John McCain, Arizona Senator and candidate for the Republican Party's presidential nomination, will be in the Grand Rapids area on Wednesday for a fundraiser held in between appearances held as part of his so-called "Straight Talk Express" tour. McCain will speak at the Ada home of J. Christopher Beckering of Grubb & Ellis|Paramount who is a member of McCain's Michigan Finance Team. Beckering has contributed $2,300 to McCain's campaign and has been identified as a "bundler"--a person who funnels money from multiple people into campaigns by pooling contributions--by Public Citizen.

The last time Media Mouse looked at McCain's campaign when it visited West Michigan in April of 2007. At that time, McCain had just delivered a major policy speech on Iraq and had recently returned from the country. During his visit to Iraq, McCain staged a media stunt featuring him walking through the supposedly "safe" country. Shortly after his walk was reported in the US media, it came out that his ability to "walk freely" in Baghdad was dependent on an escort of ground troops and air support from the United States military.

Since April, McCain has continued to make his support for the ongoing occupation of Iraq a major issue. Yesterday on McCain's website, five out of six "In the News" items highlighted McCain's support for the war. McCain continues to talk about his Iraq policy as being a policy of "No Surrender" and prominently features that text and logo throughout his website and uses it to describe some of his speaking events on Iraq. At the same time, McCain continues to solicit signatures for a "No Surrender" petition that calls on visitors to support General Petraeus' counter-insurgency strategy by signing to "fight to let this strategy continue to succeed and against a date for surrender." The petition further describes the Iraq plans of the Democratic presidential candidates as "defeatist." In the articles linked on the front page of his website, McCain says that "we are succeeding" in Iraq in what he asserts is a "conflict between good and evil, between forces of radical Islamic extremism that is trying to destroy America and everything we believe in," that things in Iraq are "dramatically better," and that "if it keeps going like this, you're going to see Americans coming home in six to seven months."

On his website, McCain articulates what he terms is a "Strategy for Victory" in Iraq. This strategy includes several components including bolstering the troops on the ground, extending a new counterinsurgency strategy, strengthening the Iraqi armed forces and police, pursuing "political progress," keeping senior officers in place in Iraq, soliciting international pressure on Syria and Iran, and an effort to "win the homefront." Interestingly, McCain appears to call for more troops than are present with the current "surge." McCain asserts that "a precipitous U.S. withdrawal would condemn Iraq to civil war and intervention by its neighbors and energize al Qaeda and other jihadists across the globe" although he offers no evidence to support his assertion. He argues that the United States should "bolster its regional military posture to make clear to Iran our determination to protect our forces in Iraq and to deter Iranian intervention in that country." Finally, McCain draws connections between 9/11 and the Iraq War and argues that people must understand this to support the war:

"The war in Iraq is at a crossroads and the future of the entire region is at stake - a region that produced the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11 and where much of the world's energy supplies are located. Success is essential to creating peace in the region, and failure would expose the United States to national security threats for generations. Defeat in the war would lead to much more violence in Iraq, greatly embolden Iran, undermine U.S. allies such as Israel, likely lead to wider conflict, result in a terrorist safe haven in the heart of the Middle East, and gravely damage U.S. credibility throughout the world."

McCain's website also prominently features the idea that the Iraq War is about "Fighting Islamic Extremists." His campaign prominently features a timeline of McCain's statements on Iraq beginning with an August 2003 appearance on Meet the Press during which McCain called for more military resources in Iraq and concluding with his May 2007 assertion that the war was mismanaged and that mistakes must now be fixed. The majority of the quotes show that McCain advocated for more troops on the ground in Iraq since 2003 and has supported President George W. Bush's escalation of the war--often called "the surge"--since it was announced in January of 2003. McCain's page on "the surge--titled "the McCain Surge"--concludes with the sentence "Today, our new counterinsurgency campaign is showing signs of success, and John McCain believes we can still prevail in Iraq if Washington politicians exercise resolve not panic." Nowhere does McCain explain what is mean by "Islamic Extremists."

Of course, the most important omission from McCain's website is any discussion of what the Iraqis want or the effects of the war on Iraqis. There is no mention of the estimated 1.2 million Iraqi civilians that have been killed, the 4.4 million displaced Iraqis or the environmental effects of the war. Moreover, McCain never considers the legality of the war under international law. At the same time, McCain's positive assessment of the war relies primarily on what he has heard from administration, government, and military sources and ignores debate over whether or not violence has really decreased in Iraq. Similarly, Iraqis who are polled about their attitudes towards the occupation consistently express their wish for the occupation to end.