McCain's Op Ed That Wasn't

Today, the New York Times declined to print an op-ed piece by John McCain. I have to say that I don't think any major newspaper ought to be turning down an article from a major candidate; however, I was extremely curious to see what exactly in the article was so offensive to the Times. Naturally, the McCain campaign has already posted the article at other venues already and will undoubtedly use this to bludgeon the Times into oblivion.

I think I may have found the passage the Times objected to:

To make this point, [Obama] 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.

But, here is the quote from Maliki:

"U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

Senator McCain, it is my duty to inform you that your pants are on fire.

McCain will tell you that the Iraqis have since pulled back from that statement, but evidence has emerged that they only pulled back after much pressure from the White House. Also, McCain is insinuating that Maliki never said anything like that.

A few paragraphs down, McCain leads with this gem: "No one favors a permanent U.S. presence, as Senator Obama charges." Wow. It sounds like John McCain wants to cut and run instead of staying the course. Also, didn't he say something about 100 years and that leaving would be surrender? In today's article, McCain says he hopes to have most of our troops home by the end of his first term.

Here's another one:

I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war?only of ending it. But if we don't win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us.

McCain loves this line. He wants to win the war! But what the hell does that mean? I don't think we're going to be getting the terrorists to sit down with us to sign a treaty. Now, you'd think that the fact that McCain is backing away from his original position and moving towards Obama's might dissuade him from accusing Obama of being for surrender. But not John McCain. He's so honest and independent that he can copy the other guy's plan, and then accuse him of surrendering to the terrorists.

The influence of McCain's new Karl Rove surrogate advisors is beginning to surface. A Rovian campaign believes it can say anything it wants whenever it wants and get away with it. I sincerely hope he is not able to convince the public that he has been for withdrawing troops from Iraq since the beginning.

As for the NY Times, I suppose they must have decided that they're not willing to print a whole bunch of bald face lies, no matter who penned them. I can't imagine this ending well for the Times. After all, they printed an op-ed piece by Obama just last week. If it had been my call, I would have run McCain's piece, but I also would have included a small fact-check in the adjacent column.