After responding earlier through a press release to the statements by Sen. John Kerry and Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, the McCain campaign held a conference call with reporters that cast McCain's statement --that the troop level in Iraq was down to pre-surge levels -- as verb tense nit-picking.

"It is the essence of semantics," said Randy Scheunemann, McCain's senior foreign policy adviser. "We are having this call about a verb tense. ... Had he said we had drawn down, he'd be accurate. Had he said we were drawing down, he'd be accurate."

McCain's fellow Arizona Senator, Jon Kyl, was also on the call and said: "The Obama campaign is trying to nit-pick the tense of the verb about the surge troops being home. The surge troops will be home by the end of July."

Kyl said he checked with the Pentagon this morning, and that "it is absolutely the case, the decisions have been made to draw down to pre-surge levels, so we are in fact doing that."

This is the response we posted earlier from the McCain campaign:

Clearly John Kerry and Barack Obama have very little understanding of troop levels, but considering Barack Obama hasn't been to Iraq in 873 days and has never had a one on one meeting with General Petraeus, it isn't a surprise to anyone that he demonstrates weak leadership. What informed people understand, John McCain included, is that American troops are not even close to Surge levels. Three of the five Army 'Surge' brigades have been withdrawn and additional Marines that were initially deployed for the 'Surge' have come home as well -- the remaining two brigades will be home in July. Talk about a political stunt, it's sending out campaign surrogates to parse words about a topic Barack Obama has no experience with, and has shown zero interest in learning about. -- Tucker Bounds, John McCain 2008