I guess we can now officially refer to Senator John McCain as "Can't Get Right." He has now proven beyond any doubt that even on his staple issue of the war in Iraq, he has little understanding.
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From Think Progress:
During an interview with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), CBS Evening News host Katie Couric noted that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) said recently that “there might have been improved security [in Iraq] even without the surge” and asked McCain, “What’s your response to that?”
After first calling Obama’s claim “a false depiction of what actually happened,” McCain proceeded to falsely claim that the surge “began the Anbar awakening“:
McCAIN: I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. 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.
But in a puzzling move, the CBS Evening News did not actually televise McCain’s false claim tonight. As MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reported, “CBS curiously, to say the least, left it on the edit room floor. It aired Katie Couric’s question, but in response, it inserted part of McCain’s answer to another question instead.” (See the full transcript here.)
In fact, the Sunni revolt against Al-Qaida in Iraq’s Anbar province — commonly referred to as “The Awakening” — “began” long before Bush even announced his “surge” policy in January 2007. As the New York Times noted in April 2007:
The turnabout began last September [2006], when a federation of tribes in the Ramadi area came together as the Anbar Salvation Council to oppose the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
But also, President Bush himself noted this fact in a speech to the Naval War College in June, 2007:
Last September [2006], Anbar was all over the news. It was held up as an example of America’s failure in Iraq. The papers cited a leaked intelligence report that was pessimistic about our prospects there.
About the same time some folks were writing off Anbar, our troops were methodically clearing Anbar’s capital city of Ramadi of terrorists, and winning the trust of the local population. In parallel with these efforts, a group of tribal sheiks launched a movement called “The Awakening” — and began cooperating with American and Iraqi forces.
Spencer Ackerman notes that the colonel McCain cited is “now a one-star general” and had explained the “Awakening” to a reporter in September 2006 “before it even had a name.” “For McCain to say that the Anbar Awakening is the product of the surge is either a lie or professional malpractice,” added Ackerman.
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And from the Jed Report:
Keith Olbermann led his broadcast tonight with Spencer Ackerman's report on John McCain's most recent gaffe: in an interview with Katie Couric, McCain claimed "the surge" was responsible for the "Anbar Awakening" -- which actually began in September, 2006, months before the surge was even announced.
The strange thing, as Keith notes, is that CBS edited the gaffe out of its broadcast. Fortunately, they posted a transcript -- and video -- online. Here are the key parts of Keith O.'s report, plus a side-by-side video of what CBS actually broadcast, and what they cut out.
Here's some more details on why McCain is wrong:
-Bush formally announced the surge on January 10, 2007.
-According to Colonel Sean MacFarland (the same Colonel referenced by McCain in his interview), the 'Anbar Awakening' "began in September 2006."
-In the Weekly Standard's IRAQ REPORT, Kimberly Kagan wrote "The number of troops in Anbar province rose even before “the surge” began."
None of this is a criticism of U.S. forces -- they played an important role in Anbar. However, the surge did not cause the awakening, and McCain's false claim that it did is just the latest example that he is in way over his head. He's not intellectually qualified to be president.
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McCain is not too old; he's just too wrong, too often. And CBS apparently wants to play the role of Fox News, covering up this fact. Haven’t the pundits been saying the media is biased towards Obama?
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Until this news broke on McCain's lack of knowledge regarding foreign affairs and recent Middle East history, I was planning to blog about the great modern political astuteness of Italians. See a recent survey of citizens in five European countries showed that they prefer Senator Barack Obama over McCain, 52% to 15%. But it was Italians who most enthusiastically supported Obama for US President, 70% to 15%. Germany: 67-6. France: 65-8. Britain: 49-14. Russia: 31-24.
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