OpEdNews - Page 3 of Article: McCain Painted Into Corner on U.S. Troop Withdrawal From Iraq

Obama called on Congress to pass a second economic stimulus package to revive the economy, part of a broader strategy of short-term and long-term measures, including a focus on renewable energy to curb high fuel prices and on universal health care to trim costs.

McCain Insists Obama Wrong on 'Surge' -- Only to Get It Wrong Himself

The Arizona senator has been particularly prickly over Obama's statements on Bush's controversial troop buildup of 2007, known as "The Surge." Obama contends that a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida and a cease-fire called by the militant Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr of his Medhi Army fighters combined with the "surge" to produce the improved security situation there.

McCain called that a "false depiction" and insisted that the "surge" was the principal reason for the dramatic reduction of violence in the war-torn country.

But McCain's assessment is at odds with the fact that the rebellion of U.S.-backed Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida terrorists in Iraq's Anbar province was under way weeks before Bush announced in January 2007 his decision to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq.

It's also at odds with the fact that the level of violence plummeted dramatically only after al-Sadr called his Medhi Army's six-month cease-fire in February 2007. He has since extended the cease-fire for another six months in August 2007 and last February. It's up for renewal next month, but there's no guarantee that al-Sadr -- who's now in Iran -- will extend it further.

McCain asserted he knew that and insisted he didn't commit a gaffe. "A surge is really a counterinsurgency made up of a number of components. ... I'm not sure people understand that 'surge' is part of a counterinsurgency."

TV Images May Be What's Really Bugging McCain

But what could be annoying McCain the most are the TV images that Obama's trip to the war zones, the Middle East and Europe have produced back home. Clearly designed to burnish his foreign-policy credentials, there's no denying that those images -- especially of his speech before nearly a quarter-million people in Berlin -- are likely to have an impact on American voters' impressions of the Illinois senator.

Perhaps even more importantly, the reception that Obama has received abroad during his trip is more revealing about where American really stands with the rest of the world. What many Americans have perceived as an anti-American attitude by the rest of the world since 9/11 is really hostility toward the Bush administration's foreign policies.

With the McCain campaign taking foreign-policy positions to the right even of Bush, the Obama campaign is certain to exploit that by further bolstering its longstanding argument that a McCain presidency would be, for all intents and purposes, a third Bush term.

With a little help -- however unwittingly -- of Bush himself.

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Volume III, Number 43
Copyright 2008, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

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