The Iraq War’s Greatest Critic before the Surge? It Damn Sure Wasn’t John McCain.

For all of you Republican hacks out there who think that the Commander-in-Chief judgment test on Iraq should start with the “surge” (as the McCain Campaign thinks you should,) the great Jed Lewison of the Jed Report has assembled this devastating mashup of John McCain clips from the beginning of the great blunder to remind you just how wrong he has been all along, and what a lie it is that he somehow did not march in lock step with the President and the neocons in this disaster from day one.

St. John the Scene Stealing Camera Hog

In my business, actors who do things on camera or on stage to divert attention from the main action and draw attention to themselves are called “Scene Stealers” or “Camera Hogs.” John McCain’s Hoggishness seems to have no limits these past few days, especially since Barack Obama seems to be doing so well on his trip to the Middle East. McCain’s porcelain smile posturing and his out of the blue use of the (as-of-yet undefined) words prevail, win, success, and victorious to define the Iraq war are perfectly characteristic of a Camera Hog. He alone had the courage (sez he) to advocate the surge, while Senator Obama was (gasp) opposed to it! And now, Obama (that traitor) would rather lose a war to win a campaign (This is a 10 on the Camera Hog scale.) The “I know how to win wars” bumper sticker is another Scene Stealing meme that everybody hears and nobody gets. Which war is McCain referring to? Surely not the one he fought in. I hope he doesn’t have the gall to declare this recent disaster a won war. (See Joe Palermo’s great essay on that.)

In any case, here’s Matthew Yglesias’ take on yesterday’s McCain campaign Scene Stealing antics:

McCain: Ignorance is Strength and Anyone Who Says Otherwise Hates the Troops Spencer Ackerman has some veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan on the record against the McCain campaign's sleazy new slanders against Barack Obama. It was while over there that I saw this truly stunning post from McCain campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb in which he tries to argue that to point out that McCain doesn't know when the Anbar Awakening happened is per se to attack the troops. But to be as clear as possible, there were American soldiers serving in Iraq for years long before the surge began. To observe that something or other (say, the Anbar Awakening) couldn't possibly have happened because of the surge (because it happened before the surge) is by no means an effort to "deny American troops credit" for their work. The very Colonel (now General) McFarlane whose work McCain was citing as evidence of the success of the surge really did do good work, as did the men under his command. It's just that their work didn't have anything to do with the surge. Which is what Barack Obama was saying. And it's what John McCain was ignorantly denying. Now the irony here is that the origins of this whole farce is McCain's efforts to hog credit himself for the adoption of improved counterinsurgency tactics. He "knows how to win wars," remember, and the evidence for that is supposed to be his embrace of the surge. But he can't even get basic facts straight.

Right on Target: Right on Time

The Washington Post has great coverage of Barack Obama’s presser in Jordan yesterday. Their headline pretty much tells the story. It has been an amazing week. I’m so proud of the guy for standing his ground and not giving in to the pressure to give credence to the lie that “the surge has worked.” He has done a fantastic job of making the case that our job is finished in Iraq and that we have to move on quickly to get refocused on Afghanistan and our own domestic agenda. Here’s part of the Wapo article by Karen deYoung and Jonathan Weisman.

Obama Shifts the Foreign Policy Debate In essence, Obama has declared the war in Iraq all but over. "There is security progress," he said during yesterday's news conference in Amman, Jordan. "Now we need a political solution." While a diminished U.S. force under his presidency would continue to protect U.S. personnel, target terrorists and provide training, he said, it would be up to Baghdad to consolidate the victory by "setting up a government that is working for the people." Two days spent in Afghanistan and two days in Iraq, Obama said, reinforced his belief that it is time for the United States to move on. Calling the situation in Afghanistan "perilous and urgent," he said both U.S. military and Afghan government officials agree that "we must act now to reverse a deteriorating situation." Obama's analysis has been buttressed by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders who, to the dismay of the White House and Sen. John McCain, his Republican opponent, have publicly agreed with his call for completing a U.S. combat withdrawal from Iraq in 2010. --snip-- Obama referred to a withdrawal timeline as something now largely agreed upon by both the U.S. and Iraqi governments, saying he welcomes "the growing consensus." He was effusive in his praise of U.S. troops and diplomats, describing the "terrific" conversation he had with Ryan C. Crocker, the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, who took him on a helicopter tour over the Iraqi capital. Obama said he understands that Petraeus would prefer leaving his options open rather than operating with a timeline, and said if he were in Petraeus's shoes, "I'd probably feel the same way." But in an indirect dig at President Bush, who has repeatedly said he would base any withdrawal decisions on the advice of military commanders, Obama said his job would be to listen to the military but make decisions based on "a range of factors that I have to take into account as a commander in chief." Those factors, he said, would include "the perceptions of the Iraqi people" and the statements of their leaders, as well as "the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan," which he called the "central front in the war against terrorism." McCain's judgments are based on "what he thinks makes the most sense," Obama said. But his own judgments, "in speaking with Afghans and Iraqis, the U.S. military and civilians," he said, led him to conclude that there is a need to "seize this moment to make America more secure" by focusing on "broader challenges." Chief among them, he said, are the "need to refocus attention on Afghanistan and to go after the Taliban, including putting more troops on the ground, and to put more pressure on Pakistan to deal with the safe havens of terrorists." The Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen, in an interview last night with PBS's "NewsHour," said he shares Obama's assessment that the situation in Afghanistan is "precarious and urgent." The 10,000 additional troops needed there, he said, would not be available "in any significant manner" unless there are withdrawals from Iraq. For now, he said, "my priorities . . . given to me by the commander in chief are: Focus on Iraq first. It's been that way for some time. Focus on Afghanistan second."

Those last two paragraphs speak volumes to me. There you have the top Military man in the nation coming right out and saying that Obama is right on target with his assessment, and that the only reason he can’t focus on Afghanistan is because Bush won’t let him. What more do you need to know? 

Bob Dole Redux

Joe Klein,  Swampland:

McCain Meltdown John McCain said this today in Rochester, New Hampshire: This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign. This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered. I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate. It smacks of desperation. It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency. How sad.

When you lose Joe Klein.....I mean ya gotta be pretty far over the edge to... oh, nevermind.

UPDATE: And Digby too:

Superprick This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign. Whatever you do, don't impugn this man's character. He did something worthy 40 years ago which allows him to say any nasty thing he pleases and then lead the entire political establishment in a group whine if anyone calls him on it. And let's hear no more about how modest the maverick is. When's the last time you heard a candidate, much less a certified, unassailable hero, bragging about how courageous he is? I'm not sure I even ever heard the Codpiece go quite that far.

Update III: Maureen Dowd:

It doesn’t work for McCain — and his foreign policy guru Henry Kissinger — to keep insisting that timetables will lead to defeat. 'The Angry One' can try to paint 'The One' as having bad judgment. But who is being advised by Kissinger, the man who helped keep us in Vietnam and get us into Iraq?

This is pretty  tough stuff for these three writers, particularly these three, representing a huge cross section of the center to center left  to come down this hard on McCain in a single day for the way he's talking about Obama right now-- well, hell, nobody likes it. He's definitely coming across as the nasty, mean, old man.

McCain Fumbles the Facts on Iraq... Again. His Most Serious Blunder Yet?

Ilan Goldenberg—The Huffington Post:

Not a Gaffe: A Fundamental Misunderstanding of Iraq John McCain made a mistake this evening, which as far as I'm concerned, disqualifies him from being president.  It is so appalling and so factually wrong that I'm actually sitting here wondering who McCain's advisers are.  This isn't some gaffe where he talks about the Iraq-Pakistan border.  It's a real misunderstanding of what has happened in Iraq over the past year.  It is even more disturbing because according to John McCain, Iraq is the central front in the "war on terror."  If we are going to have an Iraq-centric policy, he should at least understand what he is talking about.  But anyway, what happened. On Katie Couric tonight McCain says: Kate Couric: Senator McCain, Senator Obama says, while the increased number of US troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that? McCain: I don't know how you respond to something that is as -- such a false depiction of what actually happened. Colonel McFarlane [phonetic] was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history. Thanks to General Petraeus, our leadership, and the sacrifice of brave young Americans. I mean, to deny that their sacrifice didn't make possible the success of the surge in Iraq, I think, does a great disservice to young men and women who are serving and have sacrificed. One problem.  The surge wasn't even announced until a few months after the Anbar Awakening.  Via Spencer Ackerman, here is Colonel MacFarland explaining the Anbar Awakening to Pam Hass of UPI, on September 29, 2006.  That would be almost four months before the President even announced the surge.  Petraeus wasn't even in Iraq yet. With respect to the violence between the Sunnis and the al Qaeda -- actually, I would disagree with the assessment that the al Qaeda have the upper hand. That was true earlier this year when some of the sheikhs began to step forward and some of the insurgent groups began to fight against al Qaeda. The insurgent groups, the nationalist groups, were pretty well beaten by al Qaeda. This is a different phenomena that's going on right now. I think that it's not so much the insurgent groups that are fighting al Qaeda, it's the -- well, it used to be the fence-sitters, the tribal leaders, are stepping forward and cooperating with the Iraqi security forces against al Qaeda, and it's had a very different result. I think al Qaeda has been pushed up against the ropes by this, and now they're finding themselves trapped between the coalition and ISF on the one side, and the people on the other. And here is the NY Times talking about the Anbar Awakening back in March 2007. The formation of the group in September shocked many Sunni Arabs. It was the most public stand anyone in Anbar had taken against Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, which was founded by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. And here is Colin Kahl in Foreign Affairs: The Awakening began in Anbar Province more than a year before the surge and took off in the summer and fall of 2006 in Ramadi and elsewhere, long before extra U.S. forces started flowing into Iraq in February and March of 2007. Throughout the war, enemy-of-my-enemy logic has driven Sunni decision-making. The Sunnis have seen three "occupiers" as threats: the United States, the Shiites (and their presumed Iranian patrons), and the foreigners and extremists in AQI. Crucial to the Awakening was the reordering of these threats. This is not controversial history.  It is history that anyone trying out for Commander and Chief must understand when there are 150,000 American troops stationed in Iraq.  It is an absolutely essential element to the story of the past two years. YOU CANNOT GET THIS WRONG.  Moreover, what is most disturbing is that according to McCain's inaccurate version of history, military force came first and solved all of our problems.  If that is the lesson he takes from the Anbar Awakening, I am afraid it is the lesson he will apply to every other crisis he faces including, for example, Iran. This is just incredibly disturbing. I have no choice but to conclude that John McCain has simply no idea what is actually happened and happening in Iraq.

Vanity Fair Covers the New Yorker

This is big fun.

Click the image to ENLARGE it.

So He’s Geography Challenged. What’s The Big Deal?

Matthew Yglesias leaps to John McCain’s defense.  

South Carolina Embarrassment of the Week (Yes, Already!)

Well, lo and behold, the week has just got barely gotten out of the starting blocks and here we have a made the national news already again. South Carolina State Senator Kevin Bryant (R-Anderson) thinks it's creative and funny to compare a United States Senator to a mass murderer. So mature and dignified too! Doncha think, Senator?

The Truth about Barack in Iraq: They Are All Damn Glad to See Him.

Ssg. Lorie Jewell/U.S. Army, via Associated Press

The cold hard truth is that everybody is just so happy to see the guy. The troops are ecstatic.  They can’t wait to get out of that hell hole, even if most of them are going to Afghanistan. General David Petraeus knows Obama is right about al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and he’s admitted as much in the last few days. Al-Maliki and the people of Iraq know that Obama is going to end the occupation of their country and do it in a way that’s fair to them. CENTCOM’s puppet mouthpiece notwithstanding, Maliki definitely has embraced Obama and wants to see him become President.

Dr. Juan Cole Has the Skinny on the Maliki Interview Kerfuffle and an answer to Holy Joe's twisted propaganda:

Der Spiegel Recording Proves al-Maliki Story Correct Senator Barack Obama is in Iraq for consultations with American military commanders and Iraqi leaders. Despite all the talk about Iraq being "calm," I'd like to point out that the month just before the last visit Barack Obama made to Iraq (he went in January, 2006); there were 537 civilian and ISF Iraqi casualties. In June of this year, 2008, there were 554 according to AP. These are official statistics gathered passively that probably only capture about 10 percent of the true toll. That is, the Iraqi death toll is actually still worse now than the last time Obama was in Iraq! (See the bombings and shootings listed below for Sunday). The hype around last year's troop escalation obscures a simple fact: that Obama formed his views about the need for the US to leave Iraq at a time when its security situation was very similar to what it is now! Why a return to the bad situation in late 05 and early 06 should be greeted by the GOP as the veritable coming of the Messiah is beyond me. You have people like Joe Lieberman saying silly things like if it weren't for the troop escalation, Obama wouldn't be able to visit Iraq. Uh, he visited it before the troop escalation, just fine. The troop escalation, which actually allowed the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis of Baghdad and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis from the country, has largely been pushed as propaganda by the White House and the AEI. Here's an example of how their propaganda works. As is usual with news it does not like, the Bush administration attempted to muddy the waters this weekend regarding the interview of PM Nuri al-Maliki with Der Spiegel in which he expressed approval of Barack Obama's plan to get US troops out of Iraq within 16 months of next January. Al-Maliki told Der Spiegel in response to a question about how long US troops would be in his country, 'Maliki: As soon as possible, as far as we're concerned. U.S. 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. SPIEGEL: Is this an endorsement for the US presidential election in November? Does Obama, who has no military background, ultimately have a better understanding of Iraq than war hero John McCain? Maliki: 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. Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business. But it's the business of Iraqis to say what they want. ' Ali al-Dabbagh, who is usually described as al-Maliki's spokesman but actually seems to work for the CENTCOM or Pentagon Middle East command, was trotted out to make vague statements about Der Spiegel's having mistranslated or misinterpreted what al-Maliki said. This denial was issued through CENTCOM! When the original demand came from al-Maliki for a timetable for US withdrawal, it was al-Dabbagh who reinterpreted it as a 'time horizon.' Al-Dabbagh was contradicted by National Security Counselor Muwaffaq al-Rubaie, who seems actually closer in this thinking to al-Maliki. My guess is that al-Dabbagh has been recruited by some agency in Washington, DC, to explain away al-Maliki's statements whenever they contradict Bush's. Der Spiegel stood by its story. The text of Der Spiegel's statement is here. It turns out that the translator involved works for al-Maliki, not for Der Spiegel, and so presumably knew what the prime minister's words meant in Arabic. And for the piece de resistance, it turns out that Der Spiegel has an audiotape of the Arabic of the interview, which they leaked to The New York Times. Sabrina Tavernise and Jeff Zeleny write: ‘But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. . . The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.” He continued: “Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.” ' But you see, it does not matter that al-Maliki actually said what he said. It does not matter that Der Spiegel can prove it. All that matters is that the Goebbelses around Bush and Cheney have managed to muddy the waters and produce doubt, taking the hard edge off the interview. Even AFP, the usually skeptical French wire service, asserted that al-Maliki had "denied" the accuracy of the Der Spiegel interview! Of course, al-Maliki has done no such thing. CENTCOM ventriloquising al-Dabbagh engaged in the denial, and a very vague one at that. That is the way propaganda works, to obscure the truth and ensure it can be denied. Some wingnut even tried to pressure me to retract the little sentence I had written on the affair yesterday, on the grounds of "al-Dabbagh's" mendacious and ridiculous assertions. Our information system is so corrupt and easily manipulated that even a clumsy ploy can obscure the truth and bully the journalists.

 

Iraq Timetables: Goldmine for Obama. Minefield for McCain

Hilzoy at Obsedian Wings is one of my favorite bloggers; always, always the right read. This is long, but well worth the read.

More On Maliki I've been thinking about the Maliki statement and its implications. Here's my take. McCain's entire rationale, as a candidate, turns on Iraq and related issues, like terrorism and (to a lesser extent) Iran. What else is he going to run on? His grasp of the economy? His health care proposals? The widespread popularity of the Republican brand? He can't even run on the rest of foreign policy: McCain's approach to foreign policy has always lacked any kind of integrative vision; he treats problems in isolation from one another. This means two things: first, McCain really doesn't have an overarching foreign policy vision, and second, for him, Iraq has always been The Big Thing, and as a result, everything else got slighted. (Minor factoid: the Issues page on McCain's website doesn't have an entry for foreign policy. An Iraq page, yes; likewise, pages on the Space Program and Second Amendment Rights. But foreign policy? Nothing.) On Iraq, McCain begins with a huge disadvantage: he advocated the invasion of Iraq, which most Americans feel was a mistake. (He's always urging voters to look back and consider who showed good judgment on the surge, but he doesn't want them to look too far back, lest they find themselves thinking about who showed good judgment on the invasion.) He therefore has to argue something like this: now that we're in this mess, we need someone we can trust, someone who will be able to manage this catastrophe as well as possible. McCain is solid. Obama is untested, inexperienced, risky. There was always a problem with this story: namely, it involves saying that we should trust McCain, who made the wrong call on invasion, over Obama, who got it right. But sowing doubts is pretty much all McCain has. This got a lot harder last week, before Maliki's comments. First the Bush administration started appeasing negotiating with Iran, as Obama had suggested; then McCain essentially adopted Obama's position on Afghanistan; then the Bush administration agreed to what they called a "general time horizon"for withdrawing troops. (Wait: now it's "Joint aspirational time horizons"!) McCain and Bush seemed to be adopting Obama's positions all over the place. For a risky, inexperienced novice, Obama seemed to have gotten a lot of things right. And for an experienced, serious old hand with a command of foreign policy, McCain seemed to be spending a lot of time playing catch-up. And every time Obama gets to say, in effect, 'Hi, John! What took you so long?', McCain's only winning message gets that much weaker. (McCain was also starting to undercut his own message. Both his budget plan and his Afghanistan plan relied on troops being withdrawn from Iraq. A lot of troops. McCain was already counting on people not noticing this.) So even before Maliki said a word, McCain was in a pretty tough position. Two weeks ago, he had some pretty sharp differences with Obama. McCain wanted to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and cast any idea of leaving as dishonorable, as a way of risking the gains of the surge in order to embrace defeat. Obama wanted to withdraw from Iraq and send more troops to Afghanistan. By two days ago, McCain was left with basically two messages: (a) timetables would be a disaster, and Obama's embrace of them just shows how naive he is; and (b) McCain got the surge right and Obama got it wrong. It's a pretty weak foundation for a candidacy. It was against this backdrop that Maliki comes out in favor of Obama's proposal to withdraw combat troops from Iraq in 16 months (though he is careful not to endorse Obama.) McCain has to call Obama naive on Iraq. But that is a lot harder to do if Maliki agrees with Obama. It's hard to say that Maliki is insufficiently familiar with the facts on the ground. It's hard to call him naive. And whatever you think of Maliki's motives, it's also a lot more complicated to make the case that he doesn't know or care what's best for his country. In Presidential elections, uncomplicated cases are key. "Obama has only been in the Senate for three years; he doesn't have the experience to get Iraq right" is an uncomplicated case. There is no such uncomplicated explanation for Maliki's being wrong. *** Worse, lot of the more obvious ways of responding to Maliki's statement are fraught with danger for McCain. Responding that Maliki either doesn't know what he's talking about or is somehow untrustworthy and bad directly undercuts our reasons for staying in Iraq. We are there in support of the Maliki government, which we are hoping will become capable of running the country without our presence. The more ignorant, untrustworthy, or otherwise bad Maliki is, the less likely it is that he will succeed, and the less clear it is why we should try to help him. Saying, as McCain has, that Maliki only supports a timetable for political reasons is almost as bad, since it rather obviously implies that the Iraqi people really want us to leave. (As, in fact, they do.) Again, this raises the question: what on earth are we doing there? If the Iraqi people want us out, and their Prime Minister is asking for timetables, why not just take 'yes' for an answer? If the Iraqi people want us out, we have two choices. First, we leave. As McCain said four years ago, "I don't see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people." McCain does not seem to have seriously considered this option, which would deprive him of yet another distinction between himself and Obama. Second, we continue to occupy Iraq whether the Iraqi people and their government want us to or not. We have not paid much attention to the wishes of the Iraqi people for some time now -- in fact, I'm always struck, listening to Bush and McCain, by the way in which they consistently describe the question how long we stay in Iraq as one to be answered solely by them, in consultation with the commanders on the ground, as though Iraq's government and its people had no say in the matter at all. This has, of course, always been true. This administration has never cared much about what the Iraqi people think. But Maliki's comments might make it clearer to the American people that it's not enough to ask whether a candidate supports staying in Iraq; you need to ask whether he supports staying in Iraq even if the Iraqi government asks us to leave. Asking McCain that question would force him to chose between maintaining our presence in Iraq and maintaining the idea that that presence has something to do with helping the Iraqi people. Moreover, explaining why it would be OK to override the wishes of the Iraqi government presents yet another problem for McCain. The obvious default position is that when a country's government asks us to withdraw our troops, we should do so. To say that that's not true in a given case, like Iraq, you need to provide some sort of explanation. Part of that explanation would normally be: the government is unrepresentative or dysfunctional or awful in some way, and so its wishes do not carry the weight they would in, say, Switzerland. But saying something like that about the Iraqi government -- that it doesn't really speak for the Iraqi people, or isn't capable of making its own decisions about Iraqi territorial integrity -- would undercut McCain's claims about progress in Iraq. Again, McCain would have to choose: does he say that Iraq's government has made some real political progress, and is capable of making its own decisions? In that case, he should accept its wishes. Does he say that he can disregard its requests on matters of Iraqi sovereignty? In that case, he undercuts a lot of his claims that the surge has enabled real and lasting progress in Iraq. As I see it, Maliki's statement is all upside for Obama. It neither poses risks for him nor presents him with problems. But it's a minefield for McCain. And this will, I think, become clearer as time goes on, when people begin to ask him these sorts of questions.

 

Suck it Up. It’s All in Your Head.

Phil Gramm has resigned from the McCain Campaign but his economic philosophy lives on in the head of his little pal. The folks at moveon.org created this little ditty to remind you what the Republicans really think about your economic troubles.

Frank Rich: John McCain is Dumber than a Bag of Hammers

The New York Times:

It’s the Economic Stupidity, Stupid THE best thing to happen to John McCain was for the three network anchors to leave him in the dust this week while they chase Barack Obama on his global Lollapalooza tour. Were voters forced to actually focus on Mr. McCain’s response to our spiraling economic crisis at home, the prospect of his ascension to the Oval Office could set off a panic that would make the IndyMac Bank bust in Pasadena look as merry as the Rose Bowl. “In a time of war,” Mr. McCain said last week, “the commander in chief doesn’t get a learning curve.” Fair enough, but he imparted this wisdom in a speech that was almost a year behind Mr. Obama in recognizing Afghanistan as the central front in the war against Al Qaeda. Given that it took the deadliest Taliban suicide bombing in Kabul since 9/11 to get Mr. McCain’s attention, you have to wonder if even General Custer’s learning curve was faster than his. Mr. McCain still doesn’t understand that we can’t send troops to Afghanistan unless they’re shifted from Iraq. But simple math, to put it charitably, has never been his forte. When it comes to the central front of American anxiety — the economy — his learning curve has flat-lined. In 2000, he told an interviewer that he would make up for his lack of attention to “those issues.” As he entered the 2008 campaign, Mr. McCain was still saying the same, vowing to read “Greenspan’s book” as a tutorial. Last weekend, the resolutely analog candidate told The New York Times he is at last starting to learn how “to get online myself.” Perhaps he’ll retire his abacus by Election Day. Mr. McCain’s fiscal ineptitude has received so little scrutiny in some press quarters that his chief economic adviser, the former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, got a free pass until the moment he self-immolated on video by whining about “a nation of whiners.” The McCain-Gramm bond, dating back 15 years, is more scandalous than Mr. Obama’s connection with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Mr. McCain has been so dependent on Mr. Gramm for economic policy that he sent him to newspaper editorial board meetings, no doubt to correct the candidate’s numbers much as Joe Lieberman cleans up after his confusions of Sunni and Shia. Just two weeks before publicly sharing his thoughts about America’s “mental recession,” Mr. Gramm laid out equally incendiary views in a Wall Street Journal profile that portrayed him as “almost certainly” the McCain choice for Treasury secretary. Mr. Gramm said that the former chief executive of AT&T, Ed Whitacre, was “probably the most exploited worker in American history” since he received only a $158 million pay package rather than the “billions” he deserved for his success in growing Southwestern Bell. But no one in the news media seemed to notice Mr. Gramm’s naked expression of the mind-set he’d bring to a McCain White House. And few journalists have vetted the presumptive Treasury secretary’s post-Senate history as an executive at UBS. The stock of that banking giant has lost 70 percent of its value in a year after its reckless adventures in the subprime lending market. It’s now fending off federal investigation for helping the megarich avoid taxes. Mr. McCain made a big show of banishing Mr. Gramm after his whining “gaffe,” but it’s surely at most a temporary suspension. When the candidate said back in January that there’s nobody he knows who is stronger on economic issues than his old Senate pal, he was telling the truth. Left to his own devices — or those of his new No. 1 economic surrogate, Carly Fiorina — Mr. McCain is clueless. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger, a supporter, said that Mr. McCain’s latest panacea for high gas prices, offshore drilling, is snake oil — and then announced his availability to serve as energy czar in an Obama administration. The term flip-flopping doesn’t do justice to Mr. McCain’s self-contradictory economic pronouncements because that implies there’s some rational, if hypocritical, logic at work. What he serves up instead is plain old incoherence, as if he were compulsively consulting one of those old Magic 8 Balls. In a single 24-hour period in April, Mr. McCain went from saying there’s been “great economic progress” during the Bush presidency to saying “Americans are not better off than they were eight years ago.” He reversed his initial condemnation of mortgage bailouts in just two weeks. In February Mr. McCain said he would balance the federal budget by the end of his first term even while extending the gargantuan Bush tax cuts. In April he said he’d accomplish this by the end of his second term. In July he’s again saying he’ll do it in his first term. Why not just say he’ll do it on Inauguration Day? It really doesn’t matter since he’s never supplied real numbers that would give this promise even a patina of credibility. Mr. McCain’s plan for Social Security reform is “along the lines that President Bush proposed.” Or so he said in March. He came out against such “privatization” in June (though his policy descriptions still support it). Last week he indicated he isn’t completely clear on what Social Security does. He called the program’s premise — young taxpayers foot the bill for their elders (including him) — an “absolute disgrace.” Given that Mr. McCain’s sole private-sector job was a fleeting stint in public relations at his father-in-law’s beer distributorship, he comes by his economic ignorance honestly. But there’s no A team aboard the Straight Talk Express to fill him in. His campaign economist, the former Bush adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, could be found in the June 5 issue of American Banker suggesting even at that late date that we still don’t know “the depth of the housing crisis” and proposing that “monitoring is the right thing to do in these circumstances.”

Read on.

Al-Maliki to USA: Please, Just Go As Quickly As Possible.

It should be as plain as the nose on all of our faces that the Iraqis don’t want our Armed Forces to continue to occupy their country. They are sick of us. So if the American People are sick to death of our being there and the Iraqi people are sick to death of our being there, what gives? Those troops on their third and fourth tours need to come home. We don’t have enough troops for the mission in Afghanistan. So why the hell don’t we start leaving Iraq now? Why wait until next year? The reason is because this was not in the Neoconservative game plan to use an occupied Iraq as a staging ground to project US military power throughout the Middle East (and particularly as an immediate threat to Iran.) and to have a permanent military presence in Iraq (58 permanent bases) in order to protect the “assets” of western oil companies in the region and to control the flow of oil generally out of the Persian Gulf and of course, the air space over Iraq as well.  What Nancy Pelosi says about the price of oil is also true of the disaster in Iraq: We have been taken in by a couple of oil men and their lackeys in Congress (like John McCain.)

Reuters: 

Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan: report BERLIN (Reuters) - Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told a German magazine he supported prospective U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's proposal that U.S. troops should leave Iraq within 16 months. In an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, Maliki said he wanted U.S. troops to withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible. "U.S. 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." --snip-- Asked if he supported Obama's ideas more than those of John McCain, Republican presidential hopeful, Maliki said he did not want to recommend who people should vote for. "Whoever is thinking about the shorter term is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems." Maliki, who is due to visit Germany this week, has suggested a timetable should be set for a U.S. withdrawal but U.S. officials have been more cautious, despite an improving security situation. The White House said on Friday President George W. Bush and Maliki had agreed that a security deal under negotiation should set a "time horizon" for meeting "aspirational goals" for reducing U.S. forces in Iraq.

Time Horizon???? Aspirational Goals?

Translation: Cough cough, sputter sputter, uh wait a minute, there Al, ole buddy, what about uh, those oil deals we were gonna be talkin’ about? An, an, an uh, those bases, yeah, yeah, those bases (cough, cough, sputter, sputter) we were gonna occupy for you to keep ya free (cough) free ya know, free from the inflweince of the eye-rainiyuns ya know?

"The Americans have found it difficult to agree on a concrete timetable for the exit because it seems like an admission of defeat to them. But it isn't," Maliki told Der Spiegel.

Yup. John Wayne McCain and George W. Bush: still looking for a pony in a barn full of manure.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo has this:

Big Deal? No ... Bigger I've spent a couple hours now trying to process the probable impact of Prime Minister al Maliki's explicit endorsement of Barack Obama's 16 month timetable for withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. My first instinct is always to try not to overstate the impact of momentary developments. But I don't think it's enough to say this is a huge development. It's huger than that. In a stroke, I think, al Maliki has cut McCain off at the knees in a way I'm not sure his campaign strategy can recover from. Consider McCain's strategy, which is all bound up with Iraq. All understand it is a given that the war is unpopular and that the vast majority of Americans want out as soon as possible. The big of wiggle room is just what's 'possible.' McCain has invested his entire campaign in support for the purportedly nascent Iraqi democracy al Maliki represents and the claim that Obama's support for a timetable for withdrawal irresponsibly risks losing the gains we've achieved and giving Iraq back to al Qaeda. Here, with a brush of the hand and in so many words, al Maliki says, "No, we're good." What exactly is McCain to say to that? He can hardly turn against Maliki or say he doesn't have a feel of the situation on the ground. What's more, he's given Obama want amounts to a potent new talking point by defining American redeployment out of Iraq as 'victory'. Says Maliki: "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. But that isn't the case at all. If we come to an agreement, it is not evidence of a defeat, but of a victory, of a severe blow we have inflicted on al-Qaida and the militias." I don't doubt that the McCain will come up with some pat response, though their silence so far does signal the difficulty of coming up with it. But McCain's campaign has been almost entirely dedicated to raising doubts about a withdrawal strategy the great majority would like to embrace. And Maliki has now handed Obama the trump card of all trump cards with which to parry all of McCain's attacks. I would not discount the possibility that the White House will muscle Maliki into a retraction of some sort. But I think it will be difficult for that to seem to be anything other than what it is. What he said pre-waterboarding will always appear more genuine than whatever statement came later. McCain may also say that his 'surge' strategy is what made all this possible. But fundamentally that's not a point Obama is arguing. The debate is about whether or not to leave. And on that count, Maliki has now placed McCain is an extremely precarious position.

UPDATE II: Marc Ambinder, blogging at The Atlantic:

Al-Maliki's Announcement: A Big Deal This could be one of those unexpected events that forever changes the way the world perceives an issue. Iraq's Prime Minister agrees with Obama, and there's no wiggle room or fudge factor. This puts John McCain in an extremely precarious spot: what's left to argue? To argue against Maliki would be to predicate that Iraqi sovereignty at this point means nothing. Obviously, our national interests aren't equivalent to Iraq's, but... Maliki isn't listening to the generals on the ground...but the "hasn't been to Iraq" line doesn't work here. So how will the McCain campaign respond? (Via e-mail, a prominent Republican strategist who occasionally provides advice to the McCain campaign said, simply, "We're fucked." No response yet from the McCain campaign…)

Executive Director of Miss South Carolina Pageant Charged With Child Rape.

Joseph Pettigrew Sanders IV (accused of raping a 9 year old girl)

Somehow I knew we could squeeze in one more national news-worthy humiliation for the Palmetto State before the week was over (It is over, isn’t it?) Maybe we should think about starting an embarrassment of the week feature on the Hog Blog for South Carolina. We’ll see how it goes.

 Mr. Fish Takes on the New Yorker

Beating Off a Dead Horse