joe Lieberman from an American Enterprise Institute speech in January 2007.
“Too often the light at the tunnel has turned out to be a train, but I really believe — I really believe that there’s a strong possibility that you may see a very substantial change in Anbar province due to this new changes in our relationships with the sheiks in the region. … But it’s important, as I said in my opening remarks, that this troop surge be significant and sustained. Otherwise, don’t do it.”
“I wrote last week of a conversation I had after John and I and our delegation met with our military leadership in Anbar province — a tough, brilliant, committed group of soldiers making progress there, turning the Sunni sheiks in that province to our side against Al Qaeda.”
The McCain campaign released a statement last night in which they claim that the surge helped consolidate earlier gains in Anbar, but that’s not what McCain said in his original remarks:
“Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.”
So either McCain is lying about the Anbar timeline, or he’s simply confused about what happened and when. Either way, this has to be problematic for a candidate who is running on the sole platform of being better equipped to handle the war.
If I could venture a guess, I would say that McCain deliberately distorted the effects of the surge in order to argue that it alone is responsible for the the reduction in violence. As I said earlier, McCain’s only hope for winning in November is to convince enough voters that the surge is the only reason we’re “winning” in Iraq, and the he is primarily responsible for it. Once Barack Obama challenged that narrative by pointing out the Anbar awakening was already taking shape and fighting back against al Qaeda before the troop increase, McCain was left with no choice but to re-write history to comport with the version he’s trying to tell.
UPDATE: Here’s what McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said yesterday about Obama:
“If Barack Obama had had his way, the Sheiks who started the Awakening would have been murdered at the hands of al Qaeda.”
Well as it turns out, the sheik cited by McCain and Bounds was tragically murdered last year.
Filed Under: Campaigns/Elections, Iraq, John McCain
Tags: Surge
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McCain sucks.
He would be so much a worse president than Obama.
Vote Dem!
What is anbar?
it certainly appears that mcfuckhead is already
processing bush’s third term by LIES LIES LIES.
Joe supports Hagel VP! @ 2:
If that is a serious question, do the Google thing. Hint: It is in Iraq.
And he states that he ’supports the troops’, well, of course you do, sir, and so does Sen Obama. but you state that Obama doesn’t support the troops, that you state you always have, in that misleading and false ad of yours. well, for measure, old man, if you ’supported the troops’ then why didn’t you vote for the recently passed, by high-majorities, GI Bill. in fact, you didn’t even bother to show up and vote ‘no’. you had better things to do, like appearing at a fundraiser. that’s not supportive of the troops at all, sir. not one bit. that’s not a leader i believe i can count on at all. and that would be you. more of the same and then some. you had your chance in 2000, sir, and the GOP, your party, rejected you in savage fashion. and they went with W, an idiot. not now. you are last century and a Republican. not change anyone can believe in.
As we have plainly seen with his numerous flip-flops, mccain will say and do anything to gain the presidency, and try to keep the bush cronies and constituency happy. (Illegal spying must have found something really juicy on him to make him willingly appear as a senile forgetful boob to keep it from being revealed to the American sheeple).
It appears that he will even go so far as to fervently hope that the American sheeple are simply too stupid, too reliant on the MSM, or too self-absorbed trying to make ends meet to realize the bullshit he is selling them about his record, his knowledge, his beliefs, his……
Anbar is on the Iraq/Pakistan border, near Czechoslovakia. My source? Grandpa McForeignAffairs.
http://www.slate.com/id/2195865/
mcSurge…..whining about the media….a few more months listening to this guy tell me how proud he is
of himself…….keep telling me john maybe i’ll believe
you….right take another hit
Attila the Appeaser, No Stomach for Kristol @ 7:
Now I get a little confused here — is it the Sunnis that live in Czechoslovakia, or the Shiites?
miss_kitty @ 9:
pittsburg steelers….that was a trick question
The movement, known as the Anbar Awakening, was born after a tribal leader from the Sunni Muslim-dominated western desert province was killed by al Qaeda militants in August last year. The province’s Sunni leaders were fed up with indiscriminate killings by al Qaeda and their harsh interpretation of Islam.
Yesterday (and again after the unbelievably lurid comments regarding Obama’s visit to a Holocaust site) I was thinking it would be damn near impossible for McSame to screw up any larger. But imagine my suprise today upon hearing about this pre-surge surge that only McSecretSurge knew about.
Fascinating…….in a “Oh my God, that guy just threw up through his mouth AND his nose” kinda way.
miss_kitty @ 9:
Junior Bush has the answer to that one:
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2....._0804.html
Obama needs to hammer at McCain by continually using the words “confused” or “befuddled” when addressing McCain’s gaffes, e.g. “apparently Senator McCain got confused….” or “once again, it appears Senator McCain got befuddled by” (whatever) “and confused X with Y.”
McCain keeps saying Obama “doesn’t understand” so Obama needs to respond by using hte above language to highlight McCain’s idiocy/age.
and then the Icing on the Repuke Propganda Cake came tonight via CBS ..in response to Keith’s Question to CBS News about what happened to THIS Interview ( ahem- the “editing”)..their answer ” Mistakes were made”….yes, they brought out the Homer Simpson Defense…
All I know is that Old Man McGramps is sufferin’ History Confusion, Geography Confusion should not be having access to things like well BOMBS…..jus sayin’
McCain(s) on Ambition
“Putting the Country First”, July 4, 2008:
Patriotism is deeper than its symbolic expressions, than sentiments about place and kinship that move us to hold our hands over our hearts during the national anthem. It is putting the country first, before party or personal ambition, before anything.
Worth The Fighting For, p. 373, published September 2002:
I didn’t decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president
Here’s what McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said yesterday about Obama:
“If Barack Obama had had his way, the Sheiks who started the Awakening would have been murdered at the hands of al Qaeda.”
???
That… is… truly… DISGUSTING!
miss_kitty @ 9:
Geez, miss kitty, get a CLUE!!
“Sunnis” is the name of the NFL team in Pittsburgh; “Shiites” is the name of the team in Green Bay.
…and the Steelers and Packers are Islamic religious rivals in Iraq.
No 14…Matt In Texas
“Obama needs to hammer at McCain by continually using the words “confused” or “befuddled” when addressing McCain’s gaffes, e.g. “apparently Senator McCain got confused….” or “once again, it appears Senator McCain got befuddled by” (whatever) “and confused X with Y.”
McCain keeps saying Obama “doesn’t understand” so Obama needs to respond by using hte above language to highlight McCain’s idiocy/age.
*********
Really really well put what you said…..
( personally when McGramps starts pacing across the stage and mumbling and grumbling about “Stinking Corpses”….I get hit with waves of nausea…but the point is you are right, even in this Election- LANGUAGE is critical…)
Matt in Texas @ 18:
Come on. I’m just a girl. I can’t be expected to know this complex stuff.
enigma4ever @ 19:
On top of that, Obama needs to have a “hired gun” who bluntly points out McCain’s hypocrisy in no uncertain terms. It gives him (Obama) the cover to say, “Well, so-and-so may technically be right, but I wouldn’t have put it that crudely,” reinforcing the point but distancing himself from “dirty politics.”
It’s about damn time the Dems grew some balls…….and some political brains.
miss_kitty @ 20:
Oh you GIRLS!!!
Maybe this’ll help:
Vote for Obama - he’s dreamy!!!!
enigma4ever @ 15:
Before Homer Simpson, there was Ronald Reagan:
“…a candidate who is running on the sole platform of being
better equipped to handle the war.”
Stop calling it “the war” when it is an OCCUPATION.
Timbo @ 24:
On top of that, McOldBalls is not even better equipped to handle Vicki Iseman
McCain is confused….befuddled and …
McCain is confused
Timbo @ 24:
Easier said than done. If the supposedly “educated” in the MSM don’t get the difference, how in the hell will the American people ever come to understand it? It becomes especially difficult when those in power own the dictionary and get to define the terms.
correct me if i’m wrong, but, i don’t remember mcCRAZY being talked to or about, much before or during the planning and implementing of “the surge”…
now it’s, “he is primarily responsible for it” ??? since when???
constituent @ 11:
There more than a good chance that ‘al Qaeda in iraq’ is just a convenient label to put on any insurgent of whatever faction killed while carrying an AK47,
it looks good on MSM in a sixties Pentagon Vietnamese style body count way.
Matt in Texas @ 22:
Vote for Mccain- he’s demented!!!
Before all this is over in November, McCain’s head is going to explode… and the Republicans will try to blame Obama for THAT too.
One thing to remember from post march 2003, is that the Iraqi army munitions depots were emptied and the Iraqi army went underground.
Thats the reality of the Sunni insurgency, its a resistance in the classical sense.
10,000s of tons of munitions went bye bye and vanished into the sands and cities and towns, that takes a lot of organizing and manpower.
Hats off to John Amato for his dogged and incisive coverage of this story. As a former United Press International editor, I am aghast at the flagrantly biased editing out of John McCains anbar gaffe. Under the circumstances of this developing story, where McCain himself put the success of the surge at issue by weilding it like a sword to attack his presumptive opponent Barack Obama, and where Obama has responded by noting that McCain has overembellished the effect of the surge, to edit out such a gaffe as McCain’s erroneous subsequent statement to the contrary, is journalistically unthinkable. Putting aside the breached of CBS’s video editing standards, which I agree with John is rather blatant, it is more egregious by far that the statement which was edited out was not only inartful — it was the very story itself.
I can’t believe I have lived to see the day when the once-great journalistic powerhouse CBS has become a tool in the hands of political partisan hacks.
Good night and good luck.
ferrofluid (Obama 08) @ 29:
I’m sure the Bani Dulaim are happy to know that McPapen can’t even keep up with how we “liberated” them.
And Ferro (can I call you Ferro?) I completely agree. Al-Qaida in Iraq is just a convienent term for “Hanbali nutters with Russian guns from the 80s.”
The US invasion is a war-crime all its own, we had no right to depose a dictator, it was not our call. Saddam was never ours to remove, but since we went right in and broke Iraq, we can go right out. The Arab tribes are already in a civil war, and either it’ll get worse or stop altogether once we move out. My money’s on the latter.
You!
I wanna take you to a An bar,
I wanna take you to a An bar,
I wanna take you to a An bar, Anbar,An bar.
Let’s start a war, start a nuclear war,
At the An bar, an bar,an bar.
Wow!
At the An bar.
Now Tell me do ya?, but do ya have any money?
I wanna spend all your money,
at the An bar, Anbar, Anbar
with apologies to electric six
I really thought Obama should have called Mccrazy out on this, big time.
“How dare you question my patriotism” is about the only thing that I’d have said that would have been printable. Mofo.
This is too good. Obama can now just play right past McCain and watch him stamp his feet.
Poor Republican Party. It’s all washed away now, isn’t it? And you lie there..exposed..revealed..reviled.
Market your way out of this one, you vile bastards. You’re washed up. Get ready for an Obamanation like you’ve never seen.
Oh brother and this guy wants to be President?
How can any sane person vote for McCain after 8 years with another dummy the Shrub.
for all your sakes I sure hope so.
The Repugs need to be run out of town, all of them, except a handful of exceptions
it’s a little strange, but McCain looks a bit like Howard Dean in that image
So the Sunni Sheik that McCain’s surrogate claims would have been killed by Al Queda if Obama had his way was killed by Al Queda anyway when McCain had his way?
That retarded and un-researched statement sounds like a story all by itself.
It just gets better and better…
The McCain campaign has reached the level of low comedy. I expect to see old John start falling off the stage when he stands up to do his townhall meetings. You almost feel sorry for his attempts to even explain the gaff he made when the tried to explain the previous gaff which was an attempt to explain an even earlier gaff.
This is going to put the Daily Show writers out of business because all they have to do now is show unedited clips of John McCain talking about anything.
katy @ 28:
i don’t have any links on hand, but i think it was after the release of the iraq study group report (dec. ‘06) that mcworse first started making noise about sending more troops, in what looked like an obvious run to the right of the “very serious adults” — who were pressuring bush to start drawing down — in order to capture the attention (and fawning press) of neocons like fred hiatt and bill kristol.
i’m guessing mcworse was just as surprised as any of the “very serious adults” when bush wiped his a$$ with the report and actually decided to double down. all of a sudden he needed the surge to “work”.
since he has absolutely nothing else to run on, he’s gonna make sure everyone everywhere and their grandmother knows that he “invented” the surge and that the surge worked and that it worked because he spent five years as a pow.