McCain: Iraq War "Necessary And Just"

GOP Senator Looks To Jump Start Presidential Campaign With Strong Defense Of Bush Policy

(AP)  Republican presidential contender John McCain on Wednesday called the four-year Iraq conflict “necessary and just” and accused anti-war Democrats, including the party's top White House candidates, of recklessness.

Struggling to reinvigorate his troubled campaign, McCain reiterated his longtime criticism that President Bush initially went to war without a plan to succeed. But he also backed the commander in chief's recent troop increase and said Bush is right to veto legislation that places conditions on the war.

“In Iraq, only our enemies were cheering” when House Democrats enthusiastically passed legislation setting a timetable for a troop withdrawal, the Arizona senator told cadets at the Virginia Military Institute.

“A defeat for the United States is a cause for mourning, not celebrating,” he added.

In a quick counter to McCain, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama challenged the Republican's assessment of improved security in Baghdad and argued that only a change in strategy will bring a responsible end to the conflict.

“What we need today is a surge in honesty,” the Illinois senator said in a statement, contending that McCain was measuring progress in Iraq using “the same ideological fantasies” that led the U.S. into war.

Another Democratic contender, Sen. Chris Dodd, also said McCain is wrong.

“We don't need a surge of troops in Iraq. We need a surge of diplomacy,” the Connecticut senator said in prepared remarks for an Iowa speech. “The Bush/McCain Doctrine is not succeeding. It is failing.”

McCain has staked his candidacy on the war's outcome, planting himself firmly on the side of the president he hopes to succeed and the three in four Republicans who view the war as a worthy cause. Most Americans, however, call it a hopeless effort.

His remarks came a week after he made his fifth trip to Iraq, where he was criticized for saying he was cautiously optimistic of success even as he toured the capital under heavy military guard. Iraqis accused him of painting too rosy a picture and U.S. critics argued he was out of step with reality.

In a CBS News poll released Wednesday, 39 percent said when McCain talks about Iraq, he makes things sound better than they really are while 29 percent said he was describing the situation accurately. The poll, conducted before the speech, surveyed 480 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

The Iraq episode threatened to undercut McCain's credibility on a signature issue — defense. Wednesday's address, to several hundred uniformed cadets at the military college's Jackson Memorial Hall, was intended to counter his critics and put his faltering presidential bid back on course.

The cadets mostly remained silent as he spoke but gave him a standing ovation when he finished the speech.

In the speech filled with rhetoric for the GOP base, McCain portrayed himself as a leader who puts the country's interests above politics and as the most qualified Republican candidate to counter Democratic calls for withdrawal.

“Lets put aside for a moment the small politics of the day,” he said. “The judgment of history should be the approval we seek, not the temporary favor of the latest public opinion poll.”

He ignored his GOP rivals, all of whom support the president on the war but none of whom has McCain's military experience or has been as closely aligned with the conflict as the senator.

Instead, McCain assailed Democrats who control Congress, including “their leading candidates for president.” It was a reference to Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Obama. Both voted for a troop withdrawal timetable.

McCain called the Democrats' pullout policy politically expedient but strategically disastrous. He accused Democrats who control Congress of acting in “giddy anticipation of the next election.”

McCain said those like him who support Bush's troop increase chose the “hard road” but “right road.”

“Democrats, who deny our soldiers the means to prevent an American defeat, have chosen another road,” he said, referring to the standoff between Democrats and Bush over war funding and a timetable. “It may appear to be the easier course of action, but it is a much more reckless one, and it does them no credit even if it gives them an advantage in the next election.”

A former Navy pilot and Vietnam prisoner of war, McCain is the only top-tier GOP candidate to have served in the military and he is the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

[jerbear174]

FLAT TAX FAIR TAX. Do you need to file a 1040? Where is the code and section? Our government has been ripping us off for years with this scam. Working is our labor, time, therefor they pay us a wage. Not governments money IT IS RIGHTFULLY YOURS. WHO IS PAYING OFF THE INTEREST TO THE FEDERAL RESERVE which is(CENTRAL BANK). YOU ARE THE WORKING CLASS OF AMERICA. Since when does a government need permission to print money??
THE CENTRAL BANKERS have are Major players in the United Nations, by the way the UN owns the deeds to alot of our national parks, that is a fact do your research they hide it as Bio Domes for research. Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Oregon National Park, and many many more.
Georgie is just a puppet he solely couldn't steal the first election, Florida little brother state (remember the chads)?? Rigging electronic voting machines in Ohio, after all they saw the most job loss. Those machines have codes but only select few I am guessing have to power to get the codes. Easily can be changed to a 51% 49% either way you want it to go.
I won't even go into 9/11 the scientific facts and physics do all the explaining in that one.

FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL TO FIND OUT WHO CONTROLS THE WORLD.
Read the consitution.

[bigal321321]

What happened to John McCain? Remember the maverick that used to stand up to the President? The guy that was more centrist and believed in the will of the people? What happened to make him jump ship to the Presidents side? I'm thinkin' a couple of things. One, he's been brainwashed into believing that we can win this (I guess they tapped into already latent memories of the Hanoi Hilton) or Two, the money. Large amounts of money, win or lose. It saddens me as a Democrat to think the only man that could've made me jump ship on my own party has gone the other way. Back to the frontrunners....Vote Edwards!

[speakinup]

I'm somewhat happy that many of you have this pressure release - writing your comments into this post. But, if you think you are doing anything constructive, you are, sadly, mistaken. All you do by beating your chest, yelling your opinions as if they were fact, and by making childish remarks is alienate more people that are not already of your ilk.

I would urge you to become less emotional and more pragmatic. Only under these conditions will we be able to work through these difficulties.

It is quite alright to tell someone to go to hell. But, make sure they are looking forward to the trip once you are done - that's the key.

In doing so, you will gain strength for your cause and not cause someone to hold on even stronger to their beliefs. Most likely, many of you are familiar with Aesop's fable of The Wind and the Sun. It would be good for all of us to live the thought when publishing here...

[toldyouso21]

CBS/AP) A bomb exploded in the Iraqi parliament's cafeteria in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified Green Zone Thursday, killing as many as six lawmakers and wounding at least 10 other people.

So now markets in the middle of Bagdhad are safe as long as you have 100 heavily armed soldiers, 5 attack helicopters and clear the area in a 1 mile radius--

but...now the GREEN ZONE is not safe--at least for people eating lunch in the cafeteria. We don't have diminishing violence so much as we have SHIFTING VIOLENCE.

BUSH'S SURGE METASTICIZED LIKE A CANCER AND SPREAD LIKE SHRAPNEL ALL OVER IRAQ---INCLUDING INTO THE SO CALLED "SAFE HAVE" FORTRESS OF THE GREEN ZONE. Yep McCain, we see how safe it is alright.

[toldyouso21]

"CBS/AP) A bomb exploded in the Iraqi parliament's cafeteria in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified Green Zone Thursday, killing at least two lawmakers and wounding 10 other people. "


Well, McCain, you can buy cheap rugs at the bazaar if you are bizarre enough to go with about 100 heavily armed soldiers , 5 attack helicopters and heavily armored humvees--but they can no longer eat lunch in the cafeteria in the "safe" GREEN ZONE without worrying someone will blow them up. Bombs in the Green zone are a new first huh? Yep, things ARE getting safer... NOT

[sevenveils]

There is a saying: You break it you buy it.

[weneedchange]

Could we tolerate another Clinton in the White House, but this time playing %u201CSecond Fiddle%u201D to the Democrat from Illinois ??? At least she wouldn%u2019t be distracted just because another male gets waylaid in the secret hallways. She%u2019d stay far too busy wondering what%u2018s Bill still up to, with all those trips out on his own !!!! Whatever happens next wouldn%u2019t cost taxpayers another $25 million and a few more years of %u201Cwitch hunts%u201C. (We%u2019ve %u201Cbeen there, done that%u201D !!!)

Do we REALLY need two solid years of political TV commercials repeated ad nauseum, and $ONE BILLION worth of government favoritism for those %u201CSponsors%u201D ????

[harp1963]

Dear Senator McCain, I grew up in the Pittsburgh area and was a teenager when all the boys came home from Vietnam. I am embarrased that you continue to support a war, that first, was completely unprovoked, and secondly, has contributed to extreme unstablity in the Middle East.

I used to think you were very level headed person, but now, if I were you, I would forget about running for President. This country is a democracy RUN BY THE PEOPLE. And the people want our troops brought home and this retarded war ended. You can't force this war on us. We will vote all the war supporters out of office in such large numbers, even trying to "fix" the vote like you master George did in 2004 won't work. All the best

[weneedchange]

For lots of years I%u2019ve admired McCain%u2019s integrity and his willingness to admit his party%u2019s leadership had horrifically screwed up. If Bush hadn%u2019t built such a massive Campaign Fund while totally prostituting himself en route to first being nominated, McCain would have been named and elected. None of this mess would EVER have happened. All those killed and maimed would still be living/doing as hoped when growing up. McCain would probably have found another way to rid Iraq of that despot, even if at the cost of a few fatalities of Special Ops heros. And maybe Bin Laden might also have been found, had we been %u201Cserved%u201D by an administration not so hopelessly incompetent.

But sadly, McCain is now making the biggest WRONG gamble of his life, obviously hoping this latest fiasco of a plan might miraculously work, and thus bring him much support and strength from folks who %u201Cbelatedly%u201D concede he was RIGHT all along. We may WISH it happens !!! NOT LIKELY.

[me4prezz]

Democrats, who deny our soldiers the means to prevent an American defeat, have chosen another road,%u201D he said, referring to the standoff between Democrats and Bush over war funding and a timetable. %u201CIt may appear to be the easier course of action, but it is a much more reckless one, and it does them no credit even if it gives them an advantage in the next election.%u201D

That advantage is the will of the people. It is the will of the people that says that something has to give and that this war is not worth winning. It takes a bigger person to say that they know when to give up and the Democrats are finally saying they know that it is time to give up. We are dying more and more and not much to show for it, except that we traded one dictator for another. What good have we done there?

This war needs to end and the Iraqis will need support in rebuilding, but our continued killing of civilians is making us no better than those who killed us. The ones who flew planes into our buildings are who we should be fighting. Those are the ones we should be hunting down. Not civilians and not radicalists who are using this war as a media frenzy to further their own causes.

Get Bin Laden and get out.

[me4prezz]

McCain, for all his military experience, is missing the boat.

Americans are upset at being lied to. Americans are upset at being miseld. Americans are upset at being manipulated. Americans are upset at watching our husbands, wives, daughters, sons, nephews, nieces, brothers, sisters being slaughtered while our government bickers over direction for the war and not letting them do their job. Americans are upset because we are not killing militants and radicalists and those are causing the damage. We are killing civilians; women, children, elderly people. We are killing a nation and for what? They did not cause 9/11. They had no weapons of mass destruction. They have nothing and they have even less now that we took what little they did have.

We cannot leave now. We are too entrapped. We would make things worse by leaving now, but we are making things worse with the mistaken belief that we are doing anything good for these people! We need to slowly withdraw and allow the Iraqis the chance to take back their country and give our country a chance to rebuild up our military that has been so swiftly destroyed.

Thank you Senator McCain, but that is what is so upsetting.

[me4prezz]

You want to know how to overthrow a government and gain a dictatorship? You have a horrific event in a country and you tell the people, in their time of greatest need, anguish, and outrage, that "they" are to blame and that "they" are the reason your loved ones are dead. Then, you offer them a way to go to war and kill them all and you keep feeding the lies to continue the slaughter. This has happened time and again throughout history and Bush manipulated us all after 9/11 (For the conspiratory theorists out there, no Bush did not plan 9/11. I do, however, believe that he had found the perfect outlet for this war and used 9/11 as a weapon against ourselves) into a war that he wanted.

I do not know about you, but I really do not like being manipulated. I do not like being told that my loved ones have to die to fund his personal retirement fund. I do not like receiving notes saying that another friend has died and I really do not like having not only mine, but all those around me, disbelief and distraught, ragged emotions of 9/11 twisted to serve Bush's purposes.

What more do we need for impeachment people! Come on already!

[me4prezz]

America can not impose a democracy on a nation that has no desire for democracy. We, ourselves, are fighting a tyrannical government and are not much of a democracy ourselves. If we cannot lead by example, then how can we force others to undertake a system of government we ourselves cannot maintain?

McCain is disulluisioned or earning a paycheck from Bush with the misconception that either of them have words that mean anything to the American people. We had no reason to attack Iraq. We were to attack Al Qaeda. We were to attack Osasma Bin Laden. Where are we with the capture of either of those? Nowhere. We are usurping a country for the sake of their oil fields and for the sake of corrupted governmental officials.

[me4prezz]

If he is a contender for President, he might to rethink his constant support for a President that has a strong chance of being impeached. In other words, he is "backing the wrong horse".

He lost my vote the minute he says anything about supporting the twisted beliefs of the Commander-in-Chief who commands nothing but his bank account and how much he can stuff into it.

[pakaal]

irishbitch is absolutely right, we never hear any vision of the end of the War in Iraq (other than "Freedom! Democracy! which arguably they now have), because the Bush administration has never defined it. No more terrorist deaths in Iraq at all? Is there an acceptable number of daily deaths we'll agree to allow before we bring troops home? Acceptable number of bombings? And where's the plan for government? Is it by province after all? Ethnic regions? Nobody has these answers, at least I've never heard any, at least on the Administration's side. What everyone was told was the opposite, in fact. Brigadier General Mark Scheid, commander of the Army Transportation Corps, one of the original "Generals on the Ground" was told by Rumsfeld after he asked about Phase 4 (occupation and government building) answered "I will fire the next person who asks that." In Rumsfeld's own words, "The American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_09_03-2006_09_09.shtml#1157727623

Even if it weren't for the 3,286 dead American soldiers over there now in this war based on lies, with talk of us being there "until the job's done" while we make the mess worse, it'd be appalling enough.

[truthword]

After walking the streets of Baghdad with over 100 armed troops, blackhawk helicopters above, tanks and armored vehicles at his side... John Hanoi McCain claims he would have done it all by himself and didn't need armed guards, says he's not afraid to walk the streets anywhere in the world..... yeah right... this coward and the rest of his ilk won't even walk the streets of America without armed guards. They're even afraid of we the people, if McCain comes to your town show up with a megaphone and ask him why he needs the secret service to protect him from his own countrymen....

[toldyouso21]

"In Iraq, only our enemies were cheering%u201D when House Democrats enthusiastically passed legislation setting a timetable for a troop withdrawal, the Arizona senator told cadets at the Virginia Military Institute. "

Sorry McCain, you have ZERO credibility when it comes to telling us anything that is going on in Iraq, ya big fat liar.

[kansas1946]

I can't imagine why he thinks this stance will "invigorate" his stalled campaign. I just think he has lost it and give up. It is really sad to see this. I used to respect McCain.

[toldyouso21]

After all we can straighten all that out after we win right?Above
all else we have to win the election. To save
our country from ruination at the hands of the republicans Right?
Posted by larrymiz137 at 07:01 PM : Apr 11, 2007

If this was about Iraqi freedom, we would have asked if they wanted to be freed and if they were willing to die for that freedom. There are no people in existence that were ever invaded, bombed, killed, raped, imprisoned and occupied while the people who did it claim to "free" them. Freedom is a thing wished for, fought for AND volunteered for by a people--NOT something imposed. We put the Iraqis in the mess they are in now, the sad thing is how many pretend they have a halo and what we did and continue to do are just. The funny thing is that the same people who claim we are "freeing the Iraqis" are the same who call for their death when they resist the occupation, are the same who call them sand niqqers and mudslimes are HYPOCRITES. If you can't stop lying to the rest of us--for Pete's sake--stop lying to yourselves. This is about gaining a foothold in the ME by hook or by crook--call it what it is and stop trying to act like we ever did want to do anything decent. We have only installed puppet regimes, each time saying they were for the people--our puppets have always been brutal, and the people end up hating us and our lackeys and eventually overthrow them--we have a very long and ignominious history of this.

[toldyouso21]

Will it be better if we leave ? Or are we STUCK in a bad situation and need to make the best of it? Re-read the speech, tell us where he's wrong - but make it factual, not emotional. Then let's speak our minds to the Senator in a way that he will respect instead of ignor (you ignor those that are emotional or act like idiots - wouldn't you expect hium to ?)
Posted by speakinup at 06:28 PM : Apr 11, 2007

Here is the short answer: it will APPEAR better as long as we stay. But it will not be real and will disintegrate as soon as we leave. The idea is that we secure the area to buy the government time. We are working on the assumption that the government is cohesive and has the same goals.

Al Maliki's goal are clear...to stay in power. For that, he would keep America there to do his dirty work, be their police and hold his country together for as long as he can stay in power. Power means money and vacation homes in Jordan, it means a certain Shia elite class that is a dream of his. If we leave, what is happening bit by bit will accelerate. SAddam's capture left a vacuum and people are vyying to fill it. They do not understand or care about Democracy. They are trying to gather alliances, private armies and loyalties to rule--in the way Mesopotamia has always been ruled--by force and by ONE backed by the loyalty and power of those who serve the one.