You might ask, "Who understands the GWOT?" John McCain -- who, solely because of the grievous blow to Romney, seems to have been almost as big a winner last night as Huckabee or Obama -- flew to Manchester, NH yesterday for an early evening “town meeting.” He was accompanied by his own personal Chuck Norris, Joseph I. Lieberman. The setting was the nearby town of Derry, which looks like a Lionel Train layout ... The most interesting exchange came at the very end, and it was about Iraq. The money quote -- the bit that could come back to haunt McCain -- went like this: Q: President Bush has talked about our staying in Iraq for fifty years. McCain: Make it a hundred.
That’s the sound bite. That’s the headline. Now let’s look at the context, which I think is worth considering in full.
Click through; it's short and worth reading ... here's the wrap-up: You have to hand it to McCain. It's impossible to imagine any of the other Republicans engaging in this kind of extended conversation with a citizen. There was more real debate in this exchange than in any of the so-called real debates. But what the context shows, I think, is that yanking that sound bite out of context isn’t really all that unfair. McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal -- that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay.
Do you think McCain has a "pro-war" sentiment? A Hundred Years' War? | 
