Are McCain's comments ever in context? He says these things and than distances himself from them claiming the context is missed...not unlike his inability to distinguish what are the waring parties in Iraq.

This is more of the same from McCain: "If Iraq was peaceful, no Americans would mind us being there a 100 years ('Timeline of Iraq withdrawal not too important')"

1. Cessation of hostilities in Iraq is not solely up to the US. Given the polls that show many Iraqis think it justified to attack our troops and the current outrage over the proposed US bases in Iraq (war room coverage?) I remain dubious about peace happening anytime soon.

2. Do we really want our troops in Iraq, peaceful or not? Let's call this what it is: Imperialism. Guarding our oil.

Frankly, I think you're right. McCain IS being taken out of context, and Democrats are twisting what he intended to say in the worst way.

And to GOP complaints, all I can say is, Pot, Meet Kettle!

but umm...didn't we just have a bunch of casulaties over in Iraq recently?

Aren't our men and women dieing all the time over there?

I mean, sure maybe less people are dieing due to ied's and the like then earlier, but that's pretty cold comfort to those who have died or been crippled, or their families.

Saying it doesn't matter when we leave Iraq, fails to take into account those that are dieing in Iraq today, and we should hammer McCain on this point again and again.

It isn't a mispeaking it is a disconnect between those who fight on the ground and those whose notion of war is flying far above the danger.

McCain may understand being a POW, but he has no concept of what it is to be on the ground in war, facing an unseen enemy everyday, never knowing when the next bullet will be yours.

We don't need another flyboy in the Whitehouse for whome war is a glorious adventure in selfagrandizment. And we shouldn't stop from hammering McCain on this until November.

We have been paying for Japan's, Korea's and Germany's national defense for about 50 years now. It's time to bring those troops home now, too. And maybe present three of our most successful economic competetors with a bill for all that service. Then we could cut our military spending to a level consistant with our actual population and needs and we wouldn't have a budgit deficit any longer.

But first, lets get our guys home from the country where they're still getting killed. The situation is a little different in Iraq. It's not really a hardship tour when nobody is shooting at you and when you get to take your family with you,like Germany or Japan.

occupation is costing US taxpayers at least $2 Billion/ Week. All of this is happening "off the books." Here's an issue with political traction.

But the real problem with his comments is his ridiculous analogy to Japan/Europe/Korea. This shows he truly does not understand the dynamics of the conflict in Iraq, which is different in about a dozen fundamental ways. So when you take the WHOLE context, the Dem's comments are actually pretty fair.

"But from the context it's clear that he was just repeating what he's said before, which is that he thinks that at some point violence in Iraq will have basically ended and U.S. troops will stop taking casualties, but that there may still be an American presence in the country"

And HOW do we get to this "stop taking casualties" scenario?

Since he does not plan to leave, the US is in Iraq until it is peaceful. An undetermined amount of time, stretching into infinity.

MY reading is that McCain says we stay in Iraq until the fighting stops, whenever that is, until infinity.

Like the 100 years remark, which demonstrated McCain's utter ignorance of the facts about the culture in the Middle East and Iraq specifically, this remark's context only serves to demonstrate that McCain is blissfully unaware of harsh realities (something like our current president).

In this case, the vital fact that McCain has overlooked is the issue of troop deployment. Our military cannot handle the strain it is currently under for very much longer. Visions of "victory" make no difference if, in winning this pathetic little conflict, we cripple our military. The fact is that our troops cannot handle the level of overdeployment to which they are currently being subjected.

Distortion would be saying that McCain doesn't care about the troops. All this is doing is using an inelegantly worded explanation of his position to get people's attention, and then attacking his actual position. That is nothing at all like the botched Kerry joke or dirty politics.

There are lots of opinion polls, as Glenn Greenwald has pointed out constantly, that the American people want out of Iraq whether it gets better or gets worse. There has been absolutely no public dialogue on whether we want a decades long presence, and a "gaffe" that highlights his position very clearly will bring it into public debate.

Considering that Bush is trying to push through a permanent protection pact, maybe we should be talking about it and ASAP.

If you talk to ordinary Japanese and Koreans, you'll find Americans troops are not wanted in their countries (especially in Korea). They are there to advance American interests, and only secondarily provide Japan and Korea with a security buffer. What keeps them there is the fact that it is difficult for those countries to defy American interests and the political will to speak up is often lacking. They are a primary focal point, for anti-American sentiment in Korea and, to an extent, Japan.

As a side note, if you were to present these governments with a bill for services, you will find yourself with riots on your hands and even lower esteem for America than currently exists. That would be very much in keeping with an unfortunately too-common American business model of presenting clients a bill for services they didn't want in the first place.