On April 3, The Washington Post ran an item purporting to fact-check criticism of John McCain over his January comments about keeping the U.S. military in Iraq for 100 years. The Post's Michael Dobbs concluded that McCain critics who claim that the Republican presidential candidate wants to continue the Iraq war for 100 years are distorting his comments. Dobbs' article came one week to the day after a New York Times article about criticisms of McCain that “mischaracterize and distort” McCain's 100-years comments.

When McCain cries foul, the media are eager to agree

On April 3, The Washington Post ran an item purporting to fact-check criticism of John McCain over his January comments about keeping the U.S. military in Iraq for 100 years. The Post's Michael Dobbs concluded that McCain critics who claim that the Republican presidential candidate wants to continue the Iraq war for 100 years are distorting his comments. Dobbs' article came one week to the day after a New York Times article about criticisms of McCain that “mischaracterize and distort” McCain's 100-years comments.

The articles in the Times and the Post come in the midst of a great deal of media attention to McCain's comments, much of which asserts that McCain's remarks have been distorted or unfairly criticized.

Distortions and unfair criticisms are nothing new in political campaigns. Somewhat more unusual is the eagerness of some news organizations to defend McCain from such distortions. McCain and his staff distort the Democratic candidates' tax plans on a near-daily basis, and the media don't seem to care. And The New York Times and The Washington Post weren't so concerned about distortions of a presidential candidates' comments when the candidate was named Al Gore -- back then, rather than debunking the distortions, the Times and the Post were the ones doing the distorting.

But what is most notable about the coverage of McCain's 100-years comments is that while news organizations like the Times and the Post have rushed to McCain's defense with reports pointing out what McCain didn't say, those reports have failed to explore what he does mean.

If you search the Nexis news database for mentions of McCain's 100-years comments in the Times and the Post, you'll get about three dozen hits, including the two articles explicitly rebutting criticism of McCain.

While several of those articles quote McCain staff members asserting that his comments have been distorted, not a single one gives any indication that either paper has asked McCain or his staff any questions that would clarify how long McCain is willing to continue fighting in Iraq.

McCain's 100-years comment came as he avoided directly answering questions about how long he would be willing to continue fighting a war in Iraq in which American troops are being wounded and killed. Yes, Mr. Straight Talk was ducking the question. During the same event, McCain said “setting a date for withdrawal is a date for surrender, and we would then have many more casualties and many more Americans sacrificed if we withdraw with -- with a setting a date for surrender.” In effect, McCain is having it both ways -- he refuses to set a date by which the United States will stop fighting in Iraq, but when critics accuse him of being willing to continue fighting in Iraq for 100 years, he and his campaign reject that. Well, which is it? If he refuses to set a date by which we will stop fighting, then it is fair to say he's willing to keep fighting for 100 years. And if he isn't willing to keep fighting for 100 years, then he doesn't really refuse to set a date by which we must stop fighting. But neither the Times nor the Post explore that tension in their articles about McCain's 100-years comments.

Not a single article examines whether McCain's desire for a long-term military presence in Iraq similar to the presence we have in Germany and Korea is even remotely plausible. Time's Joe Klein argues that it isn't: “That betrays a fairly acute lack of knowledge about both Iraq and Islam. It may well be possible to station U.S. troops in small, peripheral kingdoms like Dubai or Kuwait, but Iraq is -- and has always been -- volatile, tenuous, centrally-located and nearly as sensitive to the presence of infidels as Saudi Arabia. It is a terrible candidate for a long-term basing agreement.”

Not a single one of the articles made any attempt to assess how much it would cost to maintain a military presence in Iraq for 100 years, or to determine how McCain would pay for it. Not a single one made any attempt to assess (or gave any indication that a reporter asked McCain) what effect such a lengthy commitment of U.S. forces to Iraq would do to our military readiness, or the effects it would have on the troops themselves.

Only one article -- Dobbs' April 3 fact check -- even hints that McCain has flip-flopped (twice) on whether the United States should have a long-term presence in Iraq similar to our presence in South Korea. And Dobbs soft-peddled McCain's shift, writing, “McCain has also not been entirely consistent about his thoughts on a long-term U.S. military occupation of Iraq. Interviewed on 'The Charlie Rose Show' last November, he rejected the Korea/Germany analogy.”

McCain has “not been entirely consistent”? That's quite an understatement.

According to The Des Moines Register, McCain said last June: “We have had troops in South Korea for 60 years and nobody minds ... If you stay a long, long time, but have the Iraqis doing the fighting, and your people are back in the bases and away from the firing line, I think Americans would be satisfied.”

Then, during the Charlie Rose interview in November, McCain rejected the South Korea analogy he had embraced five months earlier:

ROSE: Do you think that this -- Korea, South Korea -- is an analogy of where Iraq might be, not in terms of their economic success but in terms of an American presence over the next, say, 20, 25 years, that we will have a significant amount of troops there?

McCAIN: I don't think so.

ROSE: Even if there are no casualties?

McCAIN: 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.

And then in January, McCain went back to embracing the South Korea model. That's two flip-flops in seven months -- on an issue that is central to McCain's campaign. And yet The Washington Post's Michael Dobbs can allow only that McCain has “not been entirely consistent.” He hasn't been even remotely consistent. (Grading McCain on a curve is becoming something of a habit for Dobbs. The Post scribe's gimmick is that he assigns “Pinocchios” to untrue statements. Well, he sometimes assigns them. Last December, Dobbs wrote of McCain's flagrantly false claim that tax cuts increase revenues: “John McCain is fortunate that I am giving the candidates a pass this week from awarding Pinocchios, as he would qualify for a few on this one.” And last October, Dobbs awarded his first-ever “prized Geppetto checkmark,” recognizing statements that are “the truth, the whole, truth, and nothing but the truth.” Who was the lucky recipient? John McCain, for a line criticizing Hillary Clinton for an earmark for a museum in Woodstock, New York. McCain's line may have been a good one, but -- contrary to Dobbs assertion -- it wasn't quite the “whole truth”: McCain skipped the Senate vote on the earmark in question, as Dobbs own newspaper has reported.)

While Dobbs downplayed the extent of McCain's flip-flops, two New York Times accounts of the controversy over McCain's comments seemed to rule out of bounds even criticism of McCain that is completely accurate.

On March 26, the Times reported:

[McCain adviser] Steve Schmidt ... suggested that Mrs. Clinton's comment about Bosnia could haunt her, especially if she keeps making such misstatements as saying Mr. McCain wants to keep American troops in Iraq for 100 years. He said it might be necessary to keep troops there for up to 100 years, for peacekeeping as in Germany and South Korea.

[...]

Yet Mr. Schmidt, Mr. McCain's adviser, called the coverage about the sniper fire nonsense, saying, ''Everyone misspeaks.''

He also said: ''She does have a track record of misspeaking, including about being in Iraq for 100 years. Senator McCain has not said that. If she develops a long pattern of this stuff, it could become a bigger problem.''

What the Times described -- and, later, allowed Schmidt to describe -- as a misstatement was nothing of the kind. McCain has indicated that he wants to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years; he has talked about “being in Iraq for 100 years.” Rather than reporting that it is a distortion to say that McCain wants to continue fighting in Iraq for 100 years, the Times (falsely) reported that it is a misstatement to say he wants to keep troops there for 100 years. That's no misstatement; that's precisely what McCain said. The Times knows this -- in the paper's March 27 article about “sound bites” that “mischaracterize and distort” McCain's comments, the paper included only comments that accused McCain of wanting to continue the war, or fighting, for 100 years -- not comments that indicated that McCain wants to maintain a military presence for 100 years. But on March 26, the paper seemed to rule out of bounds even that, completely accurate, statement.

Yesterday, Times columnist Gail Collins wrote:

The story that McCain said he was prepared to stay in Iraq for 100 years is on one level unfair, although this fall Democrats will be featuring it in commercials about every six seconds.

What he meant was that he's prepared to keep troops stationed in Iraq for 100 years as long as no one is “injured or harmed or wounded or killed” in the process.

In response, Bob Somerby wrote: “Sorry, but that isn't what McCain 'meant.' That's what he explicitly said.” Somerby is right that Collins' formulation inaccurately suggests that McCain meant to say, but didn't, that he would keep troops in Iraq only as long as they were not being killed.

But Collins' description of the controversy actually helps McCain: According to Collins, it is “unfair” to say that McCain “said he was prepared to stay in Iraq for 100 years.” But that is what McCain said! Again: According to Gail Collins' newspaper, the distortion is saying that McCain wants to continue fighting in Iraq for 100 years. But Collins cast a broader protective cloak over McCain, asserting that it is unfair to merely say that he is prepared to stay in Iraq for 100 years.

It is perhaps a measure of the depth of the media's favorable treatment of McCain that even news reports that seem at first blush unfair to him actually help him.

Jamison Foser is Executive Vice President at Media Matters for America.