McCain and Biden Comments

I got these from http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com.

I simply fail to understand why so many otherwise reasonably progressive people give John McCain a pass. Here's what he said at the American Enterprise Insitute, a hard-right "think tank," yesterday:

Contrary to popular notions that U.S. troops are getting "caught in the cross-fire" between Sunni and Shia fighters, and are therefore ineffective in ceasing the smoldering civil war, the track record is that when U.S. troops stopping sectarian violence is excellent, where American soldiers have been deployed to areas in turmoil, including Baghdad neighborhoods, the violence has ceased almost immediately.

Similary, the marines in Anbar province report very positive effects in reducing the non-sectarian al qaeda based violence that is the predominant cause of instability there.

This is contrary to virtually all reported intelligence and news reports for the past three years. Either this man is so deluded in his hawkish mindset, or he's just as much of a fibber as Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Doesn't much matter which: he's obviously rushing headlong in the opposite direction from the clear desires of the large majority of Americans: to extricate us from this enormous, unproductive mess as soon as possible.

Contrast this with Joe Biden's remark in a WaPo interview, also from yesterday:

I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost. They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively."

See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/04/AR2007010401525.html.