TPM Editor’s Blog

Score Settling

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

There’s simply no elevating it. Sen. McCain’s (R-AZ) entire game here is about score settling and holding on to what is arguably the only thing he was right about in the last 20 years. The ‘surge’ McCain may have been right about. There’s a decent argument. But, of course, this is one move in the larger Iraq story which is undeniably one of the biggest foreign policy catastrophes in modern American history — and one which John McCain is one of the great authors of. What a sad little man.

The country is still paying a great cost for the ego bruise that Sen. McCain suffered in 2008. Even more than that, he’s stung by the mountains of criticism tied to his original advocacy of the Iraq War and all the lies that brought the country into it. It stings. Thus the endless flogging of the surge. This is payback. Nothing more.

Wake me up when McCain tells Hagel to get off his lawn.

Josh Marshall

Josh Marshall is editor and publisher of TalkingPointsMemo.com.

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