Mccain, the Surge, and 'verb tenses'

Washington Post by Michael Dobbs | May. 31, 2008 (News Report)

John McCain got ahead of events this week in claiming that the United States military has gone down to "pre-surge levels" in Iraq. That will not happen until later this year, even by the most optimistic scenario. He is also wrong about the city of Mosul being "quiet", unless you exclude car bombs and other mayhem. His advisers attempted to spin his remarks as a simple matter of "verb tense." But there is a big difference between "Mission Accomplished" and ... Full Story »

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by Elaine Meyer - Oct. 1, 2008

Dobbs challenges Mccain's troop numbers claims with facts from an official source, the Congressional Research Service. He also parses the claim that reporters were being picky about McCain's verb tense, noting that it is important whether McCain specify that troops are not currently at pre-surge levels. The only objectionable bit of reporting is when Dobbs implies that Obama's misstating of a concentration camp (Auscihiwitz for Buchenwald) is equivalent to McCain's misstatement about troop levels.

Pointing to Obama’s recent misstatement about his uncle liberating Auschwitz, Scheunemann says that all candidates should be held to the “same standard.” I agree. Three Pinocchios.

It might be helpful to tie this together with other false statements by McCain, at least in the foreign policy arena, because there have been several as of late, and they signal that he does not have the command of foreign policy that his candidacy is supposed to symbolize.
Dobbs should detail the context and particularities of Obama’s statement about his uncle, because as it reads now, it is not clear why the quote was a misstatement.