John McCain won the Republican nomination because he's nuts on Iraq.  8 years ago he would have been a tough candidate, this year he's running against 2/3 of the country.  I'm going to love watching the Republican meltdown when they lose the presidency, some of the party will blame McCain for not being conservative enough, the other part will try to move in a more liberal direction, realizing they are hopelessly out of touch with the country.  Get the popcorn ready.

100 Years in Iraq (TM)

Spread the word...

My guess is that he will follow the example of his minder, Lieberman, and lie to the voters about his plans.  He will talk of Iraqis standing up, us standing down, accelerated training, etcs., all a lie.

John McCain is scheduled to deliver a major foreign policy speech Wednesday in Los Angeles, one with a heavy Iraq focus

It may be that this address is designed to be the opening salvo in a drumbeat for an attack on Iran.  Notice the way McCain has stuck with his counterintuitive  Al Qaeda-in-Iran formulation.  Notice too the way the US military has now declared that "rockets" (in addition to EFP roadside bombs) are a "signature" weapon of groups of the Mahdi army being supplied by Iran. If you accept that it follows that Iran is behind all the recent attacks on the Green Zone. 

Also there is the claim we have not chosen to break the cease fire because only members of the Mahdi army  being rounded up are those from the Iran-linked "special groups"  who have never observed the cease fire.

So then the question would be why has Al Sadr chosen to end the cease fire if only people who do not really listen to him are being targeted.  The fact that he probably is himself in Iran will be used to suggest he has become just a cat's paw of the Iranians who want to give America a black eye in Iraq.

If Petraeus together with Bush/Cheney/McCain have made a decision to generate a reason to attack Iran that could explain a decision to unleash Maliki et al. on the Mahdi Army.  They would not take much convincing given the approaching regional elections.

But even if the decision to start this crisis was made in Washington, that does not mean that we can control the outcome.  This ploy might work too well. Because if things really fall apart in Iraq Bush might suddenly find a very large amount of resistance in the US military establishment to the idea of attacking Iran.  It is one thing to follow the commander in chief and start a conflict that he orders but it is quite another thing to, at a time when you have 150,000 troops in the field at the end of a potentially vulnerable supply line to accept new orders which you feel puts those troops at significant and unnecessary risk.

If there are officers that feel that way perhaps the upcoming Petraeus report designed to bring us the good news about the surge would be a time to put some of them on the hot seat before congress and ask them under oath to tell us how they feel an attack on Iran would affect the situation of our forces in Iraq.

In fairness, we are still "in" South Korea, and we are still "in" Germany.  Depends on what the meaning of "in" is.

No comments on JM and foreign policy, or any of the other positions he takes I strongly disagree with.

I don't think they seem to matter to most voters and many Democrats.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/articl e/0,8599,1725514,00.html  Hillary will take this on and on and on right into a miserable convention.  The superdelegates, who are able to act in concert right now for either candidate, are too fearful of the consequences, which makes them fairly useless.

Apparently, no matter what, the primary is going to last forever.  Democrats are going to vote for JM out of sheer pissiness, Clinton is going to do whatever it takes to make sure the ugliness of the primary stays front page the whole way.  We are going to lose.  We are.  There is no way of countering the current reporting of our chaos with McCain's low-key appeal and come out winning.  People are tired of the psychodrama.  At this point all I can do is watch and clench my teeth and think maybe we deserve this.

That much is clear. Mc-Cain will be our new president, no matter how many gaffes he makes. Hillary is intent to chase every low educated democrat into the arms of McCain with her race baiting (intelligent democrats no better and see trough it) so she can run again in 2012.

Its' up to both superdelegates and Democrats if she allows that to happen.

McCain's counterargument that retreat and surrender is not an option is much better than the DNC argument for withdrawal.

Obama or Clinton should pick a winning argument before going into a debate with McCain in the fall.

One of the things that made me want to pull my hair out about John Kerry was his inability to articulate simple ideas. "I voted for it before I voted against it" was only one of his horrible statements.

Any effective communicator would have been able to say something like "I voted for the troop funding, but then the Republicans added a lot of bad provisions that I couldn't accept."

One good thing about this year is that both of the remaining contestants for the nomination are sharp, effective communicators who won't take Republican attacks lying down.

(And yes, I know that each of them has flaws. Each one has strengths. This post is not an invitation for the fanatics and haters that have found this blog to launch.)

If you get your wish and McCain wins, he may do it in the mother of all "lonely landslides."