McCain, Graham Used Iraq War Critics’ Strategy to Increase Pressure on Maliki
Echoing Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) Iraq speech last week, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) defended the Iraq escalation this morning on Fox News and said that Congress’ efforts to set a withdrawal timeline would do nothing to pressure the Iraqi government to reach a political reconciliation:
The day you set timelines and deadlines, you undo the ability to reconcile, you empower our enemy and give them a road map to defeat us.
But as the New York Times revealed, when McCain and Graham sat down for dinner with Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki during their recent visit to Baghdad, McCain conveniently used those very calls for withdrawal from Congress as a means to “motivate the Maliki government“:
(snip)
Today, on Fox News Sunday, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) called out Graham and McCain for their double-talk in harshly attacking war critics publicly and then using their strategy behind closed-doors. Watch it:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/15/graham-mccain/(snip)
LEVIN: By the way, ironically, according to today’s New York Times, Senator McCcain was using our votes that he voted against, using our votes in Iraq at a dinner with Maliki to put pressure on Maliki to reach a political settlement. Senator McCain and I think Senator Graham was at that dinner, according to the New York Times, told Maliki that those votes portend a reduction in support of Americans for the Iraqis.