McCain doesn't understand Iraq war history, says "we were greeted as liberators" Posted by Max Bergmann

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

[Peace]

I really don't know why McCain is running on the Iraq War since it seems to be a losing campaign issue. Although American casaulties are drastically down, I believe that the American people, including myself, are having a hard time believing the official figures due to the fact that Bush administration has lied so many times in the past. Moreover it seems just about everybody, including the Iraqi government, endorses Obama's plan in leaving Iraq in about sixteen months.

[Soldiernolongeriniraq]

We were greeted as liberators. Unlike the gathered savants on this blog, I was there, in what was then termed "Saddam City," and enjoyed the outpouring of jubilation.

If you don't understand how the vast majority of Shi'i Iraqis and Sunni Kurds saw US troops in the first weeks of the invasion, then perhaps you have the skewed view of history.

In Tikrit, we weren't greeted as "liberators." But elsewhere I went, we were. It was a complex time, one that this blog, obviously, doesn't seem to understand well.

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