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From an interview with Katie Couric that aired on Tuesday:
This is how McCain actually answered the question. Of course, if you watched this interview live, you wouldn't have seen this -- you would have seen a portion of McCain's response to another question that was spliced in as his response. CBS was kind enough to post the transcript to its website as the interview actually occurred, and Keith Olbermann caught it. You can now watch the actual interview on CBS's site.
Why change the response? Well, for one thing, it is dead wrong. The cooling off in Anbar occurred before the Surge began and, indeed, before the strategy was even conceived. There was actually a briefing on the Anbar Awakening on Sept. 29, 2006, well before the surge was announced.
IMO, this is a far more significant error than saying "Iraq" instead of "Afghanistan" or errantly referring to the Czech Republic as "Czechoslovakia." Even mixing up Sunni and Shi'ite can be explained away as a slip of the tongue. This mixup reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on in Iraq and how we got to where we are now -- a misunderstanding that a lot of people seem to have, but that a person who holds himself out as a foreign policy expert most certainly should not make. In fact, if anything positive comes out of this, it will be that it might finally get people to appreciate that the explanation of the progress in Iraq is not as simple as just adding more troops, that there are political forces that were in place pre-surge that were also a critical part of the process, and that diplomacy is what really carried the day. It would be hard to argue that the presence of all of those additional troops didn't help, but it isn't as if peace was ushered in at the barrel of a gun, which is what McCain would have you believe.
Katie Couric: Senator McCain, Senator Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that?
McCain: I don't know how you respond to something that is as-- such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel MacFarland 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.
McCain: I don't know how you respond to something that is as-- such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel MacFarland 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.
Why change the response? Well, for one thing, it is dead wrong. The cooling off in Anbar occurred before the Surge began and, indeed, before the strategy was even conceived. There was actually a briefing on the Anbar Awakening on Sept. 29, 2006, well before the surge was announced.
IMO, this is a far more significant error than saying "Iraq" instead of "Afghanistan" or errantly referring to the Czech Republic as "Czechoslovakia." Even mixing up Sunni and Shi'ite can be explained away as a slip of the tongue. This mixup reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what is going on in Iraq and how we got to where we are now -- a misunderstanding that a lot of people seem to have, but that a person who holds himself out as a foreign policy expert most certainly should not make. In fact, if anything positive comes out of this, it will be that it might finally get people to appreciate that the explanation of the progress in Iraq is not as simple as just adding more troops, that there are political forces that were in place pre-surge that were also a critical part of the process, and that diplomacy is what really carried the day. It would be hard to argue that the presence of all of those additional troops didn't help, but it isn't as if peace was ushered in at the barrel of a gun, which is what McCain would have you believe.
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