The Daily Background
| Video- John McCain caught lying on Iraq report
by Arlen Parsa
General James Jones recently returned from a Congressional-mandated trip to Iraq and reported that political reconciliation “is absolutely the key to measurable and rapid progress” and needed to happen before any significant reduction in violence could happen. On Meet The Press today, John McCain incorrectly claimed that General Jones did not conclude in his recent Iraq report that political reconciliation needed to happen before a drawdown in violence can be achieved:
MCCAIN: Tim, I’ve known Jim Jones for 30 years. That’s not what he’s saying.
In reality, this was exactly what Jones said, both in his report and on Meet The Press a week ago. Below are two clips from Meet The Press, first with McCain today disputing what Jones said, and second with Jones agreeing with Russert’s categorization of his report the week before:
Partial transcript of Jones and Russert on Meet The Press on September 9th:
MR. RUSSERT: … The president has been saying we need to have security on the ground before we can have political reconciliation. And you’re saying, your commission, “No, no, no. You need to have political reconciliation. You need to have the Shiites and the Sunnis to put their guns down, put their arms down and come together as a country before we could ever possibly secure the nation.†Fair?
GEN. JONES: Fair. Our, our report started out with that assertion, and it closed with that assertion, that that is, that is the most important thing. Obviously both—you want both. But if, if we were to pick one or the other, which one is more critical, we think the reconciliation is absolutely the key to measurable and rapid progress. I think once you have that the, the, what’s likely to happen in Iraq is very encouraging.
You have a typo above. You wrote “I’ve known Jim Jones for 30 years. That’s now what he’s saying.” It should read “It’s not what he’s saying”
Fixed. Thanks, Paul.
“John McCain caught lying ”
also, a ‘typo’.
WE know he’s (McCain) lying about most any/everything about Iraq, that’s his MO, but, typically, the NUTLESS MSM, this time POORLY represented by Russert, didn’t ‘catch’ him.
He should have had the 9/9 MTP video that you do, locked and loaded to confront McCain, but… he didn’t and so, yet ANOTHER lie continues to propogate.
T
Agreed, it would have been nice if Russert had the clip handy to roll back, but I guess he didn’t expect to have to argue over something this simple. McCain never fails to surprise…
In this digital age, there is no reason that Russert couldn’t say, “Could someone please pull the tape from a week ago?”
It would take less than two minutes to pull the video and scan it for the content in question. If YouTubers can do it, the studio where it’s filmed can do it almost instantly.
There’s just no excuse for the media to continually let people lie on the air without rebuttals backed by proof, when it’s so readily available.
[…] Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and the 1/2 candidate John McCain (he seems to be a bit forgetful lately) have declined to attend and the right-wing base isn’t all too happy […]
McCain wasn’t lying, that’s just his senility talking. Kind of like how he has said since time immemorable that he’s an Episcopalian (even as recently as an interview in June) and then this past Saturday told the AP that he’s not Episcopalian, he’s been a Baptist for years. Or like he can’t seem to remember consistently that he’s a sitting Senator and needs to show up for, you know, votes in the Senate.
I’m sure this country will well-benefit from a 71-yr-old President who can’t remember … anything, apparently.
[…] TPM and ThinkProgress have picked up the story that I originally noted about John McCain lying about what General Jones’ report says. No hat tips, but I’m not complaining. Thanks to John at Americablog for getting this off the […]
[…] liberal bloggers in Wonkosphere. McCain’s Meet the Press video clip has been viral, with bloggers pointing to McCain’s statement that General James Jones did not say that political reconciliation was […]