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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Senator Obama was in London this morning, and he was responding to your comments from yesterday when you said that 16 months might be a pretty good timetable in Iraq.
He said, "We're pleased to see that there's been some convergence around proposals we've been making for a year-and-a-half."
SEN JOHN MCCAIN: That's really good. Look, it's not a timetable, as I said. I was asked, how does that sound? Anything sounds good to me, but...
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you never used the word before.
MCCAIN: ... you know, the point is...
STEPHANOPOULOS: You made a point of never using...
MCCAIN: ... I never...
STEPHANOPOULOS: ... the word before.
MCCAIN: Look, I have always said, and I said then, it's the conditions on the ground. If Senator Obama had had his way, we'd have been out last March, and we'd been out in defeat and chaos, and probably had to come back again because of Iranian influence.
It's conditions on the ground -- the way that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, the way that General Petraeus has said -- conditions on the ground, so that the Iraqi government can have control, can have the sufficient security, so that we don't have to come back. Senator Obama said that if his date didn't work, we may have to come back.
We're not coming home in victory. We're coming home in victory.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But it does seem...
MCCAIN: But it is a -- it is not a date. I want to make it very clear to you, it is not a date. It's conditions on the ground.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you shouldn't have used the word timetable.
MCCAIN: Pardon me?
STEPHANOPOULOS: You shouldn't have used the word timetable.
MCCAIN: I didn't use the word timetable. That I did -- if I did...
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