The McCain Myth

War hero -- granted. But, a man, McCain, who has essentially taken credit for the success of the surge (I don't know if it's his old age or what); but he's got his history and facts so incredibly skewed that it's embarrassing for this man who is truly an American hero.

While the surge has worked for the reasons that it was implemented for (to get our troop casualties down and flush the bad guys out), McCain certainly has some revisionist history about how it all came to be. In fact it was a bi-partisan coalition, including none other than Hillary, Russ Feingold and Lindsey Graham who assessed the situation in Iraq with McCain and decided, along with General Petraeus (a man McCain severely doubted the ability of early in Patraeus' tenure as central commander in Iraq) on the surge policy. They then recommended it to a "hey, fuck it, whatever you guys say" George W. upon arriving back in D.C and the wheels were in motion for the surge...assuredly not JUST because of the maverick.

McCain, when he leads a coalition of delegates into Iraq is balls to the wall. He wants to go places even when commanding officers strongly try to talk him out of it, but it's in one of those visits where we see exactly what this maverick is made of, and it smacks of George Bush's delusional administration.

On a visit to Iraq soon after the surge, to see how things were progressing in Iraq, McCain spoke to a street merchant in the country. The merchant said, while things on the surface have improved, no more street fights and RPG attacks for example, that there were still tremendous concerns about sniper fire from insurgents who just fire blindly into crowded streets and markets.

Upon arrival back home, and maybe because he is senile in his old age, McCain glaringly forgot to mention this exchange with the merchant. He came back with an "everything's coming up roses" report card on the situation in Iraq. This is Bush 101. You paint the picture you want to paint (**cough** mission accomplished **cough**). There are WMDs over there (no there aren't), but not only was it G.W's push to ignite the war in Iraq, McCain was one of G.W's strongest supporters of a war that to this day has no merit. We went to war on the premise of a lie, and McCain is as much to blame for that as is G.W.

Even if the surge IS working...and I guess the scoreboard says it is as long as Americans aren't dying as frequently over there anymore (nevermind the daily bombings between the Sunni and Shia militants that kill hundreds of innocent civilians weekly), we can't lose focus that, it's been two years of "success" from a surge McCain takes full credit for, but those two years have followed five years of an unmitigated disaster. And the five years of disaster were pushed for from the beginning by the ol' maverick.

Let's bring this down a level. For five years, for example, I thought it would be a great idea to use Crytal Meth. But, I've been clean for 2 years, I'm only an alcoholic now....so that 5 years never happened right? No, and the seeds of addiction that were sewn in those five years cannot magically disappear because of two questionably good years in which there are still flaws.

There are bombings still, a few a week, sometimes multiple bombings a day, but since it's just Iraqi's dying in those bombings, it's all good. The surge worked! It also worked pretty damn well for Al-Qaeda and its operatives.

While seeing that there would be an increased American military presence soon to descend on Iraq, the insurgents saw a golden opportunity back in Afghanistan. They retreated back to the Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan and left the Sunni and Shia Iraqis to kill themselves in what will eventually become a civil war in Iraq the day the last American troop departs, if it's not close to being one already. But, that's not our problem apparently, less Americans are dying, and back home, it's a numbers game. If the number of deaths are going down for our boys, then it's been a success right?

Meanwhile, the insurgents re-group and by all accounts are strengthening to pre-9/11 levels, but they're just doing it in a different country now. A country that was ignored and taken for granted once the senseless war, based on a lie, began in Iraq.

After the war began, in 2003, Joe Biden went over to Iraq, long before McCain's first trip into the country post-war, and came back talking about how the infrastructure of Iraq is utterly devastated and will take a decade, if not more, to get back to where it was before our bombs ravaged their country based on fabricated intelligence.