Maybe those Bar-B-Q’s for the press really do work. It looks like the media really is trying to help McCain out, but Matt Drudge seems to really like Obama and isn’t going to let McCain get off easy. After Obama had a thoughtful op-ed in The New York Times on his Iraq position, John McCain has put out an attempt at a rebuttal. The New York Times was extraordinarily kind to McCain in sending it back suggesting improvements as opposed to allowing McCain to further demonstrate how weak he is in on foreign policy by publishing the op-ed as submitted. This also demonstrates that McCain’s smaller staff could really use some improvement in both the foreign policy and ghost writing departments.
McCain repeats his fantasy views of Iraq and he criticizes Obama’s views without presenting a coherent alternative of his own. He sounds like Richard Nixon in 1968, campaigning with promises of a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. Yes, we all know that there are risks in leaving Iraq. The problem is that Bush left us in a situation where there are no perfect choices. It certainly makes no sense to just stay there for one-hundred years, and the Iraqis don’t even want that. Should McCain try, the analogy would not be like South Korea or Germany as he intended, but instead it would be a case of the United States being an occupying country, which would only continue to inflame anti-American sentiment.
Apparently the McCain campaign refuses to take the advice of The New York Times and write a more coherent piece. The New York Post is also considering running the piece. I wonder what their motivation is for trying to sabotage McCain’s campaign in this manner. Thanks to Drudge the harm is already done as the original op-ed has been spread around the web (copy under the fold).
Naturally some observers have other takes with regards to the motivations of the parties involved.
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