On Saturday night Sarah Palin once again put John McCain in a tough spot, this time on the subject of Pakistan. Just hours after McCain blasted Barack Obama for saying "out loud" that the U.S. should - if necessary - unilaterally strike at Al Qaeda targets along Pakistan's western border, Palin in essence agreed with […]

As he shows time and again, the only thing in life as certain as death and taxes is John McCain addressing Americans as "my friends." But just as predictable during tonight's first presidential debate was McCain's recycling of his tried and untrue talking points in the face of his horrendous track record on Iraq. Almost […]

No doubt, history will not be kind to George W Bush. And to be sure, Bush is already returning the favor. Apparently stunned by the Russian assault on Georgia, President Bush forgot his invasion of "sovereign" Iraq and declared, "Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century". As it turns out, John McCain, Condoleezza […]

The announcement today that the United States will deploy up to 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan is just the latest signal of the Pentagon's seeming support for Barack Obama's strategy to fight Al Qaeda in the region. Following by just weeks Obama's latest call to send at least two more brigades of American troops there, […]

Hoping to bolster support for the surge in Iraq, John McCain over the past year has frequently touted the safe streets of Baghdad. In April 2007, McCain boasted of neighborhoods "you and I could walk through." By March 2008, he reminded us that "there's problems in America with safe neighborhoods as we well know." And […]

Republican presidential nominee John McCain is fond of claiming, "I know how to win wars." Apparently, he also has ideas about how to start them. In the fall of 2001, McCain suggested the recent anthrax attacks that so terrified Americans might be a perfect pretext for war with Iraq. That revelation comes via ThinkProgress in […]

This weekend, John McCain launched an all-out war against Barack Obama's fitness to be commander-in-chief. In Denver on Friday, McCain claimed that in supporting the January 2007 surge in Iraq, he passed "a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief" his Democratic rival supposedly failed. That same day, McCain insisted to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I know […]

On Tuesday, Time columnist Joe Klein labeled as "shockingly unpresidential" John McCain's accusation that Barack Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." But in announcing "I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate," Klein spoke a day too soon. As it turns out, McCain would […]

To John McCain's dismay, the chorus of voices bolstering Barack Obama's call for a strategic refocus from Iraq to Afganistan just keeps growing. Just one day before Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki indisputably endorsed Obama's time frame for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, General David Petraeus reported that the diminished Al Qaeda threat there was being […]

Neocon godfather Irving Kristol once famously said that "a neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality." By that standard, the political right will need to coin an altogether new term to describe John McCain in the wake of the beating he has taken over the past several days. In the span of just […]