Sen. McCain: Administration deserves 'scorn,' 'disdain' for pulling out of Iraq

Ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Wednesday suggested President Obama deserves "scorn and disdain" for his decision to order complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq by year's end.

"It is clear that this decision of a complete pullout of United States troops from Iraq was dictated by politics, and not our national security interests," said McCain from the Senate floor. "I believe history will judge this president’s leadership with the scorn and disdain it deserves.”

McCain, who ran against Obama for the White House in 2008, famously remarked in that campaign that he would not object to maintaining a U.S. troop presence in the year for "a hundred years." 

The senior senator from Arizona also criticized Obama for failing to acknowledge in a speech he made at Fort Bragg on Wednesday that the end of the Iraq War had come about as a direct result of former President Bush's surge strategy — a policy which Obama vehemently opposed as senator.

"All I will say is that, for three years, the president has been harvesting the successes of the very strategy that he consistently dismissed as a failure," said McCain. "I imagine this irony was not lost on a few of our troops at Fort Bragg today, most of whom deployed and fought as part of the surge."

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