on him. It's annoying to watch JM respond to questions from the media about Obama. Know-it-all McCain flashes his patronizing smile and declares that Obama just doesn't get it about the surge.

Maybe JM doesn't get it. If the Sunnis had not been de-fanged and won to our side, whether with greenbacks or diplomacy, 30,000 more U.S. troops would have just presented more targets for the insurgents. Ditto for the cooperation, deliberate or not, of al-Sadr, and the government's reigning in of the Shiite militias. These are the critical factors in the relative lull in violence we see in Iraq. Certainly the addition of these extra troops and employment of a more reasonable strategy helped, but to give them the entire credit for the relative lack of chaos in Iraq is quite unreasonable. And saying so is not dissing our troops in any way.

As an Independent, at one time I had some respect for JM, but that was years ago. He's no longer a maverick, just a cranky old guy with a messiah complex. All he talks about is his service in Vietnam, most of which was in a rathole as a POW, and he seems obsessed with the idea that because of his ordeal the American public owes him the presidency as his reward. He likes to praise himself in his ads and end with an image of himself looking piously off-camera, as if this somehow justifies a vote for him.

John McCain stumped for George W. Bush in 2004, standing shoulder to shoulder with him as he declared him the "best man for the job." Well, that ended any hope I may have had for JM's independence or integrity. Then he courted scatterbrained tv evangelists and flip-flopped on his opposition to the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich. Well, there he is, folks, compromising and back-tracking and flip-flopping all over the place, yet he likes to level the same charges against his opponent. Yet he knows, in his heart, that the only chance he has of being elected is by courting the shame-faced racists in our society who would rather vote for an old white guy who will continue the disastrous policies of George W. Bush than to vote for a younger black man who might restore our reputation and our financial soundness. I say all this as an old white guy myself, one who's an Army veteran who votes in every election.

Shame on you, Mac, for what you've let yourself become in your pursuit of the presidency. Stop being so condescending and patronizing when you talk about Obama, as if you had it right all these years. You were wrong in supporting an invasion of Iraq that has brought us nothing but grief, at home and abroad. You were wrong in supporting George W. Bush in 2004. And you are wrong if you really think that the addition of 30,000 American troops is solely responsible for the turn-around in Iraq. A person with that kind of record shouldn't be throwing stones at Obama and playing the smug little old guy who knows it all.

Mazel tov, you got every single DNC talking-point into a single post.

Actually, I think he cherry-picked only the very best ones.

DNC talking points or no, I notice that neither of you has presented a reason that the OP is wrong.

Unless your head is full of partisan spin or bong resin, it's hard to ignore the same flip-flopping in JM's recent past that he's accusing Obama of.

I have no argument with the top post. Hence my comment. Wolf, on the other hand, likes John. I concur with Rebel. I could have voted for McCain in 2000 -- not in 2008.

Excuse my ignorance, but I don't know what Mazel tov means. But I don't relay talking points from any political party. I've voted third-party before, in national elections, and I've even been known to vote for Republicans in local contests. In 2000, Ralph Nader was saying all the things that I personally believed in, but I compromised and voted for Al Gore because I thought Jr. Bush would be a disaster for our country, yet we know how that turned out.

I do think for myself. I've been a student of history for a long time, and though I only have a BS degree, I've been an adult learner all my life. No one does my thinking for me. I was right about W being a disaster for the American republic, and I was keenly aware of what he and his talking heads were doing when they "sold" the Iraq War to the American public. I was wrong, however, in thinking that the public wouldn't fall for their war propaganda. I opposed this war from the beginning, and not because I was a "Saddam-lover" or such, but because I knew it would only increase the level of terrorism in the world, give some legitimacy to bin Laden, get us mired in local sectarian strife in Iraq, and most of all, be bad for us. I was in favor of the invasion of Afghanistan, but we tried to do it on the cheap (LOL!) by buying the loyalty of Afghan warlords and saving our troops for Iraq. The result of that miscalculation is that bin Laden is still breathing free air and the Taliban is making a comeback in Afghanistan.

Bush and McCain had it wrong. Iraq was not the center of the War on Terror. If it became so, it only happened after we attacked this oil-rich nation that posed no threat to us.

McCain and Bush, once bitter political enemies, are now joined at the hip. JM's one claim to independence was in regard to global warming , but that's not really enough. McCain would happily, I believe, commit us to staying in Iraq for the next century, but there is no valid parallel with our military presence in Germany or South Korea. Mac is still waging his campaign on the strategy of "sneer and smear," one that has worked well for the national Republican party in the past. As Mac gets more desperate, I can see that we'll probably be pulled down in the gutter for another election cycle.

Rebel,

We're likely separated by decades in age, but we're separated by very little in worldview. Thanks for seeing it all big picture, I often worry how many others of us are out there who still do. Nice posts!

KH

d.travers;

I think it is bong resin. haven't heard that one in a while.

Exactly! I felt pretty good about the 2000 race during the primaries. I was leaning towards Gore, but felt that McCain was also a guy I could get behind... then he lost the nomination to Bush. I don't know what has happened to him since--or more to the point, what the GOP did to him to get him to back Bush--but he just isn't the same guy. I look at him now and I see a broken and bitter man, halfheartedly animating a shell of his former self.

It's really sad. The Bush Administration did to him what the VC couldn't. But sad or not, he's no longer presidential material.

It's so funny to listen to you libs repeat the same old song and dance over and over again.

Do any of you remember Reagan? Well, here's a refresher for you. During the '60's and '70's, the Soviet Union was considered the ascendent power in the world. Our foreign policy was built around, slowing, not stopping, their expansion.

Then Reagan ran for office and governed on the twin principles of American economic renewal and actually defeating the communists, not just slowing their advance. Liberals called him crazy, a warmonger, sure to bring on nuclear apocalypse, and so forth.

Fast forward a little more than a decade, and what did we have? America sitting astride the world as the lone superpower, and the Soviet Union just plain gone from the face of the earth.

But did the libs give Reagan credit for his vision? Of course not. "The Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight," they would say. "The Afghani tribesmen beat them," said another. "Reagan was just lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Everyone could see that their days were numbered."

Now here we are again. Every lib in the congress and on tv was just sure the surge wouldn't work. Sending 30,000 more troops to Iraq would just prolong the misery. There was no way peace could be acheived. The only sane thing to do was pull out and cut our losses.

And now that peace is being acheived, violence is down, political reconciliation is taking place, and Iraq's economy is being infused with foreign investment, what are the libs saying about it? "It's was the Sunni awakening. It was the cease-fire with the Shias. Bush was just lucky to plan his surge to coincide with these events."

Yeah right.

It is very convenient for you to pretend that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan never happened. The Soviet Union collapsed under their own weight. Ronald Reagan happened to be the President when that happened.

McCain? As a deserving post-prison-camp contender, condescending or not?

I'll go along instead with F. Scott Fitzgerald who advised,

"Show me a hero, and I'll write you a tragedy."

The Soviets burnt BILLIONS of Rubels on troops, equipment support, and local population control in Afghanistan. Afghanistan had no strategic importance and no Oil resources. Just poppy fields and warlords holed up in caves. What did the USSR get for its efforts for invading a Middle eastern country? Pain, loss of presige, and a big drain of its resources courtesy of Osama Bin-Laden and his CIA advisor George Bush Sr. Oh did we forget that part?? Yea, Osama is one of ours. George Sr. was head of CIA black ops and ran that war in the 80's. He was in charge of supplying Al-Qaeida with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, small arms training, and organizing the mujahedien into a paramilitary group with our Allies in Pakistan. Oh what a wonderful plan that was George! Bravo.

We Americans helped dismantle the Soviet Union. Economic gains of the Internet .com business and a multitude of other corporate gains put us WAY up. Peace and prosperity go hand in hand. We didn't have a large scale war and they did. We focused our resources back into the Economy and Russia was facing shortages and trying to wage war in the middle east. How did that end for them?

Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Yes the Soviet Union collapsed under Regan's watch.

We also gave birth to Al-Quaeida and trained their leadership on the CIA payroll. Once we had no further use for them, we turned Osama and his boys loose. They set up shop in Mogadishu and Ethiopia. Darfur got some of that Wahabi education and funding. The world was steeped into Islamo fascism. Rega, George Bush Sr., Clinton, and George Bush Jr did nothing till... 20 years later, it came back to hurt us painfully.

Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

the true conservative,

You are wrong just like many republicans or conservatives to actually hint that Reagan brought down the Soviet Union. What of the people who sacrificed themselves from the end of WWII to the end of the Soviet Union? What of JFK, Nixon, John Paul II? Please do not rewrite history. Let me tell you what Reagan did, Reagan gave back their pride to the American people after the Carter's years.

The fight was way bigger than “Mr. Gorbachev bring down this wall”.

NightSwimmer:

It is very convenient for you to pretend that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan never happened. The Soviet Union collapsed under their own weight. Ronald Reagan happened to be the President when that happened.

You mean Ronald wasn't risking his life everyday pulling bricks out of the wall or helping to sneak others across to the other side?