They're calling it yet another McCain 'gaffe', but is it?

Either John McCain knows little about the history of the Iraq war, he just doesn't remember from one minute to the next, or he'll go to any lengths to spin his fiction into 'fact'. I'm not sure which it is, but in an interview with Katie Couric yesterday, McCain got it absolutely wrong and CBS tried to cover it up. The Jed Report has the video here along with Countdown's expose of it. Masterp2323 has a longer comparison of what CBS aired vs. what CBS cut which was still available unedited on cbs.com.

From cbs.com's transcript of the interview:

McCain: I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane (phonetic) was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history. Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership, and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. I mean, to deny that their sacrifice didn't make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think, does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed.

The only problem with Sen. McCain's statement is that he got it all wrong. The Anbar Awakening started in September of 2006, and the troop escalation started in the spring of 2007. That's fact. There's no way to spin the spring of '07 to have occurred before the fall of 2006.

As bad as it was, it wasn't the worst thing McCain did while his opponent was out of the country.

This was.

"I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”

On Anderson Cooper's show last night, Joe Klein called McCain's comment the most scurrilous charge he's ever heard from a candidate. Senator Kerry, in an interview on MSNBC yesterday called it 'ridiculous and insulting'. Personally, I think it questions the patriotism of a United States Senator, is inexcusable and warrants a public apology.

It wasn't the first time the campaign used the line. A McCain adviser said it the other day. It was an ugly statement at the time, but it came from an adviser, and they sometimes say ugly things. Coming from someone who wants to be the President of the United States, it's a disgusting and vile attack, and unbecoming of a candidate.

Meanwhile, the right wing news is still hiding behind the troops as they attempt to conflate the failed Bush strategy with tactical military successes. In a Fox News interview, Sen. Kerry discussed the surge, and explained the difference between tactical successes and strategic failures. I don't think the other guy 'got it'.

Here's my summary of the interview:

Fox: The surge worked!
Kerry: Not exactly.
Fox: But what about the troops?!
Kerry: They're the best troops in the world.
Fox: But the troops ...
Kerry: Our troops have done a brilliant job.
Fox: You're not giving the troops credit.
Kerry: The troops are extraordinary. They've done a brilliant job.
Fox: But you're not giving credit to the trooops ...

At that point, the audio is accidentally cut before the Senator can respond to the interviewer's final attempt to spin defense of the administration's failed policy into support of the military.

When is the right wing going to stop blaming Bush's failures on our troops? And when is the right wing media going to stop covering for McCain?

UPDATE: JedReport posted an update which shows interestingly enough that at one point before the surge, McCain understood that the Anbar Awakening was due to the sheiks in the province. Guess his memory failed him.

HuffPo's Seth Colter Walls found a gem of a quote -- John McCain talking about the Anbar Awakening on January 5, 2007...before Bush announced the surge.

Too often the light at the tunnel has turned out to be a train, but I really believe -- I really believe that there's a strong possibility that you may see a very substantial change in Anbar province due to this new changes in our relationships with the sheiks in the region.

As you know, McCain's CBS whopper was that these relationships (the Anbar Awakening) did not begin until the surge started. But they actually began in 2006, and now, thanks to the fact that I happened to have video of the event Walls referenced (go figure), we've got a YouTube clip of John McCain making that very point himself, in his own words -- before there ever was a surge.