It's not a myth, really. In the beginning of this year, President Bush, at the advice of Gen. David Patraeus, sent 30,000 more troops into Iraq to try to quell some of the violence there. At the time, Rolling Stone reported that the surge is not what people believe it to be. To be honest, John McCain is right that the surge worked: violence has gone down. But it hasn't gone down because of an increased troop presence:

The U.S. has not only added 30,000 more troops in Iraq -- it has essentially bribed the opposition, arming the very Sunni militants who only months ago were waging deadly assaults on American forces. To engineer a fragile peace, the U.S. military has created and backed dozens of new Sunni militias, which now operate beyond the control of Iraq's central government. The Americans call the units by a variety of euphemisms: Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias prefer a simpler and more dramatic name: They call themselves Sahwa, or "the Awakening."

That's right: the U.S. government is paying Sunni militias to join their side. That's your "surge." Sadly, it's the same strategy the government has used again and again, including when the U.S. backed a group of mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan, which including a younger Osama bin Laden. Back then, they were our best friends because they fought guerilla battles against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Then we promptly abandoned them. And the rest is history.