http://www.democracyarsenal.org/files/mccain_iraq_call_audio.mp3I think John McCain has been one of the most important voices on national security policy for many years now, so it really surprises me to see him giving speeches like the one today that are almost in "lala" land. These unsupported generalizations and predictions that he would have scoffed at as the old John McCain. Lets just take a couple of examples, one is what he says about the future Iraq. He says most of the troops will be gone in four years, at that time there will be relative security in the country and that it will be a democracy. But we have no idea how that is to come about. It certainly isn't coming about by the present polices of the Bush administration and the speech gives every indication he'll continue those policies and so it's kind of a wild eyed, unsupported prediction.
-Les Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations
When it comes to Iraq I think he's lost his perspective right from the beginning. If you go back and look at his statements back in 2003, before the war, and predictions all throughout 2003 that it was going well and would end shortly and then each year he seemed to be telling us it would end very very quickly...But now what he is saying it will end in four years. Even if that were to be true, he's not shown us how you could get there, that will have meant the United States be there for 10 years.
Lawrence Korb, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2008/05/former-cfr-pres.html