Graham Claims McCain ‘Has Never Said That This War Would Be Easy’

Think Progress
Thursday, March 27, 2008

Yesterday on Fox News’ Hannity and Colmes, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) claimed that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) never said that the Iraq war would be won easily:

He has never said that this war would be easy. He has been the guy saying for four years that we’re getting it wrong. We need more troops.

Watch it:

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Graham’s statement is absolutely false. In the run-up to war, McCain eagerly proclaimed on multiple occasions that the war would be “easy,” giving rosy predictions about the daunting war ahead:

“Because I know that as successful as I believe we will be, and I believe that the success will be fairly easy, we will still lose some American young men or women.”" [CNN, 9/24/02]

“But the point is that, one, we will win this conflict. We will win it easily.” [MSNBC, 1/22/03]

When Alan Colmes countered Graham’s statement with a barrage of similar quotes from McCain, Graham responded: “He said that beating the Saddam Hussein regime militarily was quick and it was lethal,” implying McCain knew the post-invasion would be difficult. But McCain has displayed ignorance about that as well:

“We’re not going to get into house-to-house fighting in Baghdad. We may have to take out buildings, but we’re not going to have a bloodletting of trading American bodies for Iraqi bodies.” [CNN, 9/29/02]

“There’s not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shias. So I think they can probably get along.” [MSNBC, 4/23/03]

McCain even reflected on the war last year and said, “it was easy.” “Well, it was easy. It was easy. I said we — a military operation would be easy. It was easy. We were greeted as liberators,” he told Tim Russert on Meet the Press in January 2007.

Not surprisingly, in his major national security address today, McCain reflected: “I am an idealist.”

– Joshua Fryer

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