Over the past 24 hours or so, an increasingly bitter war of words has broken out between John McCain and Mitt Romney. The short version? McCain lied about Romney's position on the Iraq war:
Now, one of my opponents wanted to set a date for withdrawal that would have meant disaster... If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, then there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher.
Romney immediately responded, demanding an apology from McCain. Rather than back off his previous mistake, McCain decided to escalate by saying,
I think the apology is owed to the young men and women serving this nation in uniform.
All of which led Time's Michael Scherer to write the following:
McCain says that he thinks this amounts to Romney supporting a drop-dead deadline for withdrawing troops. But that's not what happened. A more fair reading of the exchange shows that Romney was instead talking about private benchmarks that would allow Bush and Maliki to measure success or failure. In fact, Romney says flat out that he would veto any bill from Congress that contained such a timetable for withdrawal.But even if Romney had explicitly supported withdrawal, what exactly does McCain mean by demanding that Romney apologize to American troops? Is McCain suggesting that any American who opposed the surge was somehow not supporting American troops? Is he saying that it is unpatriotic to debate American policy in Iraq? It sure sounds like it. And it is an unbecoming posture for McCain, who has been boasting in recent days about the "respectful debate" he would have with Hillary Clinton, John Edwards or Barack Obama should he win the nomination.
I don't really disagree with any of the specifics here, except for one: McCain has said that he wants a "respectful debate," but why anyone would believe him is just beyond me. Go back and look at the things he has been saying for the past 4 or 5 years about the opponents of this war. It's not just that he has been mean and nasty; it is that he has been dishonest as well. And not just dishonest, but dishonest in precisely this way.
Opponents of the war, he has been saying for years, want to "cut and run." They want to "waive the white flag of surrender." They "embrace the politics of surrender." They want to "set a date certain for surrender." And, oh yeah, he's called both his fellow citizens and lawmakers on Capitol Hill names that would earn networks an FCC fine were they to broadcast his remarks on the nightly news.
Moreover, lying bout national security issues is also nothing new for the man. Remember, as just one example, that ridiculous trip he took to a Baghdad market? Remember how he had a full military escort? Remember how he tried to act as if he had gone on his own? Remember how when one of his fellow travelers compared it to a stroll through an Indiana market in the summertime, how he stood by and said nothing? Remember how members of the press who had been to that very same market were shocked and amazed by what he had said?
And then, remember how when it was all over, the media went straight back to proclaiming how this great American hero wanted nothing more than to be respectful of others and tell the truth? But pay even the slightest bit of attention and you'll realize its all a fiction. McCain's distant past may be worthy of our respect and admiration, but his more recent past? The man has been holding "an unbecoming posture" for most of the last 15 years.
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