Does John McCain Know What a Timetable Is? Posted by Michael Cohen

You really have to watch this interview with John McCain on ABC this morning: it's disturbing on a number of levels. Check out this exchange between McCain and George Stephanopolous:

JM: I want to make very clear to you, it's not a date, it's conditions on the ground.

GS: So, you shouldn't have used the word timetable?

JM: I didn't use the word timetable?

GS: You said "pretty good timetable."

JM: Well anything is a good timetable that is dictated by conditions on the ground. Anything is good, but the timetable is dictated by conditions on the ground, not by an artificial date.

Ok, let's ignore the fact that right before these words were spoken, Stephanopolous literally repeated McCain's statement back to him about a "pretty good timetable." It's one thing to forget something you said the day before, but Stephanopolous actually began the interview with these words. (I'm just saying).

But to the larger issue - by it's very nature a timetable IS NOT based on conditions on the ground. It's based on arbitrary or as McCain says "an artificial date." If Senator McCain believes that our leaving Iraq should be based solely on conditions on the ground (as he argued repeatedly in the interview) then he is making the argument that there should be no timetable for the withdrawal of troops. But here he is arguing that "anything is a good timetable." Quite simply, this doesn't make any sense.

This is not a minor mistake; McCain's entire campaign has been based on the notion that there should be no timetable for withdrawal. But from these words it is not clear that McCain even understands what a timetable is.

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Comments

[Stuart Thompson]

McCain's using "timetable" as a general term for plan or schedule and rather than using "time" as the indicator he's using "conditions on the ground." So it's a conditions-on-the-ground-table, which is a little less confusing than what McCain said here, but not by much.

The bigger issue with all this is that McCain is replacing an "artificial date" with a much more artificial set of conditions that are not made clear. In fact, these conditions will likely remain vague well into the McCain presidency until his administration is satisfied with the whatever criteria they're using.

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