NZ Conservative scoops New York Times

It is with some modesty that I announce that our blog has scooped the New York Times with an article by John McCain himself. I know the NYT will be pretty cut up about this, having just run an Obama article. They may come up with some half-arsed, err half-assed excuse to cover their embarrassment, but I know they are hurting.

The last thing they want as a paragon of balanced reporting is to be thought of as some biased left-wing hack media establishment. Well, in the dog eat dog world of journalism, tough bikkies, err cookies. Eat my print type.

So, New Zealand Conservative, in conjunction with Neocon Express, bring to you, and scooping the NYT by some small period of time, possibly an era or epoch, an article by US Presidental Candidate John McCain:

In January 2007, when General David Petraeus took command in Iraq, he called the situation “hard” but not “hopeless.” Today, 18 months later, violence has fallen by up to 80% to the lowest levels in four years, and Sunni and Shiite terrorists are reeling from a string of defeats. The situation now is full of hope, but considerable hard work remains to consolidate our fragile gains.

[A bit of a contrast from early predictions of failure - as this advert run in the New York Times positioned. I wonder if the apology advertisement took as much space?]

Progress has been due primarily to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Senator Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent. "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there,” he said on January 10, 2007. “In fact, I think it will do the reverse."

Now Senator Obama has been forced to acknowledge that “our troops have performed brilliantly in lowering the level of violence.” But he still denies that any political progress has resulted.

Perhaps he is unaware that the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad has recently certified that, as one news article put it, “Iraq has met all but three of 18 original benchmarks set by Congress last year to measure security, political and economic progress.” Even more heartening has been progress that’s not measured by the benchmarks. More than 90,000 Iraqis, many of them Sunnis who once fought against the government, have signed up as Sons of Iraq to fight against the terrorists. Nor do they measure Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki’s new-found willingness to crack down on Shiite extremists in Basra and Sadr City—actions that have done much to dispel suspicions of sectarianism.

The success of the surge has not changed Senator Obama’s determination to pull out all of our combat troops. All that has changed is his rationale. In a New York Times op-ed and a speech this week, he offered his “plan for Iraq” in advance of his first “fact finding” trip to that country in more than three years. It consisted of the same old proposal to pull all of our troops out within 16 months. In 2007 he wanted to withdraw because he thought the war was lost. If we had taken his advice, it would have been. Now he wants to withdraw because he thinks Iraqis no longer need our assistance.

To make this point, he mangles the evidence. He makes it sound as if Prime Minister Maliki has endorsed the Obama timetable, when all he has said is that he would like a plan for the eventual withdrawal of U.S. troops at some unspecified point in the future.

The rest of the article is here: The Drudge Report - McCain's unprinted rebuttal to Obama's Plan for Iraq

Related Link: We would love to print a rebuttal, just not this year. Brought to you by: Neocon Express