This is now nearly a day late, but I can’t resist juxtaposing two stories from Tuesday’s New York Times – stories which oddly enough, the NYT ran entirely separately. Put them together though, and you may find the magic equation for who will win in November. Story #1 concerned John McCain’s cheerful admission to journalists that “he needed to convince the American people that the troop escalation in Iraq was working and that American casualties there would continue to decline. If he did not, he said, “I lose” the election.”
Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, made clear that he believed his prospects in November would rest in large measure on the way the situation in Iraq played out.
“If I may, I’d like to retract ‘I’ll lose,’ ” he said. “But I don’t think there’s any doubt that how they judge Iraq will have a direct relation to their judgment of me.”
Mr. McCain said he believed opinion was shifting to his point of view, referring to a recent USA Today poll that, he said, showed that “now the majority of Americans believe the surge is succeeding.”
Fair enough. Now here’s story #2: the Pentagon has projected that U.S. troop levels in Iraq will still be at 140,000 in July – that’s 8,000 more than the pre-surge figure. And, judging by comments from the Joint Chiefs’ Head of Operations, the numbers may stay nice and high:
General Ham stressed that his projected number of 140,000 was subject to change depending on security conditions, but it was the first time the Pentagon had publicly estimated the total.
Asked if the total would be below 132,000 by the time President Bush leaves office next January, General Ham said, “It would be premature to say that.”
In other words, the military strategy in Iraq is likely to favor Mr McCain all the way through to November. No surprise, then, that he and Barack Obama have spent the last day trading insults on Iraq. But please don’t take my welcome for the European parliament’s new report on securing Iraq to be an indirect McCain endorsement – the Dashboard remains studiously neutral.
