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IRAQ: McClellan, Bush, Obama, McCain spar over war

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The debate over the U.S. invasion of Iraq has become front and center of presidential election contest.

This week, former White House spokesman Scott McClellan’s bombshell book became the talk of the Beltway.

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Bush allies promptly trashed McClellan for his disloyalty while others chided him for his tardy arrival to the anti-war camp. But few addressed the substantive issues raised in the book, which reveals tantalizing details about the run-up to the war and the management of the media:

If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq. ... The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. ...In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.

Meanwhile, presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain accused his primary rival, Barack Obama, of being clueless about the war in Iraq and ‘ignoring the successes of the U.S. troop buildup’ and suggested he swing by Baghdad for a visit.

Certainly violence in Iraq is down, but it might be too early to start patting ourselves on the back. Today, two car bombs killed and injured at least 26 people in northern Iraq, and that was before noon.

Here’s McCain:

To say that we failed in Iraq and we’re not succeeding does not comport with the facts on the ground, so we’ve got to show him the facts on the ground.

Actually, plenty of congressional delegations visit but it’s not like they really learn much, and McCain must know that.

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The high-maintenance ‘Co-dels’ (as the U.S. embassy minders call them, with a contemptuous roll of the eyes), fly in helicopters from the heavily fortified airport to the even more heavily fortified Green Zone and maybe to a large U.S. military base in the provinces.

They are quickly briefed by officers and maybe sit down for lunch with a couple of soldiers, preferably from their home states or districts, and then head back to Jordan or Kuwait en route to the U.S.

I briefly met with Obama during his last visit to the Green Zone. That was in January 2006.

The guy was so charismatic, he electrified the Bush administration flunkies and red-state military personnel in the U.S. Embassy annex, Saddam Hussein’s Republican Palace.

They all ran up to him and asked for his autograph or mugged for photos.

After taking a few questions from a handful of reporters, Obama’s aides quickly hustled the embassy minders out of the room, but kept us reporters inside.

Obama said Iraq’s Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish leaders bear at least some of the burden in producing success stories that could persuade the American public to redouble their commitment to Iraq. ‘I think it has to do with trend lines,’ he said back then. ‘Are the trend lines moving in a positive directions or negative direction?’

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All of a sudden it was me, a handful of reporters and the Illinois senator himself.

‘Put your notebooks away,’ Obama said. ‘Now it’s my turn to ask the questions.’

He proceeded to grill us about life on the streets outside the Green Zone for about 20 minutes. He said he was hungry to find out more about what life was like for ordinary Iraqis living amid violence, electricity shortages and long gas lines.

‘Part of the problem right now is I’m in the Green Zone,’ he said, ‘which I don’t think is necessarily representative of the day-to-day realities of the Iraqi people.’

Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

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