McSame flip-flops on "100 year war" and timetables. Now says Iraq troops will come home by 2013.

[jefferson_dem]

Breaking News: McCain sees Iraq combat over, U.S. troops home before 2013

In a speech he's about to give shortly at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Ohio, Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, will for the first time talk about a specific date for when he envisions direct American military involvement to be over in Iraq.

It's January, 2013. By then, he says, American combat involvement will be over and most U.S. troops back home.

A staunch defender of the war in Iraq and an ardent advocate for last year's military surge, even before the Bush administration decided on it, McCain's surprising remarks this morning are an early indicator of a significant shift in the former fighter pilot and POW's stance on the controversial and unpopular war.

And it's a theme he's likely to hit hard, and perhaps even modify further, as the general election campaign unfolds, contrasting it with the Democrat's sharper withdrawal.

Maybe you remember during their most heated debate exchange of the Republican primary season, McCain going right after former Gov. Mitt Romney for even hinting at a vague timetable for U.S. troop withdrawals because the Arizona senator alleged it would be taken by the enemy as a sign of surrender and a date they need only await.

How times change, now that McCain has the GOP nomination sewed up and confronts an unpopular war, an unpopular president of his own unpopular party, a string of Democratic successes in....

...special House elections, perceptions of a struggling economy and early Democratic attacks from both Sen. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that a McCain Administration would only be a Bush III.

According to excerpts obtained by The Times' Maeve Reston, McCain uses an imaginative speech construction today not to announce any dramatic change in his proposed policies regarding Iraq and what he once described as a possible 100 year deployment of U.S. troops. Instead, he describes "what I would hope to have achieved at the end of my first term as President."

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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/05/mccainiraq.html

[Vinca]

1. By next week he'll be promoting universal healthcare. nt

[babylonsister]

2. "Weathervane" is working overtime; maybe he sees the writing on the

wall? That would be major "FAIL".

[Barack_America]

3. Thanks for posting this.

Looks like this is part of a serious play for independent voters.

I'll do my part to keep it kicked.