    They strongly supported the illegal US invasion and
occupation of Iraq, and many opposed the 2011 US withdrawal from
that country. McCain admitted that some of the pettiness toward
Hagel derived from grudges over his break with George W. Bush:
“There’s a lot of ill will toward Sen. Hagel because when he was
a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly, at one
point said he was the worst president since Herbert Hoover, said
the surge (of U.S. troops in Iraq) was the worst blunder since
the Vietnam War, which is nonsense, and was anti-his own party
and people.”  I think Herbert Hoover was a very fine president
compared to George W. Bush, and so does McCain. That is, McCain
privately agrees with Hagel on this issue, and is slamming him
in part because he is guilty over his own inability to live up
to his ideal of party loyalty. As for Bush’s war on Iraq, the
crackpot notion that the entire enterprise was anything but an
epochal failure that left hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead
and millions displ