Claire McCaskill was on CNN this morning for an interview. Not a single word was said about Missouri, the Midwest, or even the United States. Instead it was Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.

I especially liked the part where McCaskill claims that “two years, give or take some months” is not a deadline. Funny, to me that sounds like a deadline of 2 years and “some months.”

Setting a soft deadline for withdrawal, however, will have exactly the same effect as withdrawing immediately. Telling the Iraqi government that we’re going to remove our military presence is not going to suddenly make them more capable. If they don’t have the muscle to forcibly disarm violent militias, then they’re certainly not going to have it without US backing. Some people think we need to just withdraw from Iraq in order to ease the burden on our military and ready ourselves to react to other potential threats - and I think there is merit to that argument. Regardless, that position should be stated clearly as a withdrawal.

Even the Wall Street Journal is taking note of McCaskill’s fuzzy commitments,

“When it comes to elaboration, however, the positions she takes don’t so much straddle the political divide on national security as occupy both sides of it. On Iraq, she doesn’t support a timetable for withdrawal, but told us that the Bush administration should “privately” tell the Iraqi government the U.S. will pull out, eventually. On North Korea, she opposes rewarding Kim Jong Il with bilateral talks, but blasts the president for a general “aversion” to direct talks. On terrorist surveillance, she supports wiretapping international calls of suspected terrorists, just not the way President Bush has gone about it. And so on.”

To me, this only confirms my earlier suspicions that Mrs. McCaskill will say whatever she thinks will get her elected - which leaves no one knowing what she will do if she’s actually elected.