behold the flippity-floppery

KOREA FLIP FLOP: Although McCain is now fond of using South Korea as a model for the Iraq occupation, he had rejected such a framework as recently as last November. At that time, PBS host Charlie Rose asked the senator whether he thought "South Korea is an analogy of where Iraq might be...over the next, say, 20, 25 years," to which McCain replied, "I don't think so." Rose followed, "Even if there are no casualties?" McCain repeated "no," adding that because of "the religious aspects of it [Iraq] that America eventually withdraws." Just two months later, however, McCain emphasized that as long as there are no casualties, he wouldn't mind staying in Iraq for "one hundred years, one thousand years, ten thousand years or until the earth collapses under global climate change." McCain is now fully embracing the Korea model, remarking just yesterday, "We fought a war with Japan and Germany. Afterwards we maintained a military presence there, which we are doing today. We fought a war in Korea, we maintained a military presence in Korea, which we are doing to this day. The first Gulf War, we threw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, and we have a military presence there to this day." But as McCain himself seemed to recognize just a few months ago when talking to Rose, sectarian Iraq presents a very different situation than relatively ethnically- and religiously-homogeneous South Korea or Kuwait.