John McCain thought he knew what was best for Iraq in 2003, and now John McCain still thinks he knows what's best for Iraq.
John McCain now:
John McCain's all sound and fury, signifying nothing
By Jay Bookman
"With the surge, we basically had the country pacified," McCain claimed today on "Morning Joe". "We had a stable government in Baghdad and we had the conflict basically, for all intents and purposes, won... Anybody who was there will tell you that we had the conflict won."
No. They would not. Few U.S. military leaders, then or now, would be foolish enough to claim that we had the war basically won. Unlike McCain, whose learning curve flat-lined some 30 years ago, they had learned the hard way that such proclamations of victory or "mission accomplished" had no place in a brutal civil war that was being fought not between militaries but between citizens. The very notion that American troops could "win" such a struggle in a traditional Arab country betrays a total misunderstanding of the nature of the conflict.
John McCain in 2003:
"We're going to prevail and we will win and it'll be one of the best things that's happened to America and the world in a long time 'cause it'll reverberate throughout the Middle East." --on the Iraq war, "Meet the Press" interview, March 3, 2003
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On Iraq, let’s ignore those who got it all wrong
And my favorite: “There is not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shias, so I think they can probably get along.”
"When the people of Iraq are liberated we will again have written another chapter in the glorious history of the United States of America that we will fight for freedom for other citizens of the world."
John McCain was as disastrously wrong about the situation in Iraq in 2003, and McCain continues to be disastrously wrong about the situation in Iraq today.