Jeb Opens The Door to Hell, and the Angry Geezer Walks Right In

God in heaven above, John McCain just had to open his mouth again today, surely one of the least needed contributions to our national discourse that anyone could imagine.  What motivated this latest senile maundering?  Well, of course, Jeb Bush, the serious Republican candidate (serious, by virtue of having sold out to the big money guys years ago) made the colossal error of bringing up his brother's grotesquely incompetent invasion of Iraq.  So now, Republicans need to defend the indefensible and try one more time to convince people that the Iraq aggression was anything but a war crime, and one of the most incompetent war crimes in history.  Here's McCain spouting off, in case you care.  The coverage is from Newsmax, a right wing lie factory, but I think you should hear how they are playing this story, so you can get a nice dose of outrage:

"The Islamic State's takeover of the city of Ramadi over the weekend is a "terribly significant" event that will have an impact on the psychology of the people of Iraq, Sen. John McCain said Monday, while continuing to blame the Obama administration for the militant group's rise to power."

Do I need to remind you that the real reason ISIS exists is because George W. Bush dissolved the largely Sunni Iraqi army and let the troops keep their weapons, but not their jobs, and then turned the Iraqi government over to Shiite extremists in return for their promise to knock off the violence for a while, so he could pretend that the "surge" worked?

"I hate to be repetitious, but the fact is that, thanks to the surge we had it under control, and this is another consequence of the failure of this administration and this president to leave a residual force behind," the Republican senator told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program Monday."

This is, of course one of the great malignant Republican lies about the Iraq war.  Obama did not fail to leave troops behind; all he failed to do was break an international agreement between the Bush administration and the Shiite government of Iraq promising to withdraw all U.S. troops.  Obama kept this country's promise.  That is what he supposedly did wrong.

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Well, that is the next line in the story- I mean what is a Conservative opinion piece without a little grifting?  And they did at least put it in a different color.

"The problem, McCain said, is that when the United States pulled its troops from Iraq, "there was a vacuum," and Nouri al-Maliki, who is now Iraq's vice president after serving as prime minister from 2006-14, "decided to control the armed services. He fired all of his good people and hollowed out the army and then we have this consequence of a collapse."

Maliki of course did not "fire all his good people," L. Paul Bremer, Bush's hand picked ruler in Iraq did that, with Bush's full approval.

"McCain said the United States will need to start over when it comes to training the Iraqi military, and that there needs to be a "change of attitude" in Iraq that "makes them understand the importance of good leadership and good training."

We'll need to start over in Iraq.  Doesn't that sound like a delightful prospect to you?  How can anyone be so oblivious?

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Just a little more grifting there, thank you very much.

"McCain said he agrees that there needs to be more hand-to-hand combat, such as that used on Saturday, when U.S. Army commandos launched a rare ground attack in Syria, killing ISIS head of oil operations Abu Sayyaf and capturing his wife, Umm Sayyaf, who remains in custody. 

"I agree that we need more of it," said McCain, adding that there have been operations going on for "some time," including the raid that took out al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

HOOAH!  War!  Boots on the ground!  No one Senator McCain knows, of course, but isn't it nice to have the sage opinion of someone whose experience of war comes from crashing four jet fighter planes and then spending five years in a cage.  Except for the fighter plane part, that makes him just about as qualified as my parrot.  And he has just about the same ability to repeat nonsense over and over again, too.

"I don't want to denigrate the incredible job and coordination amongst our military," said McCain. "You have to give them utmost praise. But to somehow assume that that will turn the tide here against ISIS, I  think, is just not realistic."

Of course, he doesn't want to denigrate the troops!  They did an incredible job, even though it was a colossal, epochal failure.  You have to give them the utmost praise for creating a hellhole!  So the obvious answer is to send them all back to do more of their incredible work.  This time maybe they could turn the entire Middle East into an out of control war zone.

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Yeah, they had to throw that one in too- news coverage Republican style.  Well, good work, guys, because if you are waiting for the day that the American people forget what a disaster the Iraq aggression was, you'd better start preparing for the 2116 election, or maybe the 3116 election, not the 2016 one.  And Senator McCain?  Please shut up and go away, already.