McCain defends '100 years in Iraq' statement

[sabra]

Source: CNN

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Republican presidential frontrunner Sen. John McCain on Thursday defended his statement that U.S. troops could spend "maybe 100" years in Iraq -- saying he was referring to a military presence similar to what the nation already has in places like Japan, Germany and South Korea.

Sen. McCain defends his stance on troops in Iraq Thursday on CNN's Larry King.

This week, Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama both took McCain to task for the comments, saying that if he's elected he would continue what they call President Bush's failed policies in Iraq.

"It's not a matter of how long we're in Iraq, it's if we succeed or not," McCain said to CNN's Larry King. "And both Sen. Obama and Clinton want to set a date for withdrawal -- that means chaos, that means genocide, that means undoing all the success we've achieved and al Qaeda tells the world they defeated the United States of America.

"I won't let that happen."



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/14/mccain.king/

[C_U_L8R]

1. Keep digging Mac

Keep digging

[TwilightGardener]

2. So...five years later, we are "succeeding", according to him, just not quite enough--

10 years, 30 years, 100 years, we will always be "succeeding", but never enough to leave, and if things go bad at any time, then we're DEFINITELY not leaving. No end game, no overarching strategy for the region, we just have to stay, like a bad marriage before no-fault--in good times and bad, for richer or for poorer...

[BlueJazz]

3. Ahh..Mr. McCain....if we keep spending money like drunken sailors to "Defend"....

...our Country....We won't have anything to Defend...

[Amonester]

4. Too bad we left Vietnam...

He'd still be fighting them there instead of fighting US here...

[Mz Pip]

8. At least we still don't have

troops over there. They seem to be doing okay without our continued presence.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[Amonester]

10. I agree.

And we're also doing okay without our continued presence there.

Too bad we're about to go bankrupt with the rest...

[ClintonTyree]

19. Yeah, that old "domino theory".....

never quite came to pass as the hawks said it would, did it? Could the hawks possibly have misled us then, just as they're misleading us now? :eyes: Yeah, I'd say so.

McCain get a woody every time he thinks about war, blood and guts. I think they thumped him in the head a few too many times at the Hanoi Hilton.

[klook]

5. Dog years maybe? (n/t)

[FVZA_Colonel]

6. No, success is like Bill Maher said to Larry King:

Success is keeping young muslim men from wanting to come over here and kill us. And like Maher also said, as long as we have troops in Iraq we will never be able to even hope of achieving that.

[aquart]

7. Not enough Iraqis are dead?

[Guaranteed]

9. That's utterly ridiculous. nt

[truthisfreedom]

11. McCain is backpedaling on his statement... He's on the defensive!

The Dem candidate will be able to ride that 100-year statement all the way to the Presidency.

[stickernation]

12. zbigniew brzezinski would be proud !

mccain's a chip off the ZB block !

[radfringe]

13. McCain - Just More of the SAME n/t

[Hobarticus]

14. Germany and Japan's gov'ts didn't take three months off

in the summer, so it went considerably smoother.

[radfringe]

15. so he went from 100 years in Iraq to

an indefinite number of years in Iraq... could be less than 100 years or more than 100 years

and this clears things up - how?

McCain - Just More of the SAME

[salin]

16. at least this time he isn't insulting the intelligence of 2/3 of the country

earlier in the week he said that those folks who needed the 100 years rationale explained to them (because they were questioning or disagreeing with his assessment) were just to ignorant/stupid to understand the explanation. Or something to that effect.

[eringer]

17. McBush/Cheney 08

The Manchurian Candidate wants to "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran" and keep us in Iraq for 100 years. Boy, doesn't the party of our president have a strong successor in the wings. 2008 may very well be the year where the Republican candidate obtains less votes than the third party candidate.

[Vinca]

18. McBush/Lieberbush '08. nt

[Imagevision]

20. Mccain will be back peddling his balls off in the months to come...

[rasputin1952]

21. We haven't been in Germany, Japan and Korea for 100 years...

and circumstances were/are considerably different. For starters, in neither of those nations did we stay as an occupying power for very long, in fact, less than we've been in Iraq...and we didn't start WWII...we did start the war in Iraq, (or at least the neo-con bushies did), odd how none of them have come forward to sacrifice their sons and daughters...:grr:

[poppysgal]

22. A Scary Thought

:scared: This is why the Dem's need to win this election. This guy frightens me.

[Deny and Shred]

23. "...if we succeed?" Can McCain please define what success in

Iraq is. BuchCo has moved those goalposts so often, I think the US voters deserve to know what his 'Mission Accomplished' looks like.

[LynnTheDem]

24. Al Qaeda defeated the United States of America on August 12, 2001.

Since the entire point of terrorism is "to effect CHANGE", the terrorists won long ago.

Now George W. bUsh & the rightwingnuts are just icing the terrorists' cake.

[kineneb]

25. then he should move there, with his friends,

and send the troops home