John McCain's 100 Years in Iraq

As Josh Marshall points out-- and as I have noticed from watching cable news in the past week-- the Republican establishment is beginning a major pushback against criticism of Sen. McCain's now infamous "100 years" remark in regards to staying in Iraq. It has been widely blown out of context, they insist.

No, it hasn't. Josh Marshall dissects the remark and notes it's been presented accurately-



The big hedge seems to be a McCain clarification, in one instance, that we can stay for 100 years "as long as our soldiers are not being wounded or maimed or killed." Which Marshall translates into "a military presence or occupation where no one ever gets killed and everybody is happy and nothing ever goes wrong."

The fact of the matter is that, as long as the U.S. military is in Iraq, our soldiers will be getting wounded, maimed, and killed. And that is why the way that his quote has been presented is accurate. 100 years in Iraq is 100 years of war. Period.

The Middle East isn't like Korea or Japan... as long as we are occupying that country, we will be fighting that war. Osama bin Laden has said that the reason he attacked us on 9/11 was because he was way jealous of our freedoms we put permanent bases in the 'holy land' of Saudi Arabia. And now we are cheerily throwing billion$ into the shredder to prepare to do a larger version of the same thing in war-torn Iraq. And John McCain is happy to continue this forever, because he is under the delusion that we can just stay there and tell the Iraqis to continue killing each other, but please leave us alone.

After all, this is the man who once told a private gathering of GOP donors that "One of the things I would do if I were president would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, 'Stop the bullshit,'" so he's clearly got some brilliant plans.

John McCain's dangerous position on Iraq has been fairly represented. If the GOP wants to debate it, bring it on.