The RNC and other reluctant McCain-defenders desperately want to spin McCain's Iraq policy away from the reality - John McCain sees no problem staying in Iraq. Their defense? McCain thinks the situation will be like our long-term presence in Korea, where there's little worry of casualties.

But this spin perfectly distills the problem with a continuation of Bush policy - John McCain can't seem to grasp the impact of our occupation, and how the situation in Iraq differs from American presence in other places around the world. We're smack in the middle of a civil war there, and John McCain refuses to accept the reality.

TPM has dug-up video of a McCain appearance on ABC in January, where he flippantly suggest that perhaps we'll be in Iraq for a MILLION years.

The contrast between the Democratic nominee and John McCain could not be more stark.

That the DNC and MoveOn and the Obama campaign have no compunction about taking John McCain's words out of context suggests to me that the battle to rectify the deliberate misinterpretation of McCain's remarks is over, no matter how times those of us with no real dog in the fight point that McCain really said something a bit different than what his opponents wanted him to say.

I fear Marc misses the point. In order to argue that McCain really means something different by his 100-year comments that's only made clear with more context - that he actually is talking about a casualty-free presence - you first have to give McCain the benefit of assuming that he understands how toxic the continued American presence is in Iraq, and that he's making his comments based on that acknowledgement. But McCain clearly doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt; the American people understand how bad things are in Iraq, but there's no reason to think McCain does. He still thinks the invasion was the right thing to do.