McCain's confusion on the surge

Obama has admitted that the surge turned out differently than he had expected, but noted that other events that happened around the same time also contributed to the drop in violence in Iraq. Namely, the Anbar Awakening (the Sunni disenchantment with al Qaeda) and the standing down of the Shia militias.

In an interview yesterday with Katie Couric, John McCain claimed that the surge was responsible for the Anbar Awakening. Specifically, he cited actions by a U.S. officer, Colonel McFarland, as the impetus for the Awakening. Yet McFarland's involvement with the Sunnis in the Anbar region pre-dated the surge; he had, in fact, left Anbar before the surge began.

More from Matthew Yglesias and Marc Ambinder. (And updated: from Andrew Sullivan.)

AND ON THE TOPICS OF AMBITION AND PATRIOTISM, Sullivan notes an interesting McCain flip-flop:

"Putting the Country First", July 4, 2008:

Patriotism is deeper than its symbolic expressions, than sentiments about place and kinship that move us to hold our hands over our hearts during the national anthem. It is putting the country first, before party or personal ambition, before anything.

Worth The Fighting For, p. 373, published September 2002:

I didn't decide to run for president to start a national crusade for the political reforms I believed in or to run a campaign as if it were some grand act of patriotism. In truth, I wanted to be president because it had become my ambition to be president.