What are we to make of this?
Sen. John McCain, departing from his typically sunny assessment of the situation in Iraq, expressed surprise about Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s decision to try to take control of the southern city of Basra from Shiite militias.
“Malaki decided to take on this operation without consulting the Americans,” McCain told reporters traveling with him in Meridian, Miss. “I’m surprised he’d take it on himself to go down and take charge of a military offensive. I had not anticipated that he would do it.”
This wasn’t the plan, McCain said. “We have a battle going on in Mosul, which all of us agreed would take three or four more months to get Mosul under control. The generally accepted strategy was bring Mosul under control and then address the problem that all of us acknowledged existed in the southern part of the country.”
Is he serious?
