Senator McCain's Real Record on the War in Iraq
TO: Interested Parties
FROM: VoteVets
RE: Senator McCain’s Real Record on the War in Iraq
Before The War:
McCain used many of the same arguments as Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and President Bush when advocating going to war with Iraq.
FROM: VoteVets
RE: Senator McCain’s Real Record on the War in Iraq
Before The War:
McCain used many of the same arguments as Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and President Bush when advocating going to war with Iraq.
- McCain co-sponsored the Use of Force Authorization that gave President George W. Bush the green light – and a blank check - for going to war with Iraq. [SJ Res 46, 10/3/02]
- McCain argued Saddam was “a threat of the first order.” Senator McCain said that a policy of containing Iraq to blunt its weapons of mass destruction program is "unsustainable, ineffective, unworkable and dangerous." McCain: "I believe Iraq is a threat of the first order, and only a change of regime will make Iraq a state that does not threaten us and others, and where liberated people assume the rights and responsibilities of freedom.” [Speech to the Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2/13/03]
- McCain echoed Bush and Cheney’s rationale for going to war. McCain: “It’s going to send the message throughout the Middle East that democracy can take hold in the Middle East.” [Fox, Hannity & Colmes, 2/21/03]
- McCain echoed Bush and Cheney’s talking points that the U.S. would only be in Iraq for a short time. McCain: “It’s clear that the end is very much in sight. … It won’t be long…it’ll be a fairly short period of time.” [ABC, 4/9/03]
- McCain said winning the war would be “easy.” “I know that as successful as I believe we will be, and I believe that the success will be fairly easy, we will still lose some American young men or women.” [CNN, 9/24/02]
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1 Comments:
They missed one.
McCain proposed in November, 2005 his “Winning the War in Iraq” plan. The plan was for an increase in troops (I suppose a “surge” would imply that it would be temporary, but McCain never stated when his escalation would drawdown) and that the Iraqi Army would be intermixed with Sunni and Shiites.
The latter part is still missing.
The success of Bush’s surge has to be evaluated in consideration that the US is paying Sunnis in now what the US military is calling The Sons of Iraq and the cease-fire by Sadr. Both the Sons of Iraq and Sadr loyalists are tiring of the arrangement.
From The Guardian “Ironically, some US military leaders wanted to begin working with these groups in 2005 but were overruled by the Bush administration because they refused to pledge loyalty to the central government. But by late 2006, the security situation was so bad, we took them in anyway. [SNIP] As of March 2008, fully a year and a half after the beginning of the sahwa movement, less than 11% of the 90,000-plus force has been integrated into the ISF. Moreover, the Maliki government has stated that under no circumstances will it integrate more than a quarter of these militants into the ISF.
The October elections will be critical to the future of Iraq.
The question that should be asked of McCain is “Did he plead with Maliki to integrate the military?”
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