On Sunday, Barack Obama appeared on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace and marked an end to the right-wing network's 772-day "Obama Countdown Clock." Meanwhile, another clock, this time for Republican John McCain, keeps on ticking. 61 days after accepting his endorsement, the media has not asked - and John McCain has not answered - whether or not he agrees with Pastor John Hagee that war with Iran is the fulfillment of the biblical prophecy of Armageddon.
On February 27, 2008, Senator McCain shared a stage with the End Times minister and declared, "I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee's support." As it turns out, John McCain not only actively sought Hagee's endorsement. In 2007, McCain addressed Hagee's organization, Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which just happens to believe the final biblical battle against the Anti-Christ will be fought by the United States - against Iran.
During the annual CUFI conference in July 2006, John Hagee bluntly described his vision of Armageddon as foreign policy this way:

"The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West...a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ."

On January 29, 2007, Hagee emailed a "Newflash" to CUFI members about a meeting he held that day with McCain. While noting that he did not "want to put the specifics of our conversation in this update" because "I don't want to read it in the media tomorrow," Hagee crowed about the future Republican presidential nominee:

"Senator McCain's comments concerning Israel are on target! He gets it!"

But what exactly is that McCain "gets?" During an April 2, 2006 interview by Tim Russert on Meet the Press, McCain gave a hint. Discussing Tehran's nuclear program and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's inflammatory rhetoric towards Israel, John McCain sounded as much preacher as president:

MR. RUSSERT: So we could have two wars at once?
SEN. McCAIN: I think we could have Armageddon. But I think that, that if we handle this right, and our European allies stand with us, and the Russians and the Chinese stand with us, sanctions might do the job. And I am confident that this administration will exhaust every effort before contemplating seriously a military option.

Russert, of course, did not follow up to clarify with McCain what he meant when he said "we could have Armageddon." Needless to say, no one in the mainstream media has, either.
Ironically, on the very day Barack Obama stopped the countdown clock over at Fox, John McCain attacked Obama over his association with a minister of his own, Jeremiah Wright. In the wake of Wright's appearance before the NAACP, McCain made him an issue, declaring "I can understand why people are upset about this" and concluding of Wright's comments, "it will probably be a political issue."
As tensions with Tehran continue to rise, the views of McCain supporter Hagee are also increasingly a vital issue in the presidential election. So the Armageddon watch continues. When will the media ask John McCain the question he must answer: does John McCain agree with Pastor John Hagee that war with Iran is the fulfillment of biblical prophecy?