John McCain and the Truth
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008John McCain may claim he’s a different kind of politician, but his efforts to cover up his misstatements about the war in Iraq instead of admitting he was wrong ring of the same kind of dishonesty we’ve come to expect from the Bush Administration. After seven years of a president who will distort the truth for political purposes, Americans don’t want four more years of the same with John McCain.
Last week we saw the lengths John McCain and his campaign will go to cover up misstatements he made about the facts on the ground in Iraq.
After inaccurately stating that U.S. troops were “drawn down to pre-surge levels,” McCain refused to admit his error and claimed what he said was “just facts.” [Wisconsin Town Hall, 5/29/08, http://youtube.com/watch?v=42ke9Q-qXg4]
Likewise, his campaign went into Washington spin-mode, organizing a last-minute conference call where McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann said that McCain’s mistake was an issue of “semantics” and that “[w]e are talking about a verb tense.”
But no one was buying it. One reporter wrote that “the attempt by the McCain media machine to spin the mistake as a simple matter of ‘verb tenses’ is an insult to our intelligence.” [The Fact Checker, Washington Post, 5/30/08; http://thinkprogress.org/2008/05/30/mccain-call-nitpicking/]
McCain Says U.S. Troops At Pre-Surge Levels. “We have drawn down to pre-surge levels.” [Wisconsin Town Hall, 5/29/08, http://youtube.com/watch?v=42ke9Q-qXg4]
Troops in Iraq Not Expected to Return to Pre-Surge Level Until End of July. “The increased U.S. presence in Iraq — which topped out at about 170,000 troops — is expected to go down to 140,000 by the end of July. U.S. officials plan to keep 15 combat brigades in Iraq through the end of the year, though ongoing assessments could allow commanders to change those numbers.” [Washington Post, 5/20/08]