Obama vs. McCain: Anbar Awakening
Posted: Thursday, July 24, 2008 9:22 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Security
McCain isn't backing down from his claim the surge started when he said it did, countering Dem attacks. "McCain said Army Col. Sean MacFarland started carrying out elements of a new counterinsurgency strategy as early as December 2006. At issue are McCain's comments in a Tuesday interview with CBS. The Arizona senator disputed Democrat Barack Obama's contention that a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida combined with the dispatch of thousands more U.S. combat troops to Iraq to produce the improved security situation there. McCain called that a ‘false depiction.’”
VIDEO: John McCain tried to explain his statements about the surge in Iraq beginning before the Sunni Awakening by insisting that the surge was actually a broader counter-insurgency strategy of which the surge in U.S. troop numbers was a part. The Nation's Chris Hayes outlines the inaccuracies of what McCain said and what actually happened.
“Democrats jumped on his comments. They said McCain's remarks showed he was out of touch, because the rebellion of U.S.-backed Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida terrorists in Iraq's Anbar province was under way well before Bush announced in January 2007 his decision to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq. McCain asserted he knew that and didn't commit a gaffe. ‘A surge is really a counterinsurgency made up of a number of components. ... I'm not sure people understand that “surge” is part of a counterinsurgency.’”
The
New York Times fact-checks the back-and-forth. “Democrats noted that the sheik who helped form the Awakening, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, was assassinated in September 2007, after the troop escalation began. The National Security Network, a liberal foreign policy group, called Mr. McCain’s explanation of the surge’s history ‘completely wrong.’”
“But several foreign policy analysts said that if Mr. McCain got the chronology wrong, his broader point — that the troop escalation was crucial for the Awakening movement to succeed and spread — was right. ‘I would say McCain is three-quarters right in this debate,’ said Michael E. O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.”
