The Trail

U.S. TROOPS IN IRAQ

The War as McCain Sees It

ROCHESTER, N.H. -- Far from Amman, Jordan, where the world's news media were fixated on Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain told a town hall meeting here that U.S. troops "have succeeded, and we will win the war in Iraq."

In midday remarks to a lively crowd in the old Rochester Opera House, McCain criticized Obama for sticking to his proposal for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops. "Now he wants to reverse the success we have had and set a date for withdrawal," McCain said. He did not address recent statements supporting withdrawal by 2010 from the prime minister of Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki, and the Bush White House's implicit recent support of the idea.

McCain also accused Obama of stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the success of the troop increase. "I hope that he will have the courage to reverse his position," McCain said. "We will be coming home, our troops will be withdrawing, but they will come home in victory and in honor."

By then, "we will have restrained Iranian influence in the region," McCain said. "We will have a stable and pro-American and pro-western government in Iraq. We will see and are seeing economic, political and judicial progress in that country."

Although McCain acknowledged "a long way to go," his declarations of success seemed to go further than in the past.

"We have succeeded," McCain said. "Sadr City is safe. Basra is safe. Mosul is safe. The people of Iraq are now leading normal lives."

McCain also predicted that the same strategy applied in Afghanistan will produce victory there.

-- Robert G. Kaiser

EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS