Graham Forced To Retract Troop Level Prediction After Petraeus Contradicts Him

On CBS’s Face The Nation this past Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-AZ), who recently returned from a taxpayer-funded trip to Iraq with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), bluntly predicted that “by the end of this year, we will be somewhere around 100,000 troops” in the country. “Most of the fighting will be done by Iraqis with us in overwatch,” said Graham.

Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2008/03/Graham100000Prediction.320.240.flv]

The day after Graham made his prediction, however, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker presented plans to President Bush recommending that troop levels in Iraq “remain nearly the same through 2008 as at any time during five years of war.” According to the New York Times, Petraeus and Crocker’s recommendation means that it “now appears likely that any decision on major reductions in American troops from Iraq will be left to the next president.”

Though Graham’s spokesman, Kevin Bishop, “stood by the prediction” when asked about it on Sunday, Graham issued a statement yesterday claiming he “misspoke” when he predicted the 100,000 troop level:

Yesterday, I misspoke when I said we will be, ‘somewhere around 100,000 troops’ in Iraq by the end of 2008. I think we will be at pre-surge levels, about 130,000 troops, at years end. I have consistently said any changes or further reductions in troops should be based upon conditions on the ground and the advice of our commanders.

Graham has a record of making wildly false predictions about Iraq. In September 2007, after returning from another trip to Iraq, Graham predicted that “within the next weeks, not months, there will be a major breakthrough on the benchmarks regarding political reconciliation.”

Now, apparently like his close friend John McCain, when Graham gets the facts wrong, he tries to brush it aside by claiming he merely “misspoke.”