Jun 11 2008
McCain catches heat for saying Iraq troop withdrawal isn’t important
McCain is getting hit from all sides by Democrats today for an interview he had Matt Lauer.
When asked if he knew when American troops could start to return home, McCain responded:
“No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq.”
The Huffington Post article has been updated with several comments from Senate Democrats, including Harry Reid, John Kerry and Joe Biden, as well a couple of responses from the McCain campaign. In the most recent response, the McCain campaign states that “The Obama campaign is embarking on a false attack.” This is kind of amusing considering that, as far as I’ve seen, there has been no official statement about this remark from Obama or his campaign. Some of the quoted statements took place on conference call with Obama aides, so I guess that’s how he’s getting that association in there.
As to his claim that casualties are what matter, it’s true that numbers were down in May (though 19 soldiers is still notable), but April saw 52 dead, the highest number September 2007. Almost 200 soldiers have been killed so far this year in Iraq. That’s not a number I would trivialize.
