From the beginning, John McCain has been the strongest Senate supporter of invading Iraq to replace Saddam Hussein with the famously corrupt and double-crossing Ahmed Chalabi.

• In November 1997, he announced on Fox News that it had been a mistake not to oust Saddam during the first Gulf War of 1991 under George Bush I, and he called upon the Clinton administration to set up an Iraqi government in exile.
• In the fall of 1998 - in the face of opposition from both the Pentagon and the State Department - McCain co-sponsored the Iraq Liberation Act, which committed the United States to overthrowing Saddam's regime and to funding opposition groups. McCain welcomed Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), to Washington and pressured the administration to give him money. When General Anthony Zinni cast doubt upon the effectiveness of the Iraqi opposition, McCain rebuked him at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. 
• In 2000, McCain was Chalabi’s favored candidate in the 2000 election since Chalabi knew that he would be able to free up the $97 million in military aid plus millions pushed through in Congress and earmarked for Chalabi’s exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, but held up by the Clinton State Department.
• In the fall and winter of 2002, when the Bush administration was lying about the threat posed by Iraq, McCain put himself squarely on the side of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and the neoconservatives. Like them, McCain evinced a blithe optimism about America's ability to transform Iraq. Asked by Chris Matthews in March 2003 whether the Iraqis would treat Americans as liberators, McCain replied, "Absolutely, absolutely." Echoing The Weekly Standard, he also promoted the most alarmist versions of the threat posed by Saddam, insisting that "Saddam Hussein is on a crash course to construct a nuclear weapon" and that "the interaction we know to have occurred between members of Al Qaeda and Saddam's regime may increasingly take the form of active cooperation to target the United States." And he indulged wildly optimistic scenarios about how the war might liberalize the Middle East, arguing that "regime change in Iraq" could result in "demand for self-determination" throughout the region.
• In April 2003, with Saddam's military crumbling, McCain signed a letter with four other Republican senators complaining that Chalabi's INC was not being funded. Appearing on "Good Morning America," he argued for "bringing in Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress as soon as possible."

When the invasion of Iraq turned into a disastrous occupation, McCain became its strongest defender. Now McCain claims to be the strongest critic of Bush's mismanagement of the Iraq War.

• Video: McCain's Double Talk Express: A Day At The Beach

Timeline:

• 2/12/08: “The argument is really almost insulting to one’s intelligence to say how long we’re in Iraq,” McCain said, noting that the U.S. has maintained thousands of troops in Germany, South Korea and Japan for decades. But no American soldiers were killed during those occupations, while 50-100 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq every month since the invasion.