McCain Slams Iraqi Progress on Benchmarks (Petraeus good, Maliki bad)

McCain Slams Iraqi Progress on Benchmarks
GOP Senator, Just Back From Iraq Visit, Says Petraeus Making Positive Strides

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) slammed the Maliki regime's failure to make political progress during Tuesday's Senate debate on the defense authorization bill, while also commending the leadership of Gen. David Petraeus and the successes he has achieved so far with the surge.

The Republican Presidential hopeful spent his 4th of July holiday visiting troops in Iraq, meeting with US and Iraqi officials for an update on the security and political situation.

McCain clarified that he did not intend to imply that he had learned the areas of US operation had become safe, but only that the surge was making advances unseen under the "failed Rumsfeld-Casey strategy" of keeping US forces contained to FOBs and focused on counterterrorism and training operations.

The final summary of his view on the progress of the surge sounded like a carefully constructed and vague assertion of optimism: "What I do believe," he said, "is that, while the mission – to bring a degree of security to Iraq, and to Baghdad and its environs in particular, in order to establish the necessary precondition for political and economic progress – while that mission is still in its early stages, the progress our military has made should encourage all of us."