John McCain: He Declared Iraq a Just and Necessary Success While Also Criticizing It

John McCain wants to have it both ways, but unless he is suffering multiple personality disorders he is a liar on at least one count. (And it's pretty clear which count that is.) While campaigning in Pensacola, Florida-quite possibly the most conservative and pro-war community in all of Florida-John McCain pronounced the Iraq war to be a success and has deemed it to be both "necessary and just." This unqualified support of the war has never wavered with McCain. And yet, John McCain is also the very same man who has for the past year been acting like a delusional escaped mental patient by insisting that no one in Washington has been more critical of the management of the Iraq war than he himself.

Aren't we tired of politicians who are unable to speak the truth?

First let's examine the idea that the Iraq war is necessary and just. Well, that won't take long. The Center for Public Integrity just released a list of almost 1,000 lies that the Bush administration told in order to gain support for Dick Cheney's War. A necessary and just war doesn't need even one lie to justify it, much less over 900. Not only is the justification for the Iraq war not, as John McCain would tell you, just and necessary, but neither are the reasons for keeping troops there. Justification number 833 from the GOP is that if we remove troops from Iraq it will descend into chaos and there will be a rise of terrorism inside our borders. Well, guess what; that's going to happen the minute that US troops begin leaving, whether that happens in 2008 or 2028. So a vote for any GOP candidate is the same thing as a vote for perpetual war.