Tin-plated fraud-bot Mitt Romney, who would say just about anything to get the nomination, has been out recently demonstrating that he'd say just about anything to get selected as the vice presidential nominee. And today, Romney took the nation on a mind-bending tilt-a-whirl ride into historical revisionism, telling Mika Brzezinski that John McCain, "after all, was the person who authored some time ago the philosophy that said a surge would work in Iraq."
Via TPM, here's the video:
Naturally, this is nonsense. McCain had long lobbied for additional troops to be sent to Iraq, but he in no way had a hand in the design of the "Surge" strategy. The closest John McCain came to participating in the "authoring of the philosophy" of the Surge was his involvement in a January 5, 2007 panel at the American Enterprise Institute. There, McCain and Sen. Joe Lieberman took second billing, providing the panel with their reflections from a recently concluded "fact-finding mission" to Iraq. Headlining the event, however, were the two men that actually did author the "Surge" doctrine, Frederick W. Kagan and General Jack Keane (ret.).
As Josh Marshall notes, Romney's comment "also dovetails nicely with the escalating cult of personality over McCain and the 'Surge.'" Yes, the Surge, whose successes are every bit as relevant as the "successful touchdown drive that the Washington Redskins completed last season in a game they lost 52-7.
Of course, a big difference between the Iraq War and a football game is that the Iraq War was a war of choice, a strategy that was supposed to yield several gains in national security, such as the removal of an imminent threat, the pacifying of bad regimes in the region, and an overall spread of democracy throughout the Middle East. And once you put aside the Potemkin "success" of the "Surge," you are left with a strategy that not only failed to deliver on its promised goals, but paved the way for seven years of de facto appeasement toward the terrorists who attacked America.
Hence, the value of Romney's meretricious distraction.