McCain Doesn't Understand Iraq War History, Says "We Were Greeted as Liberators"

On ABC's This Week, McCain when pressed by George Stephanopoulos whether Obama was right about invading Iraq, scoffed saying, "we were greeted as liberators." This just adds to the evidence of last week that John McCain doesn't understand the history of what's happened in Iraq.

So McCain now thinks that everything went as expected during the invasion that in fact American troops were greeted as liberators. One has to wonder if McCain's memory is really that bad. If McCain really believes that U.S. forces were greeted as liberators, as he and Cheney, predicted, then he clearly has no understanding of what actually happened in Iraq.  

In fact, during the initial phase of the war U.S. forces encountered tougher resistance than expected and the cheering crowds failed to materialize. Max Boot, McCain's own military adviser, said at the time that the idea we would be greeted as liberators "might have been wishful thinking." [Boston Globe, 3/28/03] The Philly Inquirer said that one top administration official "almost every assumption the plan's based on looks to be wrong." The administration was expecting a WWII type toppling, but instead Saddam's forces blended in with the population providing unexpected resistance that laid the ground work for the coming insurgency.While the battle for Baghdad did not materialize and the city fell quickly the result was chaos, not parades of liberation. While McCain was praising Bush and Rumsfeld, the Boston Globe noted on April 20, 2003 that,

More than a week into "Phase 4" - the reconstruction of Iraq, the centerpiece of the military's effort to be seen as liberators and not conquerors -- life in Baghdad has decidedly not returned to normal. In all levels of society, from those who openly embrace American military rule to fundamentalist Shi'ites who seek to replace Saddam Hussein with an Islamic government, people here are expressing swelling suspicion of America's motives. At night, the capital's residents listen to a cacophony of gunfire in total darkness, unless they have generators. People beg journalists for phones, because they have had none since US forces started bombing Baghdad. Government buildings still smolder and hospitals turn away patients, even though by the end of last week, US troops belatedly began guarding crucial public buildings -- most of which already had been looted.

Comments

[repearwo]

Up is Down, Light is Dark, McCain spouts the Bush Mantra.

[fetchezlavache]

That's the truth! But I don't just think he is lying--he really doesn't seem to know anything about the details of the war.

[fairwitness]

Agreed--McCain, as usual among the war-rewriters on the right, makes up whatever fantasy he needs to to spin the Iraq catastrophe into something Necessary and Glorious. Is that "lying"?

Yes.

Are they Orwellian in their bald denial of what we all know to be true and their assuption that they can erase history and write it anew to fit their narrative?

Yes.

This is the state of truth in this country now. No respect for it at all. Perhaps that's fundamental to our degraded cultural mileau.