McCain: ‘The War Will Be Over Soon’

In a townhall meeting today, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was asked about the status of the situation in Iraq. McCain, who notoriously said last month that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for another 10,000 years, said “the war will soon be over“:

That reminds me this 100 year thing. I was asked in a town hall meeting back in Florida, how long would we have a presence in Iraq?

My friends, the war will be over soon, the war for all intents and purposes although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years. But it will be handled by the Iraqis, not by us, and then we decide what kind of security arrangement we want to have with the Iraqis.

Listen to it:

For years, McCain has misjudged the length of conflict in Iraq, repeatedly telling the American public that the war will be over soon. Some lowlights:

I think the victory will be rapid, within about three weeks. [MSNBC, 1/28/03]

It’s clear that the end is very much in sight. … It won’t be long. It, it’ll be a fairly short period of time. [ABC, 4/9/03]

We’re either going to lose this thing or win this thing within the next several months. [Meet The Press, 11/12/06]

Although McCain says “the war will be over soon,” he still wants to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for hundreds of years, even acknowledging that the Iraq insurgency will simultaneously “go on for years and years and years.”

To recap, here’s what McCain said in January about the length of an Iraq occupation: “one hundred years, one thousand years, ten thousand years or until the earth collapses under global climate change.”

Original here