OVERBREADTH

So, as those willing to face reality are aware, John McCain said the following:

Q: President bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years…

A: Maybe 100! We’ve been in South Korea–we’ve been in Japan for 60 years, we’ve been in South Korea for 50 years or so–that’d be fine with me–

This is not leftist spin. It’s on video. And, as it turns out, he’s said it more than once.

A reporter asked McCain about it:

After the event ended, I asked McCain about his “hundred years” comment, and he reaffirmed the remark, excitedly declaring that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for “a thousand years” or “a million years,” as far as he was concerned.

Now, lets be fair to McCain. He simply cannot have meant that the United States will be in Iraq for a million years. Bear in mind, there were no humans a million years ago. Humans only started looking like humans 200,000 years ago. The suggestion that humans will continue to look like humans, and they will have the same political organizations as “the United States” and “Iraq,” and that this million-year future U.S. will have something akin to “troops” in million-year future Iraq is patently absurd. (I’ll admit I do see a possibility the andresydol telepods continue to time-welt the todrahelics, but just because they happened to pattern their simpdiagram after a historic “United States” doesn’t make them us.)

Anyway, McCain is not that dumb. Obviously the point he was making involved a bit of hyperbole. He was saying we would be in Iraq “for a long time.”

Thing is, this is a great talking point for the Democrats. Americans don’t want to be in Iraq for a long time, or even, any more time at all. So some Democrats, quite fairly, have pointed this out. For example, yesterday, Harry Reid said the following:

One of the things that we will be debating this fall, Mr. President, is whether our troops need to be in Iraq for another 50 or 100 years. I think that will be a pivotal part of the debate that takes place for the presidential election.

Actually, Harry Reid was pretty careful in his wording. He didn’t accuse anybody of anything. To the extent he implied McCain said something, it was something that McCain actually said. Is it fair to pick on stupid things presidential candidates say about foreign policy? I think so. Particularly a presidential candidate who is, ostensibly, the expert on foreign policy, the professional, the “experienced” candidate.

Republicans disagree. Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said the following:

Mr. President, of course no one has said that.

Lets stop there for a moment. No one has said that? Watch the video again. Somebody said it and that somebody is running for president and his name is McCain. So yes, it might come up in the presidential election.

More McConnell doubletalk:

The mainstream media, which has not been particularly friendly to the war, has hammered those who have accused Senator McCain of saying we were going to have a 100-year war in Iraq. That is a deliberate misrepresentation of what he has said.

Put aside for a moment the issue of whether “the mainstream media has been particularly friendly to the war.” (I seem to recall a good deal of media attention to voted to alleged weapons of mass destruction.) It is, in any event, not a misrepresentation to say he said it. He said it!

I understand the spin they’re giving it. The McCain point has been, effectively, “I didn’t mean at war.” He would reframe the question as:

Q: Will there be U.S. military in Iraq for 100 years?

A: Yes. I imagine people who happen to be in the military may vacation there. It’s likely that this will take place for a century, perhaps ten thousand centuries.

This may be semantically true (not the ten thousand century part), but it’s analogous to the following spin:

Q: Can you pass the salt?

A: Sure.

Subsequently: I never agreed to pass the salt. What I agreed to was that I was physically capable of passing the salt.

Yes, McWordsmith, you are correct. You only said that U.S. military would be in Iraq for a million years. You never stated what they’d be doing there. But isn’t this a bit pedantic? Do you really not understand the question when someone asks whether our troops will be in Iraq for 50 years?

Tags: Elections //