McCain "Clarifies" His Position on Iraq, Channels Nixon

In an under-reported speech in Savannah last night, Republican nominee John McCain finally laid out the terms for bringing home troops from Iraq, which he hinted could be done as soon as 2013 (!!! only another 5 years of this! Imagine....) last week in Arizona:

"We will bring the troops home when there is victory with honor," he told reporters Monday before a major fundraiser at the Savannah Marriott Riverfront.

Tired of copying Bush (and perhaps finally aware of the electoral dangers of same), McCain has decided to reach back into the past and copy yet another GOP embarrassment - Richard Nixon, whose famous 1972 re-election slogan was "Peace With Honor", referring to the war in Viet Nam. Nobody knew what he meant by that (apparently it meant a peace engineered by Richard Nixon instead of somebody else) and nobody knows what McCain means by it either, least of all John McCain. He offered no explanation, much less a definition, of what "conditions on the ground" - which is what he said the decision to remove troops would be based on - meant or what they would have to be.

The January 2013 target is not set in stone, he added; any schedule for pulling out "will be dictated by conditions on the ground."

In contrast, McCain said, Democratic candidates want to "set a date for withdrawal regardless of conditions."

That, he insisted, "would send a signal that the United States has surrendered there" and would result in "chaos" and "genocide."

It's unclear just how much good it's going to do McCain's faltering campaign to channel two unpopular presidents rather than one while continuing to dodge the central issue: when and how and under what conditions will he finally assent to end this disastrous war?