Jennifer Davis
Here.
Further evidence has come to light indicating that McCain is pulling magic unicorns from his ass over his insistence that The Surge led to the Anbar Awakening and, indeed, every positive development in Iraq. Here are McCain's words, which, due to a flurry of "WTFs?" from most people who have the barest understanding of the situation in Iraq, he's been forced to defend.
McCAIN: ... Prior to that they had been going into places, killing people or not killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counterinsurgency 'surge' entailed going in, and clearing and holding, which Col. MacFarland had already started doing. And then of course later on, there were additional troops. And Gen. Petraeus has said that the surge would not have worked and the Anbar Awakening would not have taken place -- successfully -- if they hadn't had an increase in the number of troops. So, I'm not sure, frankly, that people really understand, that a surge is part of a counterinsurgency strategy, which means going in, clearing, holding, building, building a better life, providing services to the people, and then, clearly, a part of that, an important part of that, was additional troops to ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued to succeed in that counterinsurgency.
REPORTER: So when you say 'surge' then, you're not referring to just the one that President Bush initiated, you're saying it goes back several months before that?
McCAIN: Yes.
As dday (at Digby's Hullabaloo) points out, if McCain actually means that "the surge" equals "counterinsurgency", than "we've been surging since 2005."
McCain's attempts to place everything good in Iraq into a neat box called "The Surge" is more than just an ordinary politicians desire to take credit for anything good, it's a part of the ever-increasingly confused jumble of rubrics and strategies that have gone into making Iraq the clusterfuck that it is.
I don't claim to be any sort of expert on Iraq, but I know this: If McCain wants to take credit for any good counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, then he should also take credit for his support for the war in the first place. He's been walking a narrow line--criticizing both opponents of the war and supporters of the war (for their execution). McCain's talking point has been--for god knows how long now--that we need more troops in Iraq. Well the surge did that, and because The Anbar Awakening came from a different set of causes, McCain had to expand the definition of the surge to "anything good in Iraq". Well, if he wants to retroactively add things to the definition of the surge, I'd say he has to take credit for the whole fucking thing. He has been an ardent supporter of this neocolonial mess from day one, so take credit for it, Sen. McCain. You just look like an old, befuddled, desperate man who doesn't really have a grasp of what he's saying right now.
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