Greg Sargent at TPM notes Sen. McCain’s inherent contradiction in now claiming that the surge began before the surge actually began. Mac’s time-bending comments come following his major flub on the recent history of the Iraq War (a flub conveniently covered up by CBS News’ editing team). From Mr. Sargent:

…this afternoon John McCain pushed back on criticism of his Anbar-surge timeline flub by arguing, in effect, that the overall strategy change that made the Anbar Awakening possible began before the actual surge in troops:

The Arizona senator has told reporters during a stop at a super market in Bethlehem, Pa., that what the Bush administration calls “the surge” was actually “made up of a number of components.” McCain says some components of the surge began before Bush ordered more U.S. troops into Iraq.

Greg Sargent concludes: “The surge: It can be whatever you want it to be…”

And here conservatives have been telling us for months now that this campaign is about judgment.

The surge is not some sort of performance art that the gaffe-prone McCain campaign can simply mold into whatever image it likes. It was a strategy approved by Pres. Bush and led directly to a massive build-up of US troops in Iraq; which also led to more KIAs among those brave souls.

The surge is not a political football with which Sen. McCain can now throw laterals or, more likely of late, make fumbles. It was one part of an overall change in Iraq — changes which also had quite a lot to do with Iraqi self-responsibility and community willpower. In terms of unstated goals (for which McCain is now taking credit) the surge likely did have something to do with the decrease in violence around Baghdad and Sen. Obama has clearly articulated such despite McCain’s feigned outrage. But President Bush laid out clear goals for the Iraqi Parliament as rationale for the surge, and those have not been completed.

What is clear is that Sen. Obama’s “big picture” viewpoint  makes eminently more sense than McCain’s simple cheerleading when it comes to our ongoing wars in the Middle East. The Rumsfeld plan to underman and underequip our invasion force in 2002 proved disastrous in Iraq. But, at the same time, taking all those men and women in uniform off the table for Afghanistan (and even from natural disasters here at home) has in effect doubled-down on the Republicans’ errors in judgment of the past 8 years. And their’s is supposed to be the “foreign affairs” and “military strategy” party?

We must focus again on resolving the issues in Afghanistan and, in particular, win the battle against the Taliban and al Quaida. Strategically redeploying our intrepid GIs out of Iraq is the only way to accomplish that — and that’s why, ultimately, all of this blabbering about a noun, a verb and the surge does not help illustrate one ounce of “judgment”.