Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) listens to the generals — so much so that he has advocated on numerous occasions that President Obama defer his powers as commander-in-chief to American military commanders fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Last month, McCain, along with Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), attacked Obama for reportedly considering keeping only a small force of U.S. troops (3,000) in Iraq after the year-end total withdrawal deadline. “This is dramatically lower than what our military leaders have consistently told us over the course of repeated visits to Iraq that they require.”

Yesterday on CNN, responding to recent reports that the administration is now abandoning plans to keep any troops in Iraq past 2011, McCain complained that “this whole issue has been terribly mishandled.” He said the U.S. needs at least 13,000 troops in Iraq to protect the Kurdish border region:

MCCAIN: The fact is that there is a very volatile areas between the Kurdish areas in Iraq in the north that needs peacekeeping forces. They need technical assistance on intelligence. They need help with their air assets, which they have literally none. And this has been terribly mishandled in my view by the administration. We needed about 13,000 troops left behind.

Watch it:

But just over two weeks ago, Army Major General David Perkins said that U.S. troops are no longer needed for that purpose, AFP reported:

Large numbers of US troops are no longer needed on the ground in northern Iraq to defuse Arab-Kurdish tensions and have begun handing over control to local forces, a US commander said Thursday.

Army Major General David Perkins, who leads 5,000 US troops deployed in northern Iraq, said the American contingent has gradually withdrawn from checkpoints that it had overseen to prevent clashes between Kurdish troops and Iraqi army and police. [...]

“Clearly there is not the need for them (US troops) to play the role they had, especially in the numbers they had. We have proven right now that out at the checkpoints they can run perfectly fine without US presence there at all.”

So maybe McCain doesn’t listen to all the generals. Or maybe he just listens to the ones he agrees with.

In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes, the U.S. military commander atop international forces in Afghanistan said U.S. forces would not be leaving the war-torn Central Asian country any time soon. The comments by Gen. John Allen, who took command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) when Gen. David Petraeus stepped down to take the helm of the C.I.A. in July, fall in line with other U.S. and international officials since President Obama announced in June that a complete transition to Afghan security responsibility would take place by the end of 2014.

CBS’s Scott Pelley asked Gen. Allen what his plan for Afghanistan was:

ALLEN: Well the plan is to – is to win. The plan is to be successful and the United States is gonna be here for some period of time.

PELLEY: …You’re talking about U.S. forces being here after 2014?

ALLEN: Yes, there will be.

PELLY: …Are we talking about fighting forces?

ALLEN: We’re talking about forces that will provide an advisory capacity. And we may even have some form of counter-terrorism force here to continue the process of developing the Afghan’s counter-terrorism capabilities. But, if necessary, respond ourselves.

PELLEY: But what you’re saying is that the United States isn’t leaving Afghanistan in the foreseeable future?

ALLEN: Well that’s an important message.

Watch the video here:

As for specific numbers of U.S. forces that will remain, Allen said it was “too early to tell.”

Also in the 60 Minutes segment, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, in response to a direct question form Pelley, offered a veiled acknoweldgement that the U.S. was talking to at least some factions of the Taliban-led insurgency: “[W]e talk to the whole range of people, anyone who will talk to us. You can draw your own conclusions.”

Allen recounted a recent episode where he’d gone to Pakistan to ask the top military commander there, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, to help stop a truck bomb that U.S. intelligence indicated was travelling from Pakistan to Afghanistan to target U.S. troops. “We think it ultimately exploded against the outer wall of one of our combat outposts,” said Allen. “Seventy-seven [Americans] were wounded that day.”

A scandal surrounding Atlantic Bridge, a conservative “think tank” exposed earlier this month by U.K. regulators as a front group for Tory party interests and corporate lobbyists, has jolted Prime Minister David Cameron’s government. Over the weekend, allegations stemming from the Atlantic Bridge pay-to-play scheme resulted in the resignation of Liam Fox, Cameron’s Defense secretary. But the controversy may also hit a high profile American politician: GOP presidential contender Herman Cain.

Atlantic Bridge is a right-wing nonprofit that is officially partnered with the Washington, DC-based American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate lobbying front that funnels business lobbyist tailored legislation to state representatives and state senators across is the country. Earlier this month, the U.K. Charity Commission axed the Atlantic Bridge after an investigation found the group to have violated charity laws by acting primarily as a tax exempt front for business lobbyists. In particular, a number of defense industry hedge fund managers and weapons makers financed both Atlantic Bridge and its director, Adam Werritty, a British lobbyist. Werritty, the press learned, improperly acted as a high level adviser to Fox; at times using the Atlantic Bridge nonprofit as a cover for his allegedly illicit influence peddling.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Werritty and Fox attended Atlantic Bridge-organized defense contractor parties in the United States as well, including one at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Washington, DC. The fundraising party, held in September last year, featured John Falk, a representative for a private security firm with work for the government in Pakistan, a lobbyist named Clark Judge, as well as a defense industry lobbyists like Powell Moore and Jeffrey Gordon. Gordon’s lobbying firm website lists American Bridge as a client.

Earlier this month, Gordon was named chief spokesman for the Herman Cain for president campaign. Gordon had acted as a top foreign policy adviser before his promotion. According to the DailyCaller, Gordon’s official title with the Cain campaign is “Vice President, Communications; Senior Adviser, Foreign Policy & Security.”

Gordon is also a partner at the DC consulting firm that manages the United States operations of Atlantic Bridge. A review of tax disclosure forms show that Atlantic Bridge was also incorporated in the United States. Documents reveal that in 2009, the group was run by lobbyist Adam Werritty, the “U.K. Executive Director,” Lee Cohen, the “Washington DC Director,” Scott Syfert, the “Executive Council Chair,” and Randall Popelka, a former executive director still on the nonprofit’s board of directors. Cohen is the co-founder of Gordon Cohen Strategies LLC, a firm he started with Cain’s adviser, Jeffrey Gordon.

A consistent theme of the Herman Cain campaign is the need to put big business even more in charge of government. Cain has said if he becomes president, he will literally place the CEO of Shell Oil at the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency. Given Cain’s admitted ignorance about foreign policy, it’s no wonder that he has outsourced the foreign policy positions of his campaign to a political operative who currently runs a lobbying firm and who is associated with a nonprofit that is deeply entwined with a military contracting pay-to-play scheme.