McCain: Pentagon Too Slow on Surge
by Ryan Sager
Wed, 11 Apr 2007 at 2:05 PM
updated Wed, 11 Apr 2007 at 2:09 PM
In the wake of his Iraq speech down in Virginia today, John McCain just held a blogger conference call — his second such conference call, if memory serves, so far in the primary.
During the call, he accused the Pentagon of not having moved quickly enough to send troops to Iraq for the surge. There hasn't been an appropriate sense of urgency in some quarters, he said. Pressed for where "some quarters" meant, he fingered the Pentagon and also said that the State Department hasn't been fully on board with the new strategy, either.
"We could have gotten more troops over there more quickly than we have done," he said. He didn't elaborate on the topic, saying at the outset that he was reluctant to even bring it up.
A few other notes from the conference call...
* Mr. McCain reiterated the idea that the president should be giving long, televised briefings every two weeks on the war. If Mr. McCain becomes president, let's assume this one will fall by the wayside pretty quickly.
* Mr. McCain reiterated his position that, "I don't know and I don't care what effect this has on my political aspirations." I do think Mr. McCain means this at some level, given his family's military tradition and his own service. But, we all know there's a level at which he doesn't mean it, too.
* This may be the most stark phrasing of Mr. McCain's criticism of President Bush I've yet seen: "For four years, we've been screwing this thing up."
* When asked how he felt about the Democrats and others who seem happy about American defeat in Iraq, he responded that "It does hearken back, a little bit to me, to the days of the Vietnam war."
* Asked what role bloggers would play in his administration's press strategy (bloggers love talking about themselves, don't they), Mr. McCain went on and on about how awesome blogs were. But he added: "Bloggers have a lot of maturing to do in a lot of areas."
UPDATE: Other bloggers' coverage of the call here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
UPDATE II: Watch speech highlights here.
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