Speaking of George Zimmerman, Here's Ol' Man McCain and Lindsey Graham On the Warpath.

Forget the unabomber.  America's moved on and filled Ted Kaczynski's shoes with the duobombers.  That's right, old man McCain and his longtime girlfriend, Lindsey Graham.

These geezers think calling off the aerial shitstorm planned for Iran Syria is a big mistake.

In a statement released on Saturday, McCain and Graham said the deal would give the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, time "to delay and deceive" while the country's civil war continued.

The statement said: "It requires a willful suspension of disbelief to see this agreement as anything other than the start of a diplomatic blind alley, and the Obama administration is being led into it by Bashar Assad and [Russian president] Vladimir Putin." 

Why don't they take these two old farts, strap tail fins to their ankles, and bomb Syria with them?

McCain Sells Soul, Saves Ass in Arizona

One-time hero and cranky old man John McCain has shown that it's possible to save your political career in American politics if you're willing to ditch all the principles you once championed.

When he sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 in a failing campaign against a total dud, George W. Bush, McCain preached tolerance and moderation, denouncing extremism.  Bush hammered McCain with truly sleazy campaign dirty tricks.   For years afterward the Arizona senator worked across the aisle to promote immigration reform, campaign finance reform and measures to combat climate change.

And then an open-mouth radio nutjob, JD Hayworth, did what Vietnamese torturers couldn't - he got McCain to grovel and abandon everything he once stood for.   Out with immigration reform, ditch campaign finance reform, nix that nonsense about global warming.   Out with all those principles, in with Lee Atwater-style campaigning.

Once McCain jettisoned his integrity he managed to float up to meet his Tea Party challenger and even pass the guy entirely.   Arizona voters went to McCain by a handy margin.   After all it was a no-lose proposition - Hayworth values in a McCain skin.

Aw, Grandpa! Another McCain Senior's Moment

Poor old John McCain, getting dumber by the day.

Yesterday, on FOX News, McCain came to the defence of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's gaffe about 9/11 terrorists entering the United States through Canada. Even though Napolitano had already apologized for her mistake, it didn't stop McCain from putting both left feet in his mouth: "Well, some of the 9/11 hijackers did come through Canada, as you know."

Coming from a guy who believes Shiite Iran fosters Sunni al-Qaeda and that Iraq borders Afghanistan and that the American economy should be entrusted to Phil Gramm, I guess this delusion is to be expected.

Thank god this guy didn't become president.

Grampa Ditches BGFF Sarah

Back in the day - all of six weeks ago - she was prime, Grade A, presidential material. In public at least, John McCain couldn't say enough good things about Sarah Palin. So you would think Grampa would jump at the chance to endorse his understudy for her own presidential bid in 2012, right? Not so much.

Thank God He Lost

I've been chided for being ungenerous, unduly harsh to McCain in his concession. I still don't see it that way.

John McCain ran a very dangerous, very dirty campaign. His campaign was tinged with racism, no question about it. Visible minorities in the United States had no doubt about that. McCain did just about everything that resonated with the Republican "base" that remains anchored firmly in the white vote from the slave states.

Here's a question. Imagine what America might look like this morning had McCain won. Try to imagine what non-white Americans would have made of a "rust belt/sun belt" victory. I think a McCain victory would have been a huge setback in race relations in America. McCain could have left America more divided than Bush ever did.

That is the campaign John McCain chose to run and he did it against the urging of moderate Republicans, the very group that now inherits the job of restoring their party's integrity. He joined the same people he rebuked in 2000, he became one of them. Because he joined them he couldn't find issues that resonated with decent America so he resorted to smear politics, a stench that would have been everywhere this morning had McCain won.

John McCain campaigned under the motto "Country First." Too bad he didn't mean it.

"A Vile Smear" - Senator J.S. McCain - the Angry Nut In the Shell

It's too bad it only reaches people who read, but the Washington Post has roundly denounced John "Lowball" McCain's latest attempt to smear Barack Obama over his acquaintance with Rashid Khalidi.

Although Khalidi is a native born American, graduate of Yale and long time professor at the University of Chicago, McCain and his wretched sidekick, are using the incredible power of the bigotry of their supporters to allege that, once again, Obama has been caught palling around with terrorists. Of course it's a lie, of course they know it, and, of course, it works with the two-legged malignancies who crave this garbage.

"We don't agree with a lot of what Mr. Khalidi has had to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the years, and Mr. Obama has made clear that he doesn't, either. But to compare the professor to neo-Nazis -- or even to Mr. Ayers -- is a vile smear.

"Perhaps unsurprising for a member of academia, Mr. Khalidi holds complex views. In an article published this year in the Nation magazine, he scathingly denounced Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and U.S. Middle East policy but also condemned Palestinians for failing to embrace a nonviolent strategy. He said that the two-state solution favored by the Bush administration (and Mr. Obama) was "deeply flawed" but conceded there were also "flaws in the alternatives." Listening to Mr. Khalidi can be challenging -- as Mr. Obama put it in the dinner toast recorded on the 2003 tape and reported by the Times in a detailed account of the event last April, he "offers constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases."

"Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position. To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable -- especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults.

"...We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over." That's good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign's increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks."

It's sad really. John McCain, a man whose stock in trade for decades has been his supposed nobility, chucking it all away to wallow in slime.

The Delusional Warrior

The world really doesn't need this guy in the White House

McCain Goes All In - Even His Integrity Is On The Line

John McCain will do anything, say anything to defeat Barack Obama and win the White House and he's willing to sacrifice everything, including what remains of his dignity and integrity.

It's sad really to see a guy who's built this legendary image based on an ordeal in a North Vietnamese POW camp four decades ago show just how little that truly matters - to himself. Here's a hint - if it doesn't matter to John McCain, it shouldn't matter to anyone else either.

And it doesn't matter to John McCain. Heroes don't dive into the gutter. I've had the privilege of meeting and knowing a few real heroes. They're all dead now. One was a true "Knight of the Air," two others were ground pounders. They all had one thing in common. They didn't try to wear their heroism on their sleeve - they were extremely private - and they always stood tall.

John McCain has traded on his heroism. He's exhausted it, reminding all who'll listen of it with an implied suggestion that someone owes him the presidency because of an event largely beyond his control forty years ago.

Heroism doesn't wear well for very long when it's flown like a flag in public. Maybe that's something real heroes instinctively understand. There's something disingenuous in tossing it up in the air for people to watch again and again.

But when you couple the political marketing of heroism with slimeball, gutter politics, the aura combusts like white phosphorous exposed to oxygen. All you're left with is ashy residue. And I guess that's an apt metaphor for John McCain, 2008.

This campaign will cost John McCain more than his last shot at the US presidency. He will have also forfeited his dignity and his integrity. He won't be the first hero to turn bum and he won't be the last. At least he won't have to spend time in the Crowbar Hotel like his fellow Vietnam hero and Republican compatriot, the former senator Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

It Only Took 161-Years. The Chicago Trib Endorses Obama!

When you're a Republican and you can't score the Chicago Tribune's endorsement, you're doing something very, very wrong.

Bad enough that John McCain gets turned into Grade A, Horse's Ass meat on the Letterman show, now it's this. And he's lost the LA Times and the Chicago Sun (circa 1844) endorsement to boot as they too have come out for Obama. The Los Angeles Times, apparently, hasn't endorsed a candidate from either side since Christ was a corporal.

To have the ChiTown Tribune turn on you is unequivocal proof that you've committed Republican apostasy. Once you've lost mainstream, conservative newspapers all you're left with are the rabid degenos like NewsMax and FoxNews and the open mouth hate mongers, the Hannityh-Limbaugh lowlife. I'm sure that wouldn't bother Sarah Palin but it has to hurt a guy like McCain with his very patrician Republican roots going back more than three generations.

Somewhere inside John McCain this has to be gnawing away as he watches his most prized possession, his notional integrity, steadily washed away.

John McCain's Brain Drain

America has landed in an economic crisis and John McCain's approach is precisely the same as what he did during the Savings & Loan scandal that nearly ended his political career.

William Black, former deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, told Huffington Post's Seth Colter Walls that McCain is making the same mistakes he made with Charles Keating and Lincoln Savings & Loan:

"In the S&L crisis, he took his advice from the worst [kind of] criminal. Charles Keating is the person he went to for his policy advice," Black said. "Now, he certainly is getting advice from Phil Gramm, Carly Fiorina, Rick Davis -- the whole group of economic and top political advisers are lobbyist types. He just doesn't seem to get it, ever, that the advice is going to favor their clients. Even if they just stop being lobbyists, you can't just turn that off instantly. It's their mind state that develops. ... The biggest lesson is that, when you deregulate and de-supervise, you create an environment where control fraud emerges. You hyper-inflate bubbles; you get criminalization."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/01/mccain-repeating-keating_n_130612.html

It "Kind of Doesn't Matter"

John McCain says she could just be the next Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton. Yes, McCain did say that about his sidekick, Sarah Palin. See, I told you the guy just gets goofier by the day.

And now for something completely different. Oh, sorry, that was the other Palin, the one with a functioning brain.

Sarah Palin says it kind'a doesn't matter what causes global warming.

"I'm not going to solely blame all of man's activities on changes in climate because the world's weather patterns are cyclical, and over history we have seen changes there."

"But it kind of doesn't matter at this point in the debate what caused it. The point is it's real, we need do something about it."

Okay, maybe Palin was just having a Reagan moment or a McCain "senior" moment but, still, for a journalism grad - the only one I've ever heard of who had to go to five universities to get her bachelor's degree - and a local TV sports broadcaster to boot - that's pretty bad grammar.

So, we can't "solely blame all of man's activities on changes in climate." Of course you can't, Sarah. That's why your country still has capital punishment. It climate change was solely to blame for all of man's activities, including armed robberies and murders, why you might have to electrocute clouds (you'll never get a needle to work on cumulus).

Did anyone see the footage where Katie Couric asked her where she got her information on world affairs? She said she reads magazines. Couric asked what magazines. Palin said, "oh, I read'em all." Like what, Sarah? Try to name at least one, something maybe that doesn't rhyme with Cosmo. She couldn't (or wouldn't) come up with the name of one magazine that she reads. Maybe she's smart enough to realize that People doesn't count.

Meanwhile, head drover, John S. McCain took time out to mix it up with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register. From McClatchey Newspapers:

"...He bristled when accus[ed] of running false charges against his opponent in ads, defending them as "100% accurate" and going beyond that saying in his entire career he had been wholly accurate in all matters.

McCain also replied sharply when asked about the qualifications of his running mate, declaring that he "uncategorically" believed she was fully capable, citing her years as mayor and governor -- and even at the PTA. Going well beyond poll results, he stated that the American public "overwhelmingly" embraced her. A new Pew survey finds today that 51% of Americans now believe that Palin is unqualified, up from 37% after her announcement.

A full report and videos are at the paper's site:http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081001/NEWS09/810010377&theme=CAMPAIGN_2008

Top McCain Aide Really, Really Outed

John McCain's problems with campaign manager Rick Davis just keep getting worser and worser.

First there was the problem of Davis serving as an influence peddler to the now ruined mortgage giant, Freddie Mac.

McCain's first line of defence was to claim that Davis had cut his ties with FMac long before he joined the campaign.

Then it came out that, right up to death's doorstep, Freddie Mac kept paying $15,000 per month to Davis' old "consulting" firm, Davis Manafort.
That's Davis (as in Rick) Manafort.

McCain's next line of defence was to claim that his campaign manager had also cut his ties with Davis Manafort before joining the senator's campaign. The reality there was that Rick Davis had supposedly resigned from Davis Manafot but.. there's always a but... he retained his equity interest in the firm.

McCain's people lashed out like cornered rats at The New York Times for leaking that one. But now the Rick Davis calamity is back, this time courtesy of Newsweek.

It goes like this. If Rick Davis severed his ties with Davis Manafort when he joined the McCain campaign, why did he ask that his $20,000 a month campaign salary be paid directly to Davis Manafort? From Newsweek:

"The McCain campaign told reporters the fees were irrelevant because Davis "separated from his consulting firm … in 2006," according to the campaign's Web site, and he stopped drawing a salary from it. In fact, however, when Davis joined the campaign in January 2007, he asked that his $20,000-a-month salary be paid directly to Davis Manafort, two sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal campaign business told NEWSWEEK. Federal campaign records show the McCain campaign paid Davis Manafort $90,000 through July 2007, when a cash crunch prompted Davis and other top campaign officials to forgo their salaries and work as volunteers. Separately, another entity created and partly owned by Davis—an Internet firm called 3eDC, whose address was the same office building as Davis Manafort's—received payments from the McCain campaign for Web services, collecting $971,860 through March 2008.

In an e-mail to NEWSWEEK, a senior McCain official said that when the campaign began last year, it signed a contract with Davis Manafort 'in which we purchased all of [Davis's] time, and he agreed not to work for any other clients.'"

So which is it. Is John McCain no longer capable of discerning the truth or just incapable of telling the truth?

Sixes and Sevens and Nines...

Is John McCain the riverboat gambler of the 2008 US presidential elections?

He took a gambler's gut instinct roll on his choice of running-mate, Sarah Palin.

"Always in a hurry, I never stop to worry,

Dont you see the time flashin by.

Honey, got no money,

Im all sixes and sevens and nines.

Say now, baby, Im the rank outsider,

You can be my partner in crime.

But baby, I cant stay,

You got to roll me and call me the tumblin,

Roll me and call me the tumblin dice."

John McCain Slammed - by John McCain

OMG - The Old Fart IS Delusional

John McCain gets goofier by the day. He'll say anything that suits him at the moment and, to be charitable, he probably can't tell fact from fiction any longer. The guy who would be POTUS has completely lost touch with reality. Here he is discussing why Palin is capable to handle national security issues:



Palin knows more about energy than anybody else in America?

Last week, Sarah Palin told Charlie Gibson of ABC News that her state, Alaska, produced "nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy." She only overstated that about six fold. Alaska actually produces 3.5% of America's domestic supply of energy, ranking ninth behind Pennsylvania.

This begs the question of the veep would-be's educational background. After all, she has precious little real experience and is astonishingly ignorant of her own government's policies. Well, relax, she has a degree. From WikiAnswers:

She received her bachelor's degree in journalism and attended five schools before graduating: University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hawaii Pacific University, North Idaho College, University of Idaho, Matanuska-Susitna College, and University of Idaho again.

Five schools to get a lousy journalism degree? My, that's certainly impressive. Of course look at the current veep - he scored five draft deferments to keep his ass safely out of harm's way in Vietnam. Is five their lucky number?

McCain - Goofier By The Day

John McCain has turned into the guy who fell out of the Stupid Tree and hit every branch on the way down.


For weeks and weeks McCain has insisted that the fundamentals of the American economy are strong, strong enough in fact to make permanent the Bush tax cuts for the rich despite the government's debt crisis.


Now that Fannie and Freddy have been nationalized, Merril Lynch snapped up and Lehman Brothers tossed into the latrine the Old Fool is dancing around trying to squirm out of it. From Salon.com:


On NBC's "Today" show, Matt Lauer, from the floor of the New "bloodbath" and asked Mr. McCain how he could say that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" while his campaign released an ad saying that the economy is in crisis. "Clarify this for me," Mr. Lauer said. "It doesn't seem as if both things can be true."

Mr. McCain replied by saying that when he spoke about the fundamentals of the economy, he was referring to the workers -- which is different from how he has described the term before.

"Well it's obviously true that the workers of America are the fundamentals of our economy, and our strength and our future," he said. "And I believe in the American worker, and someone who disagrees with that -- it's fine. We are in crisis. We all know that. The excess, the greed and the corruption of Wall Street have caused us to have a situation which is going to affect every American. We are in a total crisis."

It's hilarious to see McCain rise up against the greed and corruption of Wall Street given that the late, great Merrill Lynch has been his Numero Uno campaign contributor. McCain is up to his Jockey shorts in Wall Street.

And just what has the crusty old bugger been smoking to make him believe that the workers of America are doing all that well? Their government has every American household in hock to the tune of $440,000 (read my earlier post "Right Wing Meltdown"). Savings are at all time lows, debt at all time highs, folks are losing their homes in foreclosures and their jobs to outsourcing.


John McCain is saying whatever comes out of his backside without even trying to reconcile the persistent contradictions. Jeebus, I sure hope the American people aren't dumb enough to put their country's future in the hands of this guy. He's like Dan Quayle minus the intellect.

Steinem on Palin

Another feminist icon has denounced McCain VP nominee, Sarah Palin. This time it's Gloria Steinem. Excerpted from Steinem's op-ed piece in the LA Times:

"This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters.

Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for - and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs."

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience.

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge."

John McCain Gaffe of the Day

Poor old, very old, John McCain has done it again, right on schedule. He just made a public appearance, wife Cindy at his side, when he told the assembled crowd he was urging her to enter the Sturgess bike rally Miss Buffalo Chip Beauty Pageant. McCain quipped she could be a first - an American First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip. Seems McCain's handlers didn't tell him the pageant is a topless contest.

To take your mind off Cindy's plight, here's a little McCain "straight talk" from BraveNewFilms.org:

Dissecting "The Surge"

John McCain clings to "the surge" of US troops into Iraq as proof that 1) America is winning in Iraq and 2) that he's the best man to serve as America's next president.

The success line is built on two facts - the US sent an additional 30,000 soldiers to Iraq and violence in that country subsided. It's highly convenient for McCain to claim that one led to the other, convenient but also highly misleading.

There are a number of reasons for the drop in violence in Iraq but there's also an awful lot of wishful thinking thrown in for good measure by those with a personal stake in the surge.

We know that a major cause for the drop in violence in Baghdad has been the conclusion of ethnic cleansing. The Shiites have taken over the city and the Sunni and other minorities have been "cleansed" to their own, ethnic enclaves. The surge did nothing to stop much less reverse the ethnic cleansing of Iraq's main city.

Another major cause for the drop in violence has to be credited to Muqtada al Sadr who has reined in his powerful Shiite militia, the Mahdi army. The good news is that al Sadr has told his forces to lay low. The bad news is that al Sadr has told his forces to lay low. The fuse on that little bomb may have been put out but the guy holding it still has a pocketful of matches.

Then there's the Sunni resistance which has, at the moment, loaded up with American weapons and American cash to fight their fellow Sunnis, the al-Qaeda terrorists. Now that al-Qaeda has decided to refocus its efforts on Pakistan and Afghanistan, the resistance is pushing on something of an open door. The good news is that the Sunni resistance is winning. The bad news is that the Sunni resistance is winning. You see, the resistance has all along said, quite openly, that they've only called a temporary truce in their battle with the Americas and the Shiite militias. That was enough, however, for the US forces to re-arm, re-equip and heavily fund their once and future adversaries.

If the surge had really worked it would have meant somehow defanging the militias and the resistance. The whole political reconciliation business was intended to lay the groundwork for an end to ethnic violence but that hasn't happened.

The spoiler is America itself. The United States wants Iraq to grant it a near-permanent and autonomous military presence in that country. The Pentagon envisions expanding its existing 32-bases to 60 in total. That, kids, is a clear statement that America has no intention of leaving or even limiting its military dominion over Iraq any time soon. There's a reason why the US has built its largest embassy in the world in Baghdad, on a site bigger than the Vatican itself.

This is a demand that neither Sunni nor Shia can accept. America will need one hell of a lot more than a paltry surge if it incites Arab Iraq to unite and rise up against it.

In Iraq, all eyes are on America. With Obama leading McCain in the polls it probably suits the interests of the Sunni resistance and the Shiite militias to lay low for the time being. Why fight if not fighting is the best way to rid the country of foreign forces? There'll be plenty of time for the Sunni and Shiite to hash out their differences once American forces are gone. Those people aren't going anywhere, are they?

But this is an election year and we're talking about an electorate not very good at digesting nuance. Surge works, mmmm goood! It may even be that John McCain truly believes it's working. After all he believes that Iran is training al-Qaeda and that the terrorists are Shiite, not Sunni, and that Iraq shares a border with Pakistan. This guy doesn't know which way is up but, then again, he's only running to be president.

Iraq's Maliki Backs Obama, Not McCain

Oh Johnny boy, this has got to sting.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki has told Der Spiegel that Barack Obama's 16-month timeframe for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq is spot on:

"Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports US presidential candidate Barack Obama's plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned." He then continued: "US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

Oops, that isn't going to sit well for John, 100-Years War, McCain.

"...apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain's more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: "Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems."

Iraq, Maliki went on to say, "would like to see the establishment of a long-term strategic treaty with the United States, which would govern the basic aspects of our economic and cultural relations." He also emphasized though that the security agreement between the two countries should only "remain in effect in the short term."

Maliki went on to say that he wasn't expressly endorsing Obama, just his policy on Iraq.

"So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat," Maliki told SPIEGEL.