Time's Newton-Small purported to examine controversy over McCain's 100-years comment, but failed to mention his inconsistency
SUMMARY: Referencing Sen. John McCain's comment that he would "be fine" with a Korea-like U.S. troop presence in Iraq, Time's Jay Newton-Small claimed the McCain campaign is "[f]earing a Kerry-esque I-actually-voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it moment." But Newton-Small did not note that McCain has, in fact, flip-flopped on the issue, having previously dismissed the idea of a Korea-like U.S. troop presence in Iraq in November 2007.
In an April 8 post on Time magazine's Swampland blog, reporter Jay Newton-Small purported to examine the back-and-forth between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain over McCain's January 3 comments that the U.S. might be in Iraq for "a hundred" years and that he would "be fine" with a Korea-like U.S. troop presence there "[a]s long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed." Newton-Small quoted Obama asserting that he "can stand up to John McCain with credibility and say no to a 100-year occupation of Iraq," and then wrote that Obama's "continued reference to a '100-year occupation' in Iraq must have the McCain campaign grinding their teeth. Fearing a Kerry-esque I-actually-voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it moment, McCain's folks have been doing their best to debunk his comment made at a New Hampshire town hall meeting in January." Newton-Small added: "McCain has since said he meant a presence like the one the U.S. maintains in Korea which helps maintain peace though the war ended decades ago." However, while writing about the McCain campaign's supposed "fear[]" of a flip-flop moment, Newton-Small failed to mention that McCain actually has flip-flopped: While McCain said he's "fine" with a Korea-like U.S. troop presence in Iraq, he had dismissed the idea in November 2007.
As Media Matters for America has documented, on the November 27, 2007, edition of PBS' Charlie Rose, McCain was asked by Rose if South Korea "is an analogy of where Iraq might be ... in terms of an American presence over the next, say, 20, 25 years, that we will have a significant amount of troops there." McCain replied, "I don't think so." Rose then asked: "Even if there are no casualties?" McCain replied, "No. But I can see an American presence for a while. But eventually I think because of the nature of the society in Iraq and the religious aspects of it that America eventually withdraws."
By contrast, during a January 3 town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, a participant said to McCain: "President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years -- " and McCain interjected: "Maybe a hundred. 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 as long as Americans -- as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, then it's fine with me. I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Qaeda is training, recruiting, and equipping, and motivating people every single day."
During the April 6 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) specifically criticized McCain for making contradictory statements on whether America's future troop presence in Iraq would be analogous to the U.S. presence in South Korea. Kerry cited McCain's interview on Charlie Rose and asserted, "So you have a different John McCain today when he talks about 100 years or a million years."
Newton-Small's April 8 Swampland post:
Obama this morning addressed the Communications Workers of America's annual conference in Washington. He gave his usual spiel to unions highlighting his opposition to the war in Iraq, his credentials to take on lobbyists and his days as a community organizer in Chicago. The 600,000-member CWA has yet to endorse a candidate and Hillary is also expected to address the group today (fair disclosure, I was a member of this union for two years when I worked at Agence France Presse).
Obama also didn't miss the opportunity to take a swipe at McCain. "I opposed this war from the start. I've opposed it each year it's been going on," Obama said. "And that's why I'm the one candidate who will offer a real choice in November because I can stand up to John McCain with credibility and say no to a 100-year occupation of Iraq, and no to a third Bush term. It's time to bring out troops home."
Obamas' continued reference to a "100-year occupation" in Iraq must have the McCain campaign grinding their teeth. Fearing a Kerry-esque I-actually-voted-for-it-before-I-voted-against-it moment, McCain's folks have been doing their best to debunk his comment made at a New Hampshire town hall meeting in January.
Q: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for 50 years - (cut off by McCain)
McCAIN: Make it a hundred.
Q: Is that ... (cut off)
McCAIN: We've been in South Korea ... we've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea 50 years or so. That would be fine with me. As long as Americans ...
Q: [tries to say something]
McCAIN: As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed. That's fine with me, I hope that would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where Al Queada is training and equipping and recruiting and motivating people every single day.McCain has since said he meant a presence like the one the U.S. maintains in Korea which helps maintain peace though the war ended decades ago. And, clearly, given the transcript, it is what he meant. So is it fair that both Clinton and Obama continue to hit McCain for these comments? Obama was careful today not to say that troops would be at "war" for 100 years, just an occupying force (though in an email entitled "THE NEW POLITICS OF DISTORTION" the RNC was quick to point out that as recently as Saturday Obama did use the combat phrasing). Obama defended his remarks on the Today Show this morning: "We can pull up the quotes on Youtube," Obama told Meredith Vieira. "What John McCain was saying was, that he was happy to have a potential long-term occupation in Iraq. Happy may be overstating it -- he is willing to have a long-term occupation of Iraq, as long as 100 years, in fact he said 10,000 years, however long it took."
That's not entirely accurate either as it would likely come as news to most South Koreans that U.S. troops are occupying their country. The GOP has been quick to accuse Obama of crossing the politics-of-hope line in the sand with his continued use of this line. Perhaps they have a point. It is because of the Bush campaign's daily flip-flop attacks that no one actually remembers what Kerry meant when he made that infamous statement: that he'd voted for the $87 billion war supplemental when it was offset by getting rid of Bush's tax cuts to the very wealthy.
I am McCain's "Ernest Hemingway"
I was the questioner at the January 3 Town Hall Meeting in Derry, NH, who McCain called Ernest Hemingway and who asked him what he hoped to accomplish in Iraq and how long it would take. When I pressed him for a time frame and cited George Bush's figure of fifty years, Senator McCain shocked me by saying "Maybe a hundred".
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-tiffany/mccain-told-me-100-years_b_95522.html
The truth will set you free
For credibility in a story, the Huffinton Post is not exactly good source.
So where a story is published is MORE important than who writes the story? OK
Only to narrow-minded dunderheads who don't trust anything they read on Ariana Huffington's web site. However, these same dunderheads will readily accept as the absolute truth anything Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, or Bill O'Reilly says.....
Mccain needs to continue this war to maintain the GOP mandate of running as a commander-in-chief. To govern a sovereign state of truly free people, he has to expand his governance to actually do something other than sit on his butt and command-in- chief. To be president of the United States, you have to be many things to many people.
I wonder if it ever occurs to the GOP base / war cheerleaders that their top gun has conceded that Al Qaeda will still be active and the region will be volatile in 100 years. For the party that likes to describe everybody else as defeatists and cut & runners, they seem prety comfortable with a mere century of protracted failure in the Global War on Terror.
Lucky for McCain he probably won't have to much pressure on him to explain these things.
So a reporter actually had the "audacity" to write a story that is not a rubberstamp of the MMFA position.
Damn, it's almost as if some reporters have a will of their own or something.
Go Obama!
I don't see why this is such a controversy. Only an idiot would honestly think that anyone has actually implied that we'll be at WAR there for another 100 years. That is stuff and nonsense.
The point of it is to have a base and have a small military presence there to help with stability in the region - much of like how we currently do in Japan, Germany, S. Korea, etc. Diplomatic and military relations with allies are very important in trying to sustain a relationship with a newly reformed nation.
Whoever leads Iraq with the blessing of the US will be considered a puppet by the majority of the Iraqi population.
What's so hard to understand here?
The majority of the people of Iraq wants us out.
The majority of the people of the United States wants us out.
There will not be an Iraqi government supported by it's citizens who is supportive of our occupation in the foreseeable future. The Iraqis have made no headway in forming a government which will be able to unite the population.
McCain's position is that we should stay and have a presence in Iraq after the fighting stops. How does he propose we bring about the end of the violence? He doesn't address this, he talks about what takes place after the violence ends.
John McCain will be dead by then, I will be dead by then, thousands more Americans will be dead by then, hundreds of thousands more Iraqis will be dead by then.
The Shia-Sunni schism has lasted for more than 1,500 years. Nothing we do will bring it to an end. And no occupied country ever embraces their occupiers.
The majority of the people of Iraq wants us out.
Id like to see the facts on that, because I do not believe it to be true. In fact, the majority of the people of Iraq fear that if we leave, they will be killed by genocide. The only people who want us out are the ones who prospered under a corrupt and inhumane regime.
The majority of the people of the United States wants us out.
This part I will agree on, as polls do show about 66% do not like the war in Iraq. I do not like the warn in Iraq, I do not like how much it costs. But I do believe its our responsibiilty to clean up the mess we made.
McCain's position is that we should stay and have a presence in Iraq after the fighting stops.
I hate to tell you this, but regardless who is the next president, and the president after that...is not going to change this. We will have a presence in Iraq as a form of a US military base, as well as an embassy for diplomatic relations. There are great US interests in the country and the region, much to do with oil and Israel, that even stopping the fighting will not stop us from having a presence.
John McCain will be dead by then, I will be dead by then, thousands more Americans will be dead by then, hundreds of thousands more Iraqis will be dead by then.
So are you inferring that since we'll all be dead, that we just let our next of kin deal with the problem?
The Shia-Sunni schism has lasted for more than 1,500 years. Nothing we do will bring it to an end. And no occupied country ever embraces their occupiers.
Of course they dont. No one wants foriegn government having influence on their soil. But it comes with the fact that we dont believe they can govern everything on their own - ala Japan, S. Korea, and most of all Germany.
Here are two links showing that they want us out.
Not only do they want us out but a large percentage of them feel that it's OK to kill Americans.http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/home_page/165.php?nid=&id=&p
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-09-27-iraqi-opinion_x.htm
From your first article: Most Iraqis believe that many aspects of their lives will improve once the US-led forces leave, but are nonetheless uncertain that Iraqi security forces are ready to stand on their own.
Goes without saying that they do not want a permanent foreign military occupying their land. No one would. However, even they are saying that Iraq's own people are not ready to stand up on their own. As we know, a timetable only works if the certain criteria are met by that time.
Also, is it really that suprising that 9 out of 10 Sunni's want the US gone? If that doesn't help sway the overall statistics, I dont know what does.
But...no one is dumb enough to believe that we went there for this long out of "good will". Of course we will have a military presence there. Nothing in this world is free...and that includes the liberation from an inhumane regime.
What are the terms that we need in order to extricate ourselves?
How long will this take?
How do we go from so many Iraqi's wanting us dead to all of the Iraqi's wanting us to be there. It's the supporters of this war who are always making comparisons to WWII and how we are still in the countries that we defeated militarily. We were at war with nations, not different religious factions.
They also mention the Korean Peninsula. How could a similar situation ever exists in Iraq?
North and South Korea are two different countries now, with one side on each side of the DMZ.
What they don't want is comparisons to Vietnam. That is the only war we've been involved in that was even remotely similar and we all know how that ended.
I do think that it was the biggest foreign policy blunder in our history to have invaded Iraq. I also think that whether we stay or not will depend on whether or not we re-institute the draft. There is no other way to keep troop levels at even the current size.
I know the nation, and I, don't have the stomach for a draft. I don't want my kids risking their lives for what will always be considered a mistake.
I'm not for the draft either, as my father was drafted into vietnam at age 19. However, I am for instituting some sort of mandator civil service for all people immediatly following high school ... or dropping out of high school. If this is the nation for the people, and all people are responsible, then we should all perform some sort of duty reflecting that. Whether it be coast guard, border patrol, youth counciling, etc. I want my kids to understand the value of being an American and what it means to do things for your country. Kids today are spoiled, and have no sense of government or personal responsibility. Something needs to be done to give them a swift boot in ass and remove the "entitlement" attitude they seem to be growing up with.
I dont see this is the BIGGEST blunder, i may give that to Vietnam....and NAFTA is not far behind.
I believed that my generation paid the price for lessons learned. That was the only good that I saw come from Vietnam.
Now I know that I was wrong, we learned nothing.
Why is McCain and Hillary always beaten up by the press for theircomments or votes while Obama gets a free pass. What has been Obama's role during his congressional years regarding the Iraq war. He opposed it but since taking office in January 2005, he has voted for four separate war appropriations, totaling more than $300 billion. Obama voted no to Senator John F. Kerry's proposal to remove most combat troops from Iraq by July 2007, warning that an "arbitrary deadline" could "compound" the Bush administration's mistake. And in March 2007, he voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution that stated the Senate would not cut off funding for troops in Iraq.
At least McCain does come out and state that he is all for the war, while Obama and Hillary talks about withdrawal but seems to vote otherwise.
With the cost to be paid by howmany following generations? So now its saving the Iraqs from an inhuman regime. Worse than Dufur? and a few other parts nearby? The millions displaced, ethnic cleaning, Half a million killed in the last seven years? How you can call any of this good calls for some special blindness.
It was for the control of the oil. For the advantage of the oil companies in large. With a little trickle down that you better by god thank them for.
So now its saving the Iraqs from an inhuman regime.
First off, I never claimed it to be anything but that. So dont give me this "So now its..." rhetoric. Take your word games somewhere else if you want to generalize me with every republican or war backer.
Half a million killed in the last seven years?
Half a million of who? Half a million (minus 4 thousand) who were targeting the US troops? I dont see that as anythign worth crying about.
McCain has flip-flopped on a ton of issues. He didn't even support the immigration bill that he helped create. Not to mention all of McCain's so called "misspeaks" that have been happening lately. Check out this gem from monday. McCain clearing doen't know the difference betwwen Sunnis and Shi'ites, as he has made the mistake quite a few times.
http://campaigncircus.com/video_player.php?v=9031
McCain has flip flopped a bit, and messed up a bit, no doubt about it. Not a big McCain fan myself. However, Hillary's driver's license issue, and "sniper fire" fib definately take the cake. I dont know much about whether Obama has flip-flopped or fibbed, but some people view his credibility as diminishing due to his ties with controversial figures, ala Rev. Wright.
It bothers me to think that these three are the best we can come up with for President.