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I'm not sure how important knowing when the Anbar Awakening is, seriously, I don't have any idea, but it seems to me that McCain is responding to the the sense of the question diminishing the role of US forces and instead crediting Sunnis and Iraqi Security forces.
I tend to agree with McCain that it's the presence of more US forces rather than domestic improvements that's gotten the results that Couric mentions, but certainly both together have proven more effective that what preceded them. Interestingly, the Iraqi government is apparently moving against the groups involved with the Anbar Awakening, according to my wikipedia search of 10 minutes ago, so perhaps there's a flaw with assuming that the things would have worked out okay had they alone been given more time to work.
Sure, it's an error to suggest that the surge happened first, but I'm not sure why it's a disqualifying error, unless you're kind of desperately looking for a reason to claim that McCain is the guy who didn't know what he was doing in terms of predicting what would happen with the surge.
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