John McCain is neither stupid nor senile nor a compulsive liar. He’s just much misunderstood, that’s all.

Talking to Katie Couric the other day, he innocently used the word “surge” in the context of Iraq, never for a moment imagining that everyone would understand him to be referring to the surge, when he only meant a surge.

Kate Couric: Senator McCain, Senator Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What’s your response to that?

McCain: I don’t know how you respond to something that is as– such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane [phonetic] was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that’s just a matter of history.

In fact, the possibility of being misunderstood was so far from his mind that he didn’t even think to explain which surge he meant. Didn’t occur to him for a moment that there might be any confusion. Didn’t even occur to him that Couric may have been asking about the surge, and not a surge.

For two days, while the story raged around him, it may also not have occurred to him which surge he meant, but now two days later, he’s got his explanation together. And it’s a doozy. Fittingly enough, this insult to our intelligence was delivered “in the cheese aisle of a Bethlehem, Pa., grocery store yesterday”.

Just for the record, the surge was announced by Bush in January 2007. The Anbar awakening begain in the summer of 2006. And now, over to Senator John “I sh*t you not” McCain, for a surge:

McCain: First of all, a surge is really a counterinsurgency strategy, and it’s made up of a number of components. And this counterinsurgency was initiated to some degree by Colonel McFarland in Anbar province relatively on his own. When I visited with him in December of 2006, he had already initiated that strategy in Ramadi by going in and clearing and holding in certain places. That is a counterinsurgency. And he told me at that time that he believed that that strategy, which is, quote, the surge, part of the surge, would be successful. So then, of course, it was very clear that we needed additional troops in order to carry out this counterinsurgency.

Prior to that, they had been going into places, killing people or not killing people, and then withdrawing. And the new counterinsurgency — surge — entailed clearing and holding, which Colonel McFarland had already started doing. And then of course later on there were additional troops, and General Petraeus has said that the surge would not have worked and the Anbar Awakening would not have taken place successfully if they hadn’t had an increase in the number of troops. So I’m not sure, frankly, that people really understand that a surge is part of a counterinsurgency strategy, which means going in, clearing, holding, building a better life, providing services to the people, and then clearly a part of that, an important part of it, was additional troops to help ensure the safety of the sheikhs, to regain control of Ramadi, which was a very bloody fight, and then the surge continued to succeed, and that counterinsurgency.

Q: So when you say ‘surge’, then you’re not referring just to the one that President Bush initiated; you’re saying it goes back several months before that?

Yes, and again, because of my visits to Iraq, I was briefed by Colonel McFarland in December of 2006 where he outlined what was succeeding there in this counterinsurgency strategy which we all know of now as the surge.”

Just in case you were too hypnotized by McCain’s captivating rhetoric to notice, the crux of McCain’s “it all makes sense if you suspend disbelief and you squint just so” timeline is the argument that the counterinsurgency strategy which is the surge (McFarland’s surge) began well before the number of troops in Iraq actually, you know, surged.

It doesn’t matter how obvious it is to anyone watching or hearing or reading the original exchange with Couric that McCain clearly thought that the Anbar awakening came after Bush’s surge. He’s concocted this drivel to “explain” himself, and that’s his story, and he’s going to stick to it. (Because all of us are mindless cretins. Or maybe McCain is only shooting for the mindless cretin vote at this point.)