GQ's Robert Draper has a long piece examining John McCain's Iraq War policy record and history in the upcoming October issue of the magazine. The article, titled "Prisoner of War," traces McCain's eight separate trips to the war-torn country. In one interesting anecdote, Draper recounts how Bush told McCain's friend and frequent surrogate Republican Senator Lindsay Graham that "he saw John [McCain] as the guy who would carry on his legacy in Iraq."
Even so, as the situation in Iraq had deteriorated, McCain had spent most of 2004 preoccupied with another mission: his political future. Knowing that any '08 presidential bid would require repairing the damage to his relationship with Bushworld that had occurred during the 2000 election cycle, he devoted himself to becoming the GOP's most loyal foot soldier. He made scores of campaign appearances, and even as he publicly bemoaned the horrors of Abu Ghraib and the insufficient number of ground forces deployed in Iraq, McCain supported the Bush administration where it counted most: on the Senate floor, where he helped push through $87 billion worth of supplemental funding for the war. Those efforts did not go unnoticed. On June 22, 2004, Bush took McCain's buddy Lindsey Graham aside during a White House function and, standing on the Truman balcony, told Graham that, as the latter would remember it, "he saw John as the guy who would carry on his legacy in Iraq."
Read the full story at GQ.