McCain was for Bush’s ‘Mission Accomplished Banner” before he was against it

Yesterday, McCain claimed that he thought the banner behind Bush which celebrated that the Iraq war had resulted in "Mission Accomplished" was "wrong".

On Thursday, the fifth anniversary of Bush's dramatic landing on an aircraft carrier where the banner hung, McCain said, "I thought it was wrong at the time."

"So all I can tell you was that I was the strongest advocate, or one of the strongest advocates, for changing to adopt the surge," McCain told reporters. "And I think that history will judge me by the fact that I thought it was wrong."

However, no matter what he claims now, that was not what he was arguing at the time. Indeed, at the time, he used the fact that the banner flew over Bush's head as proof that major conflict was over.

NEIL CAVUTO (host): Senator — after a conflict means after the conflict, and many argue the conflict isn’t over.

McCAIN: Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier? Look, the — I have said a long time that reconstruction of Iraq would be a long, long, difficult process, but the conflict — the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished, and it’s very appropriate.

How many times is this bugger going to be allowed to flip-flop - and outright lie about what his positions have been - before the press actually start to take notice?

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

UPDATE:

There are many who argue that McCain's "100 year" line concerning Iraq was merely McCain pointing to a situation similar to that in Germany and North Korea. The problem with this theory is that McCain - the greatest flipper that ever flopped - has already specifically excluded that analogy.

Here he talks to Chris Matthews in 2005:

MATTHEWS: Would you be happy—we‘ve been there to help get them democracy started. But would you be happy with that being the home of a U.S. garrison, like Guantanamo or Germany all those years, where we have 50,000 troops permanently stationed in that country?

MCCAIN: No. I would hope that we could bring them all home. I would hope that we would probably leave some military advisers, as we have in other countries, to help them with their training and equipment and that kind of stuff.

MATTHEWS: But you‘ve heard the ideological argument to keep U.S. forces in the Middle East. I‘ve heard it from the hawks. They say, keep United States military presence in the Middle East, like we have with the 7^th Fleet in Asia. We have the German—the North Korean—the South Korean component. Do you think we could get along without it?

MCCAIN: I not only think we could get along without it, but I think one of our big problems has been the fact that many Iraqis resent American military presence.

And I don‘t pretend to know exactly Iraqi public opinion. But as soon as we can reduce our visibility as much as possible, the better I think it is going to be.

How this man gets away with changing his positions so often is simply jaw dropping. He deserves to have no credibility left at all.

Tags: John McCain, Mission Accomplished, Iraq war, US election 2008