John McCain Confused on Sunni Awakening and the Surge.

During an interview with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), CBS Evening News host Katie Couric noted that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) said recently that “there might have been improved security [in Iraq] even without the surge” and asked McCain, “What’s your response to that?”

After first calling Obama’s claim “a false depiction of what actually happened,” McCain proceeded to falsely claim that the surge “began the Anbar awakening“:

McCAIN: I don’t know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.

But in a puzzling move, the CBS Evening News did not actually televise McCain’s false claim tonight. As MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reported, “CBS curiously, to say the least, left it on the edit room floor. It aired Katie Couric’s question, but in response, it inserted part of McCain’s answer to another question instead.”

CBS’s full interview with McCain (with video) appears online. CNN aired the portion that CBS edited out. Watch it:

In fact, the Sunni revolt against Al-Qaida in Iraq’s Anbar province — commonly referred to as “The Awakening” — “began” long before Bush even announced his “surge” policy in January 2007. As the New York Times noted in April 2007:

The turnabout began last September [2006], when a federation of tribes in the Ramadi area came together as the Anbar Salvation Council to oppose the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

But also, President Bush himself noted this fact in a speech to the Naval War College in June, 2007:

Last September [2006], Anbar was all over the news. It was held up as an example of America’s failure in Iraq. The papers cited a leaked intelligence report that was pessimistic about our prospects there. […]

About the same time some folks were writing off Anbar, our troops were methodically clearing Anbar’s capital city of Ramadi of terrorists, and winning the trust of the local population. In parallel with these efforts, a group of tribal sheiks launched a movement called “The Awakening” — and began cooperating with American and Iraqi forces.

Spencer Ackerman notes that the colonel McCain cited is “now a one-star general” and had explained the “Awakening” to a reporter in September 2006 “before it even had a name.” “For McCain to say that the Anbar Awakening is the product of the surge is either a lie or professional malpractice,” added Ackerman.

TPJ: There is one major reason for the "Sunni Awakening." Sunni Sheiks were tired of being used and bullied by their former allies, al-Qaeda and saw the need to stand up to them or risk being pushed aside and dominated. They initially saw al-Qaeda as friends to their cause but soon regretted that decision once al-Qaeda began operating outside the interests of the Sunni.

So if the Sunni hadn't made that key decision to turn on al-Qaeda then they would still be fighting us no matter how many troops we poured into Iraq. The surge enjoyed a nice bit of luck because of the Sunni Awakening development. Therefore to assert that the surge was the only reason that violence is down is disingenuous.

And for McCain to say that the surge was a success isn't exactly true because the whole point of the surge was to give the political leaders the time and space to get their act together and they still have not. So yes the violence is down, partly because of the surge but probably more thanks to the Sunni Awakening. An awakening that established itself before the surge.

Meanwhile the McCain campaign is complaining that Obama's trip abroad is getting more press. However, with yet another Iraq gaffe/confusion they should be thankful that they haven't received more criticism from the media on this Sunni Awakening misstep.

UPDATE: The McCain camp just released a statement saying that he was right in what he said during the CBS interview. Blind stubbornness in the face of cold hard facts and dates, yep, he really is just like Bush.

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