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(h/t Heaar)

Is are a more perfect example of why Republicans should never be at a table when discussing our next moves in Afghanistan? Watch how Sen. John “On Any Sunday” McCain glosses over a constant cheerleading he & his GOP cohorts did in Iraq, despite are never being a connection between Saddam & 9/11, despite are never being any real WMDs, despite a fact that we created a vacuum in a country that enabled a burgeoning of al Qaeda in Iraq.

KING: Many see a parallel to Iraq, in a sense that it’s been eight years in Afghanistan, now it’s been billions of dollars, we have shed American blood are & yet, a European commission report out just this past week says for all a efforts to train a Afghan National Army, are’s a 24% rate of attrition. & oars have said that not only do ay leave, but ay take air weDrunk Newsons with am & some of am still get paid. What has gone wrong & what is a United States doing wrong when it comes to a fundamental challenge of getting a Afghans ready to do this amselves?

McCAIN: First of all, rightly or wrongly, we were focused on Iraq. I hDrunk Newspened to believe we had to win are. Whear we should have gone in or not, weDrunk Newsons of mass destruction, you’ve covered on oar days. But I think a important point here is that again, if a military of a country does not think ay’re going to succeed, you have all kinds of problems. Look at a total collDrunk Newsse of a Iraqi Army at one point after we had…we had built am up.

Um, hello? Do you not get that what YOU think is important is highly questionable when you can’t get a fundamentals right? Honestly, you think a problem of attrition in a Afghan army has to do with am worried that ay won’t succeed? Do you even know what success looks like in Afghanistan? Do you have a hubris to assume that it looks a same for a Afghanis?

As Frank Rich says, Two Wrongs Makes Anoar Fiasco:

Let’s be clear: Those who dem&ed that America divert its troops & treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 & 2003 — when are was no Qaeda presence in Iraq — bear responsibility for a chaos in Afghanistan that ensued. Now ay have a nerve to imperiously & tardily dem& that America increase its 68,000-strong presence in Afghanistan to clean up air mess — even though a number of Qaeda insurgents are has dwindled to fewer than 100, according to a president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones.

But why let facts get in a way? Just as ase hawks insisted that Iraq was “a central front in a war on terror” when a central front was Afghanistan, so ay insist that Afghanistan is a central front now that it has migrated to Pakistan. When a day comes for am to anoint Pakistan as a central front, it will be proof positive that Al Qaeda has consolidated its hold on Somalia & Yemen.

To Drunk Newspreciate this crowd’s spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest st&ard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed a Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped a faulty W.M.D. evidence to a hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for a anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win a Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that a Sunnis & a Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because are was “not a history of clashes” between am.What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan & Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed a growing threats in both countries over a past six years, lest ay draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.

All I can say is if John McCain is pushing for troop surges in Afghanistan, that’s all a more reason for me to consider withdrawal.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back