Discussing the war with Letterman, McCain repeated his assertion that U.S. troops must remain in Iraq rather than withdrawing early even though the war has been mismanaged.
"Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be," McCain said. "We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives."
OBAMA: We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged and to which we have now spent $400 billion and has seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.
Sen. Barack Obama's nutroots are showing. RedStateLady has the video of Obama arguing that each and every member of the military who volunteered to serve and died in Iraq wasted his/her life.
On Sunday Sen. Barack Obama, speaking at Iowa State University, made this jaw-dropping statement...
Wasted! Hard to believe anyone would say such a thing, but there it is on video.
Obama got his candidacy off to an inauspicious start by saying last weekend that the war “should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and on which we've now spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.''
[...]
He was asked Monday whether military families deserved an apology. “Well as I said, it is not at all what I intended to say, and I would absolutely apologize if any of them felt that in some ways it had diminished the enormous courage and sacrifice that they'd shown. You know, and if you look at all the other speeches that I've made, that is always the starting point in my view of this war.''
That’s true; none of his previous speeches declared that the lives of slain U.S. soldiers were wasted. He saved that gem for his first day as a presidential candidate.
The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times all published March 1 articles reporting McCain's announcement on the Late Show, with The New York Times and the Post directly quoting McCain from the program -- but none of these articles noted his claim that "we've wasted" American lives in Iraq. Yet when Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) made similar comments in Iowa on February 11, the Post and the Los Angeles Times reported the remarks the following day. The New York Times, meanwhile, devoted a February 13 article to Obama's subsequent apology and clarification.
He [McCain] said on the Letterman Show last night, he used the work "wasted." He said today he meant to use the word "sacrifice." Given John McCain's record on military matters and the fact that he himself is a war hero, is this over with right now or are there legs on this story?