Democratic libel

In his latest column, Frank Rich correctly calls out both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for misrepresenting John McCain's "100 years in Iraq" comment:

REALLY, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of themselves for libeling John McCain. As a growing chorus reiterates, their refrains that Mr. McCain is “willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq” (as Mr. Obama said) or “willing to keep this war going for 100 years” (per Mrs. Clinton) are flat-out wrong.

What Mr. McCain actually said in a New Hampshire town-hall meeting was that he could imagine a 100-year-long American role in Iraq like our long-term presence in South Korea and Japan, where “Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed.” See for yourself on YouTube.

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The Democrats should...stop repeating their 100-years-war calumny against Mr. McCain. There’s too much at stake for America for them to add their own petty distortions to an epic tragedy that only a long-overdue national reckoning with hard truths can bring to an end.

This sort of distortion is especially disappointing coming from Obama, who is supposed to be committed to the raising the level of political discourse in this country. I hope that he issues a public apology to McCain and reiterates both McCain's views and his own in a fair-minded way.