Sen. John McCain, a retired naval aviator, has a history of confronting military leaders he feels have fallen short.
His latest target: Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary.
Kirby’s recent statement that the U.S.-led coalition campaign against the Islamic State was “having some success” provoked the ire of the Arizona Republican in a mid-October interview, with congressional mid-term elections weeks away.
“It’s the most amazing thing — the spin and the lies out of this White House,” McCain said in an interview last week on the Tyler Cralle Show on 980 WAAV-AM. “It’s unbelievable. This idiot Admiral Kirby was asked, I think yesterday, that said, ‘John McCain says that we are losing, what do you say?’ The guy, you gotta run it, you gotta run it. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blah. I mean, it’s amazing.
“And how can they possibly now, with ISIS taking about two-thirds of the [Syrian] city of Kobani, they’re saying this is effective,” continued McCain, who is next up for reelection in 2016.
McCain’s Kirby name-calling was first reported by BuzzFeed News.
Here’s a text of what Kirby told the Pentagon press corps in an Oct. 15 briefing, according to an official transcript:
Q. What would you say about Senator McCain’s assessment that IS, the Islamic State, is winning and that the U.S.-led coalition is not?
KIRBY. Well, I’m not going to — I would just tell you that we believe that — let me put it this way. It’s going to be a long fight. It’s going to be difficult. There’s going to be setbacks. There’s going to be wins, and there’s going to be losses.
The — we’re mindful of the complicated nature of this. And we’re also very mindful of the fact that — and I’ve said it before — military power, military action is not going to be decisive in and of itself. It’s just not going to work that way.
But the situation changes every day. And so I’m not going to qualify who’s winning or who’s losing today. This is — this — the strategy is still sound, but you don’t judge the success of a strategy based on a day or a week or even several weeks.
We are — we believe — and we’ve said it before — that we’re in this — we all need to be in this for a matter of years. And for us after just a couple of months going at it, we’ve only been doing airstrikes since August 8th, to — to make a decisive, you know, statement that we’re winning or losing — well, I can tell you is that there are — there are areas where we are having success. We have definitely made it harder for ISIL to sustain itself and to operate. They are continuing to feel the pressure, which is one of the reasons why we think they’re going after Kobani so badly.
I mean, I think part of it is they really want a win, because they’re not getting a win everywhere. They are getting pressured inside Iraq. The Iraqi security forces are stiffening themselves around Baghdad, and Baghdad remains secure.
So it’s a mixed picture, Phil. I mean, I don’t mean to ramble, but it’s a mixed picture. And I don’t think it’s — I don’t think it’s militarily — because I can’t speak for, you know, other elements of the government, but, I mean, I’d say, from a military perspective, it does no one any service to try to, you know, make a call on any given day.
We know we’re having some success. We know we’re making progress. But it’s going to take a long time. And just as readily, I’ll say there’s going to be days, there’s going to be moments where we’re set back, and not just — and when I say we, I mean the big we, and not just the United States, but our coalition partners and — and that includes Iraqi security forces.
via John McCain calls Navy 2-star an ‘idiot’ during interview | Military Times | militarytimes.com.
