McCain ‘Nitpicks’ His ‘Verb Tense,’ Claims Troops Are Now ‘Drawing Down’ To Pre-Surge Levels
McCain ‘Nitpicks’ His ‘Verb Tense,’ Claims Troops Are Now ‘Drawing Down’ To Pre-Surge Levels
Last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) inaccurately claimed that troops in Iraq are already down to “pre-surge levels”:
So I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it’s succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr city are quiet and it’s long and it’s hard and it’s tough and there will be setbacks.
This assertion was wrong. There are now 155,000 troops in Iraq — far above the 130,000 before the surge.
McCain and his advisers quickly dismissed any criticisms of the statement, calling it a case of “nitpicking” a “verb tense.” They claimed that McCain meant to say that troops will eventually be drawn down to pre-surge levels. Last week, a reporter gave McCain a chance to correct his statement, asking, “Did you misspeak yesterday?” McCain replied, “Of course not.”
Apparently, however, McCain is now acknowledging that he did misspeak. At a campaign event today, McCain “nitpicked” his “verb tense” and said that U.S. forces are currently in the process of drawing down to pre-surge levels:
[Petraeus] is gonna come back in July, when our drawdown from the surge. Three of the five brigades are already back. There’s two more brigades that will coming back at the end of July. … But we are drawing back down from the surge. And then in July, he said that he wants to pause.
Watch it:
This assertion is still inaccurate. In February, Joint Staff director for operations Lt. Gen. Carter Ham testified that even after the Bush administration’s draw down, troops will still be higher than pre-surge levels:
Q: General, coming back to Iraq and the troop numbers, so what you’re saying is by the time we get to the end of July, we’re going to be at 140,000, which looks to me like we’re still talking about significantly higher than pre-surge levels in Iraq. Am I reading that correctly?
GEN. HAM: Yes.
McCain is wrong, no matter which verb tense he’s in.
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog Roll
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH……VERY STRAIGHT TALK-IE
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:48 pmIs anyone else flashing back to the Reagan years? Oy…
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:49 pmWhy do the Repugs seem to find the dumbest assklowns to run for President? Is this the best they can do?
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:49 pmShares that “I cannot admit an error” gene with the outgoing nitwit. He is the sixth man on Obama’s B-ball team, by feeding him all this material. What a putz.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:52 pmMcCain is wrong, no matter which verb tense he’s in.
– - McCain is pluperfectly wrong.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:54 pmThis is more than just a mistake of verb tense. Look at what he said today. It sounds a lot different and a lot harder to see what did come out of his mouth as a slip of the tongue had that was suppose to be his orignal speech.
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:58 pmIn the unlikely event of a McCain presidency some may experience post-surge troop levels for a period of a hundred years… if your country should experience this, consult a physician immediately as this condition could result in permanent damage to your democracy…
June 2nd, 2008 at 5:59 pm.
Oh, that’s right.
The sign said Mission ALMOST Accomplished… NO?
.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:03 pm.
Q U E S T I O N:
When will we return to pre-Iraq invasion numbers?
.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:05 pmMcSame and his advisors are counting on the low information types to elect him. These Low Information Voters (LIV) don’t remember and cannot recall events taking place more than a few moments ago. You would literally go crazy arguing with them over the facts of McSames campaign.
As a good blogger wrote a few days ago: If McSame doesn’t say anything you like, wait a few minutes. That’s perfectly stated.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:06 pmHind site always 20/20!!
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:12 pmWhy are you guys so obsessed with staring at people’s Hind quarters?
BTW- we can know he would have voted against it ’cause he said at the time, “I would vote against this” and there are plenty of people, myself included, who had the foresight to see this mess in Iraq… just ’cause you dismissed us and Hans Blix doesn’t mean no one saw this coming.
speaking of talk express. I had a great time on my radio show last night talkin to my old drummer from my punk bands days last night. you can listen to the podcast on my blog. we talked about a wide variety of issues…
http://oldhacks.blogspot.com
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:13 pmawe man, he’s gonna be worse than Bush!
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:17 pmLOL, I’m sorry but McBush doesnt know if he is coming or going at this stage of the game. Can you honestly imagine 4 years of McBush in the White house? Wow that is scary indeed.
JJ
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:17 pmis your ISP Snooping on you?
Hey, Old Yeller, that’s cos we’re not nearly as stupid as you.
Duh. (If you were smart, you’d know that.)
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:18 pmMaybe if Kmart would print the current troop levels on the rear of a pair of shorts, yellow would finally get an accurate picture… from now on all important information/lessons/etc. should be presented on the rear of sweatshorts, seems that’s the only way to reach some people…
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:21 pm“But your honor, I returned the money! there’s no harm done!”
“You returned the money? You have the $50,000 in your freezer! How can you make that statement?”
“What I intended to say is that I was going to return it, and there would have been no harm done. That’s what I meant to say.”
“I find you guilty of perjury.”
“What? You’re going to punish me for a mistake in grammar?”
–from Laszlo Chutzpah’s Big Book of Jokes, Bald-Faced Lies and Republican PR.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:22 pm@
Seriously, is he a liar or just too damn old to get the facts straight? Is it just me, or does he “mis-speak” a LOT?
Either way, there is no way this guy should be holding any office, let alone the oval one. I could, however, see him doing a Dole, i.e. hawking hard-on meds.
PEACE
@
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:22 pmyellow Says:
Obama didn’t even vote on the war with Iraq. How can the Dem’s say he would have voted aganist it? Hind site always 20/20!!
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:04 pm
Obama made a big-assed speech about it at the time, f_ckwit.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:23 pmMcbush’s verb tense conjugations:
Past -Present- Future
Past Perfect-present Perfect-Future Perfect
Past Imperfect-Present Imperfect- Future Imperfect-
Mcbush was just speaking in the Past Imperfect tense, obviously…
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:24 pmZoo, you know those trolls are allergic to facts. Now you’re gonna give Ol’ Yeller the hives.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:32 pm#19 mom,
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:33 pmThat’s why I call him Johnny McSpeak.
I told my girlfriend that I sleep with other women. I just had the tense wrong. I meant to say “I have slept with other women”. Gee, I don’t know why she got so upset. It was just a ‘tense issue’. :)
Seriously, this is a major gaffe that Obama will run well with. When we get to October, and the troops are still above the pre-surge level, he can ask over and over again, “When again are we drawing down to pre-surge levels? Just how much into the future was your ‘tense error’?”
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:37 pmGrampy McSame says – My friends back in the day we all loved surgeon, yep, surgeonfish was all the rage, why we would pre-surgeonfish with little bits of cheese, they so loved the cheese, but now people want to nitpick my pre-surgeonfish talk, well, those darn kids can just stay the hell off my lawn, I don’t need to be told about surgeon, I am an expert on surgeon, I’ll show that young upstart Obama about surgeon, what does he know, nothing, that’s what, why he would do things FOR Americans, now that’s something that I sure as heck am going to do also, except it will be for warprofiteers and really, really rich people, like my wife…my pants are full of german sausages.
Grampy, it’s just that you are constantly missing the mark, how many times can you be wrong in one day, read your notes better.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:41 pmJoint Staff director for operations Lt. Gen. Carter Ham testified that even after the Bush administration’s draw down, troops will still be higher than pre-surge levels
Well, since McCain hasn’t even shown up to vote or do his f-king job why should he know of anything testified about in Congress at all?
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:42 pmIt’s a wonder he remembers where his office is.
Well, they’ll be drawing down until they surge up again. Which will probably happen in November, after the election.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:47 pmMcCain at AIPAC: “We should privatize the sanctions against Iran by launching a worldwide divestment campaign.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:53 pmMcCain failed to mention:
May 2007: H.R. 2347/S. 1430 Obama, in fact, introduced the Iran Sanctions Enabling Act, which would authorize state and local governments to direct divestiture from companies with investments of $20 million or more in Iran’s energy sector.
McCain refused to sign on to Obama’s bipartisan divestment bill, and refused to get his colleagues to lift an anonymous hold on the bill.
Obama made a big-assed speech about it at the time, f_ckwit.
And what a speech it was!!!!!! Obama has had it right for a long time, no flipping and flopping like a headless frog being poked by the various “base” groups of the right!
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:14 pmMc Cain campaigns like a boxer who has been hit in the head too many times…
Is that disrespectful to the war hero?……that’s right,he was dropping bombs on people from 20,000 feet in Vietnam…
yeah, that was a war that started when the U.S used a fake incident (Gulf of Tonkin) to attack a much smaller country, getting entangled in a civil war and it turns out oddly enough, in the end they never posed much of a threat to us anyway.
Maybe we should stop this pattern of attacking smaller countries that aren’t a serious threat to us…it doesn’t really benefit any one in the end except the military industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned us about.
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:43 pmyellow Says:
Obama didn’t even vote on the war with Iraq. How can the Dem’s say he would have voted aganist it? Hind site always 20/20!!
Looks like your “hind sight” is impaired by having your head shoved neck deep up your hind end.
As Zooey said he made a speech about it, duh.
Next time try commenting about something you actually know about,like how many polyps you have up there.
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:44 pmAfter being pilloried by Barack Obama and the press for his erroneous assertion that “we have drawn down to pre-surge” troop levels in Iraq, John McCain once again resorted to grammatical sleight of hand to extricate himself. Speaking about possible future events as if they happened in the past, McCain claimed credit in the present. But as his jaw-dropping “2013″ speech earlier this month revealed, that rhetorical device isn’t merely a defensive tactic, but an essential campaign strategy. Call it McCain’s Future Perfect Presidency.
For the details, see:
June 2nd, 2008 at 7:48 pm“McCain’s Future Perfect Presidency.”
All of our troops are home from Iraq.
Under the McCain logic, if he just used the improper tense and meant that the troops will be drawn down to pre-search levels, and not that they already have been, then why not say that all of our troops are home?. Sometime in the future they will be. Perhaps in 100 years.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:12 pmyellow Says:
——————————————————————————–
Obama didn’t even vote on the war with Iraq. How can the Dem’s say he would have voted aganist it? Hind site always 20/20!!
Can you document a case of any Democrat of consequence(not just your neighbor or the local bartender) who has said this? Link, please.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:22 pmIs it possible that Sen. McCain is beginning to show signs of the stress of campaigning?
Reminds me of the sort of thing we were hearing out of the White House during Reagan’s second term.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:29 pmwoody, has your mental erection lasted more than four hours?
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:41 pmHere’s a link to his speech in Oct 2002
Anonymouse Says:
Reminds me of the sort of thing we were hearing out of the White House during Reagan’s second term.
So I’m not the only one reminded of ol’ Ronnie “there are no homeless/hungry in America” Raygun.
“You know, if I listened to him long enough, I would be convinced that we’re in an economic downturn, and that people are homeless, and people are going without food and medical attention, and that we’ve got to do something about the unemployed.” — President Reagan, 6/8/88, accusing Michael Dukakis of misleading campaign rhetoric.
“Facts are stupid things.” — Ronald Reagan, 1988
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:41 pmralph the wonder llama Says:
Zoo, you know those trolls are allergic to facts. Now you’re gonna give Ol’ Yeller the hives.
June 2nd, 2008 at 6:32 pm
Crap. Now I’ll have to decide between the “bullet cure” or the “drive in the country cure.”
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:02 pmOnly a true fool would even CONSIDER McSame’s lame ass excuse for his blatant lack of knowledge on just how many and WHO is in Iraq . . . I REALLY hope it is the onset of dementia and not a reflection of ignorance . . . there ain’t no “ignorance cure medication” or research being done on that . . .
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:34 pm“80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees.” Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, in August 1980. Reagan arrived at a campaign rally to find a tree decorated with this sign: “Chop me down before I kill again.”
June 2nd, 2008 at 9:52 pmToday, it’s a verb tense. Tomorrow it will be another universe.
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:25 pmI can’t wait for the debates where the best he can hope for is not to shit his pants on live TV.
RU,
My point, which could have been stated more succinctly, was that prominent Democrats have not stated he would have voted against the war, although we’re all sure he would, but rather he was right about the war and spoke out against it even though he wasn’t in a position to cast a vote.
Thanks for your concern about my erection, though. Now that I’m aware that it is an object of your attention, I’ll be more cautious in the future.
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:30 pm