Since asserting earlier in the campaign that he would be fine with the US having troops in Iraq for 100 years, Sen. McCain has insisted that he was talking about a Korea-like peaceful deployment -- not a deployment in which troops would be getting killed.
Now, however, comments surface from three years ago in which McCain pretty explicitly rejects the idea of any long-term Korea-like presence. From an interview on MSNBC: "I would hope that we could bring them all home. I would hope that we would probably leave some military advisers, as we have in other countries, to help them with their training and equipment and that kind of stuff."
In the narrow sense, his whole explanation for his 100-year remark evaporates. It leaves him with the absurd position that the US must keep fighting and accepting casualties for an indefinite period so that eventually the country is pacified and a Korea-like occupation that he opposes can begin.
In the broader sense, it suggests that McCain -- while posturing as if he's like some kind of national security savant -- has no fixed idea better than anyone else of what to do, changing his mind but never letting his previous wrongness intrude on his sense of his own competence.
And he is, of course, not the only candidate that takes that view of themself.