Dems to hammer McCain for '100 years' - David Paul Kuhn - Politico.com

Dems to hammer McCain for '100 years' - David Paul Kuhn - Politico.com:

"On a recent conference call with reporters, Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s bulldog operative, mentioned four times in two minutes that John McCain “wants to be in Iraq for 100 years.”

“Instead of offering an exit strategy for Iraq, he’s offering us a 100 year occupation,” said Obama last week, in a speech marking the five-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq."

McCain never actually went so far as to call for a century-long occupation. Rather, in response to a New Hampshire town hall questioner who asked about President Bush’s statement that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for 50 years, McCain interrupted and said, “Make it 100.”

Okay ... so they are totally misleading people about the meaning of his words .... his and Bush's.
Bush was asked about how long troops would stay over there and he basically said they will stay for as long as it takes-even if that meant 50 yrs. In otherwords -- he's not going to give up unless it is the best thing for both nations (there and here)...otherwise there will be that void of power where you can't tell who is going to get in and what they will do - and if history has anything to show us its that the void usually gets filled with people who are not the best for the nation in question, that's how the Taliban got into power.
McCain simply was trying to point out that there is no way to actually put a number on how long it will take. He was pointing out that if the number of years was 50 or 100 that it wouldn't matter....the objective wasn't time, it was helping the nation settin gup an independant democratic nation.

Even the media let the story pretty much go, figuring it was something best revisited later during the actual campaign.
Barrack & Clinton -- while I commend them for finally turning towards their opponent instead of a possible running mate -- are beating this horse dead before the election. If they keep going after McCain about this sort of stuff they will have nothing left when the actual election circuit comes around.
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I do think they should have said that we have been in other countries as friends not occupiers, but they did not clarify that point so it seems like we are there w/o invitation.