McCain's embarrassing assertions on the Iraq surge

Even military leaders involved in last year's troop escalation agree that the prospect of U.S. withdrawal is the main reason violence has ebbed. By Joe Conason CBS screen shot of Sen. John McCain July 25, 2008 | "The surge worked." So insistently do the media's mainstream and conservative commentators repeat the Iraq success meme -- echoing the mantra of George W. Bush and John McCain -- that to probe its premises and assumptions is not permitted. To question the success of last year's troop escalation supposedly implies a negative assessment of the performance of American soldiers and Marines and may even imperil their morale, creating a frame that stifles dissent. But now McCain himself has inadvertently reopened real debate on the subject by claiming that strategies and tactics used to quell the Sunni insurgency long... [read full story]