Speaking at a retreat hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy over the weekend, McCain adviser Max Boot threw President Bush under the bus:

McCain’s advisers attempted to deflect comparisons between McCain and Bush. In trying to turn such comparisons against the Obama campaign, Boot noted that eight years ago he favored “another presidential candidate with not much experience in national security policy” — George W. Bush — “and we’ve seen the implications.”

For a little background on how monumentally disingenuous this is, let’s go back to October 2001, when Boot penned an article arguing that the problem with U.S. foreign policy was too little military intervention. “The problem,” Boot wrote, “has not been excessive American assertiveness but rather insufficient assertiveness. The question is whether, having now been attacked, we will act as a great power should”:

Once Afghanistan has been dealt with, America should turn its attention to Iraq. It will probably not be possible to remove Saddam quickly without a U.S. invasion and occupation — though it will hardly require half a million men, since Saddam’s army is much diminished since the Gulf War, and we will probably have plenty of help from Iraqis, once they trust that we intend to finish the job this time. Once we have deposed Saddam, we can impose an American-led, international regency in Baghdad, to go along with the one in Kabul. With American seriousness and credibility thus restored, we will enjoy fruitful cooperation from the region’s many opportunists, who will show a newfound eagerness to be helpful in our larger task of rolling up the international terror network that threatens us.

Clearly, only someone with as little foreign policy experience as George W. Bush would actually follow such knuckleheaded advice. But what’s John McCain’s excuse?

In an al-Iraqiya interview on September 17, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki discussed the state of negotiations between the U.S. and Iraqi governments regarding the eventual withdrawal of U.S troops from Iraq. Maliki said that “perhaps one of the two most important points is deciding the final date.” Transcript via Open Source Center:

MALIKI: Actually, the final date was really the end of 2010 and the period between the end of 2010 and the end of 2011 was for withdrawing the remaining troops from all of Iraq, but they [the Bush administration] asked for a change [in date] due to political circumstances related to the domestic situation [in the US] so it will not be said to the end of 2010 followed by one year for withdrawal but the end of 2011 as a final date. Agreement has been reached on this issue. They are willing to respond positively because they, too, are facing a critical situation.

President Bush has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. withdrawal would be dictated by military commanders and the situation on the ground, and not by political considerations. Now, according to Prime Minister Maliki, the Bush administration has attempted to time a withdrawal in a way that would benefit John McCain and the Republican Party. I would say that I’m shocked, but of course, this is the way that the Bush administration has always treated national security, as just another piece in a political game.

Last week, the right-wing fever swamp was bubbling up over an article by Amir Taheri, in which Taheri claimed that Barack Obama had “tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.” Not only did the story turn out to be a complete fabrication, now we find out that the complete opposite is the case: It is the Bush administration that tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay a draw-down of the American military presence, once again playing politics with America’s national security, and effectively repudiating past claims that a U.S. withdrawal will only be “dictated by the facts on the ground.”

Two questions: What did McCain know about this, and when did he know it?