McCain supported the Bush Administration's military plan for invading Iraq
Posted by Max Bergmann
Michael is dead on when he says that McCain's solution to almost every foreign policy problem is to call for more troops. He called for more in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and now Iraq. But I have one small quibble with Michael, I think in Iraq we must be more skeptical of McCain's claims of being a critic of the Bush administration's running of the war from the outset.
The fact is that McCain did not think we would need a lot of troops in Iraq and thought an invasion would be "easy." So McCain fundamentally adopted and supported the Bush administration's military strategy for invading Iraq. Only after his strategy proved a total disaster, as Iraq descended into chaos, did McCain start to criticize the Bush administration and call for more troops. But by attacking the Bush administration's plans for the war he is really attacking himself.
Perhaps the most striking evidence of McCain being in lockstep with the administration is actually something that McCain didn't say. John McCain was at the Hearing when General Shinseki famously stated that “several hundred thousand soldiers” would be needed in Iraq – but McCain sat silent and didn’t even ask a question. Shinseki said at the hearing that"
“something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers, are probably...a figure that would be required. We're talking about post-hostilities control over a piece of geography that's fairly significant with the kinds of ethnic tensions that could lead to other problems. And so, it takes significant ground force presence to maintain safe and secure environment." [Senate Armed Services Committee, 2/25/03]
Yet following this sobering account, one which differed substantially from the views of the Bush administration, as well as John McCain himself, McCain said nothing.
But there is much McCain did say. All of McCain's statements before the war and in the immediate aftermath show that he was a real cheerleader for the invasion and that he did not think the invasion would be difficult at all (sorry for lack of links - most of these are pulled through Lexis).
"And I believe that the success will be fairly easy." [CNN, Larry King Live, 9/24/02]
"There's no doubt in my mind that once these people are gone that we will be welcomed as liberators." [MSNBC, Hardball, 3/24/03]
"I believe that we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time." [CNN Late Edition, 9/29/02]
"We're not going get into house-to-house fighting in Baghdad." [CNN Late Edition, 9/29/02]
McCain said, it "will be brief." [Fox News, 2/21/03]
McCain, like Rumsfeld, dismissed the impact of looting:
“it won’t be long. It, it'll be a fairly short period of time, but this, this happens in wars… we'll have a short period of chaos. [ABC News, 4/9/03]
McCain said he did not believe there “would be thousands of body bags” if we invaded Iraq – did not envision an insurgency.
I believe that because in 1991 we--there were some very well-informed strategists and tacticians who said that there would be thousands of body bags. I did not believe that at the time. It's clear that Saddam Hussein is much weaker than he was in 1991. Look, we're going to send young men and women in harm's way and that's always a great danger. But I--I--I cannot believe that there is an Iraqi soldier who is going to be willing to die for Saddam Hussein, particularly since he will know that our obj--our objective is to remove Saddam Hussein from power.