Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Juan Cole on McCain

This is just a part of a much longer article at Cole's website. Cole has a good analysis of the positive spin that McCain has been putting on events in Iraq.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

McCain Checks into Cloud Cuckooland
116 Iraqis Killed in Day of Carnage

Senator John McCain has contracted Rumsfeld's Disease. This malady consists of a combination of bad temper, misuse of language to obfuscate reality, and a Panglossian optimism in the face of stubborn, sanguinary facts on the ground.

McCain, for instance, hailed that deployment of Iraqi brigades "at or above 75% of their programmed strength"! Put another way, a quarter of the Iraqi troops ordered to Baghdad technically speaking went AWOL instead! If a quarter of all US troops ordered to Iraq fled to Canada or refused to leave their home base, that would be a catastrophe. But McCain manages to deploy weasel words to make this incredible statistic seem a positive thing. Moreover, even his basic facts may be wrong. Last I knew, one of the Iraqi brigades ordered to Baghdad only came at half strength

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