Word: trooped
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...post-9/11 world than it did eight years ago. On Iraq, McCain supported the invasion and still does. But he was an early critic of the way the Bush Administration was prosecuting the war and called for a change in strategy that would include a surge in U.S. troops to gain control of Baghdad. At the time, advocating an increase in U.S. troop levels in Iraq rather than a reduction was unpopular even within the G.O.P. But McCain stood by Bush when the policy was implemented...
...success of the troop surge has given McCain points for prescience and reaffirmed his political courage. Yet there's a downside too. As violence in Iraq has ebbed, economic anxiety has rocketed to the top of voters' concerns. This shift exposes one of McCain's weaknesses. He is a conviction politician, passionate about the issues that animate him, dismissive of and uninterested in those that don't. Iraq, foreign policy, the military and treatment of veterans - these topics get him excited. In the domestic realm, he's fire and energy when he rails against pork-barrel spending. But mention other...
...issue that McCain cares most about is Iraq. His I-told-you-so support for the troop surge, his admiration for David Petraeus?McCain never fails to mention that Petraeus should have been Time's Person of the Year?is the climax of every speech. This too is admirable, but also a bit half-baked. McCain's vision of the war is simple, binary: We are fighting al-Qaeda and, to a lesser extent, the Iranians. We are "succeeding," he says. "Al-Qaeda is on the run, but it is not defeated." But Iraq's future is complicated...
...April, the U.S. will deploy a mini-surge of 3,200 marines to boost the overstretched coalition military units already in place. While the troop commitment is welcome, it may also trigger a rise in attacks such as the strike on the Serena. "The Taliban cannot fight us face to face. So they continue killing people this way," says Amrullah Saleh, head of Afghanistan's National Directorate for Security, which is investigating the attack. "An enemy who cannot hold territory, an enemy who can find no refuge among the people, has no other recourse but suicide bombing...
Further reductions are not a foregone conclusion. According to Petraeus' spokesman, Col. Steven Boylan troop levels could hold at the July level or could drop, depending on how things stand over the next three months. Violence levels are an important factor, but so is the Iraqi ability to take over security from the American troops. Iraqi security forces have the nominal lead in nine of 18 provinces, having recently taken over from the British in Basra. A proposal to hand over security to Iraqi forces in Anbar this spring is now being considered. Anbar province has been the U.S. military...