As we watch the coverage of this unfold today, it's worth keeping in mind how big a controversy this would be if a Dem had said this.

Amen.

They're better hit them with this club until this club splinters into a thousand pieces.

I look forward to the day where we don't have to ruminate about how big a controversy a gaffe would have been if a Dem had said it. We're clearly not there yet, but just saying.

McCain's gaffe this morning absolutely needs to find its way into advertising and into the press coverage, beyond a conference call.

Suggestion for keeping this story alive: the Obama camp must CALL on McCain to explain how the timing of the troops' return is not important to the troops or families.

Yes, let's not forget how important having our National Guard back at home is for disaster relief. We could use them now:

http://www.thepersonalispolitical.com/2008/06/mccain-says-bringing-troops-home-not.html

Additional remarks from the conference call according to Ben Smith:

"It is unbelievably out of touch and inconsistent with the needs of Americans and particularly the families of troops who are over there. To them it’s the most important thing in the world when they come home," he said. "It’s a policy for staying in Iraq."

Kerry and Obama aide Susan Rice also both said McCain is "confused" -- a line some in McCain's camp will surely take as a shot at the candidate's age.

"He confuses who Iran is training, he confuses what the makeup of Al Qaedais, he confuses the history going back to 682 of what has happened to Sunni and Shia," Kerry said.

Rice cited a "pattern of confusing the basic facts and reality that pertain to Iraq."

"A line some in McCain's camp will surely take as a shot at the candidate's age."

I'm sure they will and don't they realize how stupid that is?

Just like the "lost his bearings" comment, if the Obama camp is able to make the McCain camp bring up his age without ever mentioning it themselves, they win.

Hey, Greg,

Can you ask Mark Halperin at Time's The Page, why he hasn't yet posted the Obama camp response?

For those of us with family deployed in Iraq, it's the first thing we think about in the morning and the last thing we think about at the end of each day. It occupies a lot of space in between as well...

And Greg? Forgive me for being dense, but I don't understand what you mean with:

The key here is that the Obama camp is hitting McCain over the meaning of his comments as the McCain campaign itself defines them.

For once, let's hope democrats do not play defence here and go on a full-throated continued offence. Don't let repugs frame the national security issue citing Obama's "experience". If the last 8 years taught the dems a lesson, it should be "never let repugs frame the national security issue. Never"

How many different ways does McCain have to say it or spell it out before it's completely understood that he doesn't give a sh*t about the troops, and that he has every intention of keeping the U.S. in Iraq long after he is dead and buried.

By the way, thanks greg for the new focus of tpm. It's like a breath of fresh air. On to the general!

I'm adapting this comment from another thread:

The Dems need to respond to the McCain comment more effectively. McCain had a slight slip of the tongue. He isn't really saying that bringing the current troops home isn't important. He wants soldiers home for Christmas as much as any other politician. I don't think he's as insensitive as the gaffe, when taken out of context, sounds. Kerry is turning McCain's highly qualified phrasing into a gotcha opportunity. To me, it is analogous to the continued censure of Michelle Obama about being proud of the USA. You reap what you sow.

The real problem is that McCain wants a permanent military base in Iraq. He wants us to get something out of this war and that something is an armed presence in the region. That is why he compared Iraq to Korea and Germany. He's got no problems with our being there for 100 years if we can establish well-protected military bases that allow us to police the region.

The Dems are short-sighted in playing this as a question of McCain's being callous and delusional. The bigger problem, the one they really need to emphasize, is that McCain's bought into the stupid neo-con desire to extend an American empire. To me, that is much more radioactive than the perceived insult to the forces.

McCain just attempted to change the subject by talking about why Obama's "bitter" comments will deliver Pennsylvania to McCain:

“We’re going to go to the small towns in Pennsylvania and I’m gonna to tell them I don’t agree with Senator Obama that they cling to their religion and the Constitution because they’re bitter.”

http://thepage.time.com/2008/06/11/mccain-brings-back-bitter-in-pennsylvania/

Oh, and Mark Halperin still hasn't posted the Obama response to the McCain gaffe.

I have had MSNBC on and all they are talking about is the friggin Johnson/vetting thing.

Unfriggin believable.

McCain has made a cold-blooded calculation. As long as the soldiers' death rate in Iraq less than 1 per day, then he believes that the American people aren't going to care too much about what a McCain presidency does in Iraq. The $3B per week won't matter, either. The only thing stupid McCain is doing is not being able to hide his cold-bloodedness. He is an incompetent dissembler, to go with the rest of his incompetence.

this is of a piece with mcThuseleh's opposition to the Webb/Hagel GI Bill.

I'm with you, Mercer... and let me say, as I have adapted from a post on another, similar thread, that we must, in the interest of understanding one's opponent, get to the heart of McCain's thinking, and not rejoice in a misguided "gotcha" opportunity: We must understand that McCain truly believes we are involved in a war for the hearts and minds of the free world! If you keep 'em safe, warm and dry with a fresh can of Spam in their flak jackets, they can bivouac indefinitely! This is McCain's brain!

His thoughts are those of the unflappable soldier, not of a commander-in-chief. There are no careful considerations of our geopolitical stature, our long term military readiness, our diving headfirst into an unwinnable war. No musings about relations with the Mideast, NATO. No talk of economic or human impact. His is just the soldier's credo to carry on when told to march. I pity him; his narrow-mindedness is overarching.

oh,come on McCain, Obama is on full attack mode 24/7 which I like, you don't give away sound bites this easy! please believe him when he says 'bringing soldiers home is not important'. IT IS NOT IMPORTANT TO HIM.

I agree with MercerReader that the ultimate issue is the long-term presence in Iraq that McCain and Bush want, and certainly Obama and the Dems need to effectively respond to it in the context of a rational assessment of our strategic interests and tactical options.

However, I completely disagree that hammering McCain on his statement today is irrelevant, because politics is not just about dispassionate, rational arguments, especially at the Presidential level. You may disdain this aspect of how the game is played, but the Republicans certainly don't. They will smear Obama, Michelle, and every other Democrat at every opportunity regardless of what we high-minded Democrats will do. The refusal to attack Republicans only cedes the offensive to the GOP, which then means the Democrats continually are in a defensive posture, having to spend time and money responding.

What John McCain inadvertently revealed was a cavalier disregard for the emotional aspects of having loved ones at war. Nobody who truly undestands that would say it's "not too important."

And if McCain's response is that it's more important to get them out of harm's way rather than bring them home, that also reveals a disregard for the fact that a large portion of our forces over there are not career military who would not expect necessarily to be sent home, but National Guardsmen and women. The vast majority of these people did not joing the NG in order to spend several deployments in Iraq away from Iowa or Texas or Michigan for many, many months; the NG was NOT a career military gig in the way that enlisting in the Army or Marines is.

Senator McCain declares mission accomplished. Says there is no reason to set deadlines for withdrawal. We should get our Troops out now. He says that we should not engage in nation building or staying until law and order is established. We should not stay because it would put our Troops in danger of being killed or captured, and would only help the terrorists. He said that he does not believe that it would harm our global prestige if we withdrew all our Troops now. He strongly urges that we do so.

This is not a joke folks: Senator McCain said all that.

Watch him say it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8TFKXHiefs

liam - That video is amazing. The contrast with today's McCain, who seems absolutely over-the-hill by comparison is striking.

The Republican party has received unthinking credit for a generation or more as the party of national defense and business. This conflates "business" with the "economy" and "Defense" with "national security". Statistics over 30 years bear out that, while corporate business does well enough under Republican tax cuts and de-regulation, the economy and small business do not follow, and while the military-industrial complex and those who profit from war do well enough under Republican rule, veterans and actual security (e.g., an increase in effective diplomacy, allied cooperation, and peace) do less well. I have always thought that Lyndon Johnson would not have felt the need to so disastrously escalate the war (troops/Laos/Cambodia/napalm/carpet bombing, etc.) were it not for the fact that he ran as the alternative to a man who suggested dropping hydrogen bombs on N. Vietnam.

Echoes of Dick CHeney's "SO?" dismissive comment.

I feel better about the Obama campaign's handling of the Iraq occupation issue when I see them turn it into a patriotism issue in Obama's favor. As in: American blood and toil and $341 million per day invested to try to make Iraq stable, imagine for example if that had been spent on Katrina. Don't argue so much about the McCain frame that we could win something over there if we just spent enough or tried hard enough, argue that we want to spend that blood and treasure here, on our own citizens, that a healthy country is our best security, that Iraq stability is a real tilting at windmills exotic expensive risky project. Every Congressperson knows that American voters like military bases in their own neighborhood and give much less of a damn about closing them in another U.S. neighborhood much less overseas.

I wonder sometimes if Obama's stated interest in beefing up the project in Afghanistan is going to hurt his ability to convince in this regard. The reality seems to me that the majority of Americans will get all patriotic about interventionist military adventures, but only if they do not include extended occupation in unfriendly climates. Reagan did not suffer for withdrawing from Lebanon, Clinton did not suffer for withdrawing from Somalia, even though the argument can be made that both decisions caused blowback, Bush did not suffer in the 2000 campaign for arguing against military interventionism. It's simply not true that the military backing out of foreign entanglements that look hopeless as to relatively quick positive outcome are unpopular or make the president ordering it look unpatriotic, quite the opposite. Many Americans don't like occupation of war torn places precisely because they are xenophobic.

I think many of the more hawkish, pro-military Americans take the "you don't like us in your country? well, then, fuck you, we're leaving" attitude. Their patriotism is always dependent upon the "America #1" thing, so when our economy is ailing or we have world class embarassments like Katrina, they are quite open to "let's put our own house in order first." It is sort of crucial in this regard to admit that the spending on the Iraq occupation has fueled the economy, and that it should be applied to projects here instead; likewise the toil and lives of military personnel, especially Reserves and Guard, there's an awful lot of police departments around the country hurting.

The simple fact is thus: McCain wants a permanent US presence in Iraq. If Obama were smart about this, he would frame the Iraq debate as a choice between those who think the US should eventually leave and those who support the establishment of a neo-US Empire in the Middle East. I'm willing to bet everything I own that the majority of the US population is firmly against Empire.

Folks, McCain is RIGHT. A timetable for bringing the troops home is pretty irrelevant.

Our focus should be about how we are going to get that bottled hot water to those babies!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DqR7zis99I