Kerry to McCain: "You're debating with yourself"

Oh, snap.  The face to face debate between John McCain and John Kerry on Meet the Press this morning was really an unfettered rout by JK (of course).  John Kerry just poked about a million holes in McCain's continued absurd assertion that "we are succeeding in Iraq".  Sen. Kerry played several roles in this tragic drama of making McCain look like a total weeny completely divorced from reality:  as an intellectual foreign policy powerhouse, as a fact checker in real time of McCain's spinning, as a spokesman for the Democratic party and what our plan is, as a member of our community so saddened by the loss of two of the seven soldiers who wrote that insightful op-ed for the NYT, as an old perceptive friend trying to save McCain from making a further fool of himself.  Oh, I could go on, but let's take a look at the transcript that documents another humiliating defeat for John McCain.
I would say even Tim Russert would have to admit that John McCain was in the unlucky position of having to defend a policy for political reasons that most honest pundits agree has failed in what it said it would do:  bring about a political solution.  So started the debate:

MR. RUSSERT:  General Petraeus was in Washington, and he testified and he agreed that in order to do that we will lose, on the average, two U.S. men or women per day...

SEN. McCAIN:  Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...15 will be wounded or injured per day...

SEN. McCAIN:  Mm-hmm.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...at a cost of $300 million per day.  Is it worth it?

SEN. McCAIN:  Well, General Petraeus' answer was pretty much the same as mine.  All of us are saddened and frustrated by the course of this war.  It was very badly mismanaged by the former secretary of defense and this administration.  I, late in 2003, said this strategy is doomed to failure, that we had to fix it, that we had to adopt the strategy that we've now adopted.  And it is now succeeding.

That is the entire crux of McCain's argument.  We're succeeding.  I think we need some reality to that ridiculous assertion, and Senator Kerry delivered just that:

SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA):  Well, the Bush-McCain strategy of escalating our troops in the middle of a civil war has no relationship directly to what you need to do to resolve the civil war.  So you can put additional troops in and secure a small area here or there, but everybody knows there are not enough troops to be able to secure all of the areas you need to secure and, most importantly, it does absolutely nothing to resolve the fundamental differences, Tim.  A policy of putting more troops in and staying is a policy for staying.  It is not a policy for winning or for changing the equation. And the fact is that over the last four and a half years, they've had ample opportunity to make any of the fundamental political decisions that really don't relate to security. An oil revenue law does not take security to be passed.  A de-Baathification law does not take security to be passed.  It takes political will.  They haven't shown the political will.

No political solution.  No success.  Got that, McCain?  Of course, they had to debate for a while longer but this first hit across the bow was pretty much near fatal, and that with only one sentence.  Who said the Senator from Massachusetts can't show some brevity?  Kerry also talked about how in the greater war on terror, staying in Iraq is weakening us, something neither McCain nor any other Republican cares to talk about.  Then Kerry even takes a swing at the Roadblock Republicans, while defending the Democratic plan which sets a timetable for withdrawal as leverage to get Iraqis to act and work out a political solution:

KERRY:  Fifty-two votes, a majority of the United States Senate, has voted to do that.  And Republicans are, are, are obstructing our ability to be able to change the policy of the war.

McCain continued to blah, blah, blah about the usual strawman argument that we're just going to pull out without working on a regional solution to the sectarian violence in Iraq.  He also tries to put in another plug of the talking point about the Moveon ad:

This consequences of a set date for a withdrawal, in the view of many who opposed us going into the war in the first place-General Scowcroft, General Zinni, others-would be-including a piece by Dr. Kissinger in this morning's Washington Post-all agree that setting a date for withdrawal would cause us to have severe national security problems in the future.  General Jim Jones' commission testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week that if we set a date for withdrawal, it will have severe national security implications not only in Iraq but the region.

Look at the region.  What do, what do the Saudis do when they feel they have to help the Sunni?  What happens when the Iranians gain further and further leverage in the region?  What happens as far away as Afghanistan and Pakistan? The Syrians, who are now exporting suicide bombers into Iraq, the lethal explosives that're coming in from Iran-all of that will accelerate, and we will be-have cause, unfortunately, to return.  And I understand, again, the frustration that people feel. But to somehow assert that we've been pursuing exactly the same tactic is simply not in keeping with what we have been doing on the ground.  And I'm proud of General Petraeus' leadership, and I'm appalled by the attacks that've been made on him.

Kerry doesn't bother answering the last part of McCain's remarks, as that is just another distraction from real policy questions.  He talked about how what Democrats favor is a change in the mission, not abandoning Iraq, and that means dealing with the political problems in Iraq.  Then he moves in on the al Qaeda talk:

KERRY:  Now, I think John and others have a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship of al-Qaeda to Iraq.  Number one, it wasn't there. I thought one of the starkest things that General Petraeus said, "Did this have anything to do with al-Qaeda?  Was al-Qaeda in Iraq before we attacked?" "No, it wasn't," he said.  There was no al-Qaeda there.  So we are in Iraq today on false pretenses, in the middle of a civil war, expending our troops while Iraqi politicians use us as cover for their own games.  And the only way you will change that is to change this equation.  When the president says to them, "We'll stay as long as it takes," they can make the decision to take as long as they want to make any decision necessary.  You wouldn't negotiate the sale of your home the way we're negotiating in Iraq.  There's no leverage.  We've said we're there.  You have to create uncertainty.  You have to create leverage.  And the only way to do that is to say to them, "This mission is transitioning.  You have to take responsibility for this security over the course of the next year, and we're going to take a different position."

Now, there's one other ingredient to that, and it's been missing.  You have to surge the diplomacy here, not the troops.  There is such a stunning absence of real diplomacy in this effort.  Where's Condi Rice?  Where is the effort of this administration to be engaged in a standing summit and conference, where you go into a room and the president gives the instructions, "You don't leave here until you know one of three things:  They're either willing to have pluralism and settle these differences and do the passing of these laws, or they're going to live in some kind of a semi-partitioned, you know, form where Sunni can't go kill Shia and Shia can't kill Sunni, or it's impossible."

McCain refuses to talk about Iraq in these terms, because it would expose how hopeless the surge strategy always was.  When Kerry tries to interject this fact, McCain gets a bit pissy (at Russert, too):

SEN. McCAIN:  You know what John is advocating is to go back to the failed tactic of before.  And whether al-Qaeda was there before or not, al-Qaeda is there now.  Al-Qaeda is there now.  Who blew up the mosque in Samarra?  Who just went in the northern part of Iraq and killed 500 innocent impoverished people?  Who is it that continues to set off most of these suicide bombs to try to increase the sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia?  It's al-Qaeda. It's al-Qaeda in Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT:  Is the problem...

SEN. McCAIN:  Now, now-let me...

SEN. KERRY:  But, John, you're just ignoring what I said.

SEN. McCAIN:  ...could I just finish-could I just finish what I'm saying please,

Later on, I was moved that Senator Kerry talked about the soldiers who wrote the NYT op-ed, two of them who were killed.  Although troops in Iraq die every day, those two deaths were a particular blow to us, as they had written something so important, only for them to be gone from this Earth only a few weeks later:

SEN. KERRY:  You know, let me read you-these are seven troops.  They wrote it in The New York Times, 82nd Airborne.  They've been there the whole tour.  And they wrote, "To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is farfetched.  As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent past coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable." And they go on to say it, two of them, Sergeant Mora and Sergeant Gray were killed the other day, one wounded-and another one wounded.  These, you know, you got to listen to these people.

McCain's answer was to dismiss those soldiers.  Shame on him:

On this issue of bringing up men and women who are serving and how they feel about the war, look, I hear from them all the time.  I lament the loss of those brave, young-two young Americans who wrote that piece.  I hear from hundreds of them every day, just like in Vietnam, despite what the, the-what was accepted, Americans wanted to win in Vietnam, they want to win here.  I hear from these men and women, hundreds of them, all the time.  They want us to win.

So McCain, without any concrete back up of a letter or op-ed piece, claims those soldiers who took the time to write in don't represent the troops at all.  Not only that, by mentioning Vietnam in the same sentence, it was a veiled dismissal of all Lt. John Kerry fought for back in '71.  Kerry smartly ignored such petty talk, and stuck to the important issues.  Now, Kerry goes into fact checking mode, interjecting the truth amidst McCain's incessant spinning.  This is a real joy to read and see, I can tell you:

SEN. MCCAIN:  ... But if you listen to bin Laden, Zarqawi and all that they say they drove us out of Beirut, they drove us out of Mogadishu, they hit the U.S.S.  Cole, they attacked our embassies, and they're saying, "We'll drive them out of Iraq, and we will succeed." And so you listen to what he...

SEN. KERRY:  And where is he saying that?  He's saying that from the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

SEN. McCAIN:  And he's able to reach, and he's, and he's able to reach every corner of the world.

SEN. KERRY:  Yeah, and he's able to do it because this administration took their eye off of him and chose to go to war in a place that had nothing to do with the war on terror.  And the fact is, as I said before, al-Qaeda loves our being in Iraq.

SEN. KERRY:  ...then change the equation.  And Iran loves the fact that we're in Iraq.

SEN. McCAIN:  And Iran loves to be in Iraq.

SEN. KERRY:  And Iran is getting stronger.  Excuse me?

SEN. McCAIN:  And Iran loves to be in Iraq, and they are in Iraq.

SEN. KERRY:  Well, Iran is in Iraq.

SEN. McCAIN:  And al-Qaeda is in Iraq.

SEN. KERRY:  Iran has thousands...

SEN. McCAIN:  ...and al-Qaeda is-if we don't continue to beat them back, will be a major influence...

SEN. KERRY:  John...

SEN. McCAIN:  ...and have training bases, and they will have...

SEN. KERRY:  ...you're debating with yourself...

It's almost like BarbinMD and John Kerry were thinking the same thing at the same!  It must be a Kossak Zen thing going on.

The debate keeps going and going, McCain gets more and more annoyed, because he knows he's losing big time.  The exerpt I'll show is on the Iraqi troops and how they never seem to stand up, do they.  Kerry gets in a zinger on Petraeus, and not only that, is proven once again by the transcript that McCain (like so many Republicans) accuses Kerry of saying something that he didn't say. 

SEN. KERRY:  Supposedly, we're training Iraqi troops, Tim.

SEN. McCAIN:  And they're doing much better.

SEN. KERRY:  Supposedly, there are supposed to be enough troops-the Iraqi prime minister said they can stand up with their own security by this November.  We're talking about a transition policy that goes into next spring. Are you telling me that after five and a half years of war, which is what it will be next spring, Iraqis can't have people capable of walking their streets with a gun and keeping peace?  Please.

SEN. McCAIN:  I'm telling you...

SEN. KERRY:  How can they assert that after all of these years of-you train an American recruit and in four or five months you can have them on a battlefield.

SEN. McCAIN:  I'm telling you there were colossal failures in the training of the Iraqis under former Secretary Rumsfeld, and I'm telling...

SEN. KERRY:  And General Petraeus, who was in charge of it.

SEN. McCAIN:  I'm telling you right now that Iraqi and American soldiers and Marines are fighting together in neighborhoods in Baghdad and Anbar and other places, and we are proud of the work that the Iraqi military is doing, and they're getting better every day.  And I'm convinced that, in a relatively short period of time, they will take over more and more of those responsibilities as they were.  And I think it's wrong to denigrate the sacrifices that Iraqi soldiers are making right now on behalf of their country...

SEN. KERRY:  Nobody denigrated them.

SEN. McCAIN:  That-you're saying they're ineffective.  They are effective, and they're fighting alongside of Americans, and I'm proud of them.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator McCain...

SEN. KERRY:  I never used the word "ineffective."

SEN. McCAIN:  And I'm proud of them.

SEN. KERRY:  What I said is they are not standing up at the levels that they should be...

SEN. McCAIN:  They are standing up well.  They are standing up well.

SEN. KERRY:  ...after four and a half years of training.  We were told by Secretary Rice at our committee earlier this year that 120,000 were trained and ready to go.  General Petraeus, when I visited with him in Iraq, told me he would have a hundred and some thousand ready to go two years ago.  Now, how many times do they get to change the goal posts and change the policy and move it to a different place?  Where is the accountability for the benchmarks? The-no young American soldier should give their life or limb in order to have Iraqi politicians continue to delay making fundamental decisions.  That's what this is about.

Unlike the president's policy in Iraq, Kerry gave a kick ass debate performance on Meet the Press.  I can't excerpt the entire transcript, so go ahead and watch the video here.

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