Obama played fealty to the troops and the White House tropes saying"
"There is no doubt that the extraordinary work of our U.S. forces has contributed to a lessening of the violence, just as making sure that the Sadr militia stood down or the fact that the Sunni tribes decided to flip and work with us instead of with al-Qaeda -- something that we hadn't anticipated happening. All those things have contributed to a reduction in violence."
McCain took the opportunity to slam Obama (the old familiar we can't just tuck tail and run refrain) saying:
"When we adopted the surge, we were losing the war in Iraq, and I stood up and said I would rather lose a campaign than lose a war,"and further adding:
"Sen. Obama said the surge would fail. He said that it couldn't succeed. He was wrong. He said he still doesn't agree that the surge has succeeded now that everybody knows that it has succeeded."
Professor Juan Cole discusses McCain's "boasts" about the surge being right and Obama being "wrong" noting:
Look, it is more important that McCain was consistently wrong. He was wrong about the desirability of going to war against Iraq. He was wrong about it being a cakewalk. He was wrong about there being WMD there. He was wrong about everything. And he was wrong about the troop escalation making things better. The casualty figures dropped in al-Anbar, where few extra US troops were ever sent. They dropped in Basra, from which the British withdrew. Something happened. Putting it all on 30,000 extra troops seems a stretch. And what about all the ethnic cleansing and displacing of persons that took place under the nose of the "surge?" McCain has been wrong about everything to do with Iraq. And he is boasting about his wisdom on it!
