I dunno John - maybe you should ask around some more...

Updated with new video below the fold ~~BG]

Appearing on the Today show...today...to get a good belly scratching and ego stroking from the lightweights lightweight, Matt "haircut" Lauer, McSame said it doesn't matter how long troops are in Iraq. What matters is casualties.

According to John W. McBu$h, we can stay forever if we aren't getting killed.


Then I fell through the looking glass. Again. He repeated the absurd - and thoroughly debunked - false equivalency of a theoretical future Iraq and our continued troop presence in Japan, Korea and Germany, and frankly, Steve Clemons cleared this up for us weeks ago.

...More important is what McCain actually did mean: that the U.S. should maintain a military presence in Iraq not only as long as it takes to end hostilities, but long after hostilities have ended. Iraq will not be anything like Japan, Germany or South Korea in the foreseeable future. Given the events of the past five years, the Iraqi population simply will not tolerate a permanent U.S. military presence, especially if large-scale violence has ended. McCain is seeing things through a 20th century prism that minimizes the costs and sometimes destabilizing effects of projecting U.S. military power around the world.

Democrats and moderate Republicans should engage on this point with every bit as much fervor as they engage on the withdrawal debate. The case needs to be made that there are costs to overdeploying the U.S. military and that alternative sources of power -- international laws, institutions and diplomacy -- can fill the gap. This is one answer -- though certainly not the only one -- to the question of how to make the Iraq debate about something bigger that I hope Matt Yglesias's book will help to address.

There's no need to use the "100 years" quote to paint the man into a corner and portray him as a proponent of perpetual war (even though he may in fact be one). His argument is wrong on its face and needs to be dealt with head on. (emphasis added)

I know that his son has served with the Marines in Iraq, and I applaud him not making political hay out of that fact. But maybe he should ask some of the parents of his sons fellow Marines if they think it's hunky-dory to stay in Iraq in perpetuity.

Seventy percent of the American people want our troops out of Iraq. At the very (rotten) core of the whole mess is the fact that we went in under false pretenses. Almost 4100 American Soldiers, Marines, Airmen and Sailors have been sacrificed on the altar of a war that was started based on lies - lies that anyone with the temerity to challenge saw that person shouted down, threatened, painted as unpatriotic and sometimes physically attacked.

When will someone ask McSame the real question...What is the justification? We went in based on lies. No matter how long we stay or how low casualties go, the lies will never be made true, the WMDs will never materialize from Bullwinkle's hat.

That is the key judgment. It matters fuck-all that American forces are currently experiencing what has been loosely defined as something resembling "success" but it's a moot point. There can be no success in this unjust clusterfuck. When will someone besides a handful of DFH leftie bloggers get with the program and ask that question?

Video for those who are inclined to watch:



UPDATE: Our friends at the DNC have put together a YouTube of video clips to highlight just how out of touch he is with the American people on the issue of Iraq.