McCain strongly rejected long-term Iraq presence “Bring them all home”:
This is a Sam Stein blog from April 28th 2008, and it has a video piece from MSNBC. The blog and the video show the differences between Sen. John McCain the senator in 2005 and Republican Candidate McCain in 2008. MSNBC’s video had the headline “McCain’s Iraq Flip-Flop?” On Hardball with Chris Matthews in 2005 McCain said “as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be.” Matthews was asked if Iraq would be a good place for a permanent military installation like there is in South Korea.
Now in 2008 McCain has changed his mind as has been widely shown in the news that he feels we could be in Iraq for 100 years and beyond. McCain now believes that the Korea model is exactly the right model for our troop deployment. The blog has been updated with a response from somebody in McCain’s camp Marc Ambinder, who says “the full context of the interview he gave in 2005 suggests that he modeled a long-term U.S. commitment to Iraq on South Korea, albeit with a big difference: a major corps would not necessarily have to embed itself in the country.” Also Ambinder suggests that the military advisers in the speech are actually solders just not called soldiers.
Clinton in 05 ‘I agree with McCain on long term-Iraq presence:
This is a Sam Stein blog from May 5th 2008 which directly relates to the McCain blog from a couple of days ago. In 2005, Hillary Clinton agreed with John McCain that Iraq military presence should be modeled after the US military presence in South Korea. This is the same thing that John McCain said on Hardball with Chris Matthews which was the story from last week’s blog. Clinton said “we’ve been in South Korea for 50-plus years. We’ve been in Europe 50-plus years. We’re still in Okinawa with respect to protection there coming out of World War II.
These quotes came back to the public eye this past Sunday which makes it similar to the Reverend Wright speech. This is old news that is coming back to the fold which is in news terms is called commodity. The old news becomes today’s headlines, and everything old is new again. Clinton continued “We don’t want to send a signal to the insurgents, to the terrorist that we are going to be out of here at some, you know, date certain… We want to send a message of solidarity.” The blog tried to explain why exactly Clinton would say the things that she did. One thing that Sam Stein noted that the interview was Clinton had just traveled to Iraq and saw their first democratic elections. This would put her in good spirits as she just saw a big success in Iraq.. Stein noted that everybody except war critics believe that this was a turning point in the mission. Clinton now believes that we should get out of Iraq by sending a few brigades home every month for 16 months. The blog has links to a CNN article in which Clinton said that she was the only candidate who would or could end the war. The blog also has a statement from Barack Obama who says that he is the true war-ending candidate.
The only thing that would have made this blog better was the video from the Meet the Press interview. The other blog had a video from Hardball, and that made it better overall. I think most people will believe a video or audio piece better then something that is written. It would have been better to see or hear Clinton in her own words. The interview from Meet the Press is the news, and it should have been the focal point. An embedded video would have made that point clear, and it was a missed opportunity.
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