McCain's Phony Withdrawal

When tomorrow's papers tell you McCain has set a 2013 "timetable" for leaving Iraq, don't believe it for a second.
John McCain announces timetable for withdrawal from Iraq!

Well, actually, he did no such thing, and probably will never do any such thing, but this morning, in an interesting speech (and crappy companion commercial) dreamcasting ahead to the year 2013, the presumptive Republican nominee cleverly set bait for the national media to undo his most enduring campaign blunder to date: Letting slip the bedrock truism that McCain sees no downside whatsoever to having U.S. troops stationed in Iraq in the year 2109.

The Arizona senator's ongoing political challenge this year is to maintain his strong support and feelings of empathetic good will from independents and Democrats who hate the war (and the mindset behind it) that he so adamantly supports and even embodies. It's a tough nut to crack, trying to convince people who hate George W. Bush that your foreign policy is more "moderate" than the president's when in fact it has been more radical and interventionist for a full decade running, but McCain is banking on the power of suggestion, and above all the remarkable potency of the benefit of the doubt, to obscure his rock-solid neo-conservative credentials and expansionist foreign policy.

Here's how he did it today. By January 2013, after the first McCain term, he says: