McHistory

   Seriously… Why did the little green men from Mars kidnap John McCain’s brain and will they return it before the first McCain/Obama debate?

   His little flubs in the last few months were bad enough. His constantly reversing who the Shia and the Sunni are, his multiple gaffs about Iran supporting Al quaeda in Iraq and his getting nailed by Tim Russert and others over declaring that he never said something that he said several times (including to Tim Russert) have been bad enough for his credibility.

   But what the hell has happened to the man in the last two weeks? McCain was in Pennsylvania and gave an interview where he discussed his time as a POW. In the course of the interview,he spoke of the personal connection that Pennsylvania had for him during that time. He mentioned how he fooled his captors by giving them the names of players from the Pittsburgh Steelers as the names of members of his unit in order to satisfy his interrogators.

   Ok. Two problems for McCain here. The first is that McCain has actually used that story as why he is against torture. You know, that position he did a wild 180 on to run as the GOP’s man. He brought up a story that shows, yet again, that being for torture is kind of a daft idea since you don’t get good information. Oh, and it was also a problem for McCain since he made up the story for the interview.

   McCain has told that story a number of times before, written of it in his autobiography and referenced it in his now flip-flopped opposition to torture. In every version that’s been told before it was the Green Bay Packers’ offensive line that he said he used. Did he just have a massive brain fart or did he actually think that he could get away with “customizing” the story in this age of 24/7 news channels, wall-to-wall video sharing and Youtube? I don’t know, but I just kinda rolled my eyes and didn’t think about it after that.

   But this last week has been just been nuts for McCain. First McCain goes on CBS and claims that Obama is totally wrong about what has happened in Iraq and it’s “just history” that The Surge lead to the Anbar Awakening and allowed the safety of those behind it. Oh, we had to find this out later by the way as CBS doctored their own interview footage to cover for McCain and edited part of an entirely different answer into being the total answer to the question where McCain boneheaded it. But the media loves Obama and is in his camp. Anyhow…

   The thing is that the Anbar Awakening came before The Surge. Our having to bribe militant leaders into a ceasefire and the Saudis doing the same came before The Surge. And the Sheik who masterminded the Anbar Awakening was assassinated last year by terrorists in Iraq during The Surge. But McCain goes on undeterred.

   In the last few days, McCain has redefined the components of The Surge and replaced the historical start of The Surge with various other dates. As of this morning, if you go by McCain’s latest version, The Surge would have been underway before the damned thing was even created.

   And someone stop the man before he comes off sounding any dumber with his newest word game fun. The Surge, you see, my friends, is just the counterinsurgency. Uhm… No, John. The “Surge” was so named because Karl and crew found that name to be more palatable to the American people than calling it what it really was; The Escalation. It is not now and never was some cutesy shorthand for saying “counterinsurgency.”

   But the hits just keep coming as McCain tries to explain his way deeper and deeper into the hole he’s digging here. By the time of the interview clips playing this morning, he’s only just short of claiming that we were able to invade Iraq thanks to the success of The Surge.

   Oh, John, when you say the Iraq is the first major conflict we’ve faced since 9/11? Nice slap at the guys who actually went into Afghanistan and fought the people who actually attacked us on 9/11. But I guess you can be forgiven for forgetting about them in your zeal over the Iraq War. Your role model Bush did the same thing as well.