McCain: 'I didn't use the word timetable'

David Edwards and Andrew McLemore

Published: Sunday July 27, 2008





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Senator John McCain famously said in January 2008 that if US troops were to stay in Iraq for 100 years, it "would be fine with me."

After Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki endorsed Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan, McCain changed his position, telling Wolf Blitzer that "it was a pretty good timetable" in the video at the bottom of the page.

But now the Senator is denying he ever used the word timetable at all and reasserting "conditions on the ground" as the overriding factor for when US troops can leave Iraq.

"I didn't use the word timetable," he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an interview airing Sunday.

When asked if Obama was right that the US invasion of Iraq "inflamed the Muslim world," McCain said that his own prediction of Americans being greeted as liberators was correct.

"We were greeted as liberators," McCain said.

This video is from ABC's This Week, broadcast July 27, 2008.



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