Saturday, August 23, 2008

John McCain - Iraq War Cheerleader

From before the Iraq War started through its fourth year, John McCain made it very clear that he liked how it was going:

“But I believe, Katie, that the Iraqi people will greet us as liberators.”
[NBC, 3/20/03]

“It’s clear that the end is very much in sight.”
[ABC, 4/9/03]

“There’s not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shiahs. So I think they can probably get along.”
[MSNBC, 4/23/03]

“This is a mission accomplished. They know how much influence Saddam Hussein had on the Iraqi people, how much more difficult it made to get their cooperation.”
[This Week, ABC, 12/14/03]

“I’m confident we’re on the right course.”
[ABC News, 3/7/04]

“I think the initial phases of it were so spectacularly successful that it took us all by surprise. Obviously, some mistakes were made, to say the least, in allowing some of the looting. We have more troops there now. We probably should have had more troops. But the fundamental point is whether we're going to move forward and have the elections and have a government that the Iraqi people can support, which I believe that we will.”
[CBS, 10/31/04]

“I do think that progress is being made in a lot of Iraq. Overall, I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course. If I thought we weren’t making progress, I’d be despondent.”
[The Hill, 12/8/05]

McCain played down the increasing civil violence in Iraq. When host Don Imus remarked that Iraq "already looks like a civil war," McCain responded, saying, "I keep trying to look at the bright side of this because we have to because the consequences of failure are catastrophic." McCain added, "I think, at least we're on the right track here."
[MSNBC, 3/1/06]
But in 2007, when accused of being a supporter of Bush's policy, he rewrote that history:
It’s entertaining, in that I was the greatest critic of the initial four years, three and a half years. I came back from my first trip to Iraq and said, This is going to fail. We’ve got to change the strategy to the one we’re using now. But life isn’t fair.

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