Politics

McCain Admits Iraq War Was A Mistake

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GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona admitted Friday that the Iraq War was a mistake.

“The principal reason for invading Iraq, that Saddam had WMD, was wrong,” McCain wrote in his new book. “The war, with its cost in lives and treasure and security, can’t be judged as anything other than a mistake, a very serious one, and I have to accept my share of the blame for it.”

McCain was one of the biggest supporters of the initial surge into Iraq in 2003 and was actually one of the first Republicans to get behind it. The Arizona senator has previously stated that his support for the Iraq War rested with his experience during Vietnam, where he was captured as a prisoner of war. McCain believes America could have won.

“I will defend the decision to destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime as I criticized the failed tactics that were employed for too long to establish the conditions that will allow us to leave that country with our country’s interests secure and our honor intact,” McCain said in a 2008 speech. “We are in Iraq and our most vital security interests are clearly involved there.”

He continued to hold that opinion even years later.

“I came out of the Vietnam War convinced that frankly we could have won, and we had it won,” McCain told Politico. “Just as I believed we had the Iraq conflict won after the surge—and for which I sacrificed everything, including my presidential ambitions, that it would succeed.”

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