In what was billed as a major address today on nuclear non-proliferation, John McCain offered the latest installment in the ongoing saga of strategic incoherence that passes for his foreign policy. Just months after calling for a "League of Democracies" and the expulsion of Russia from the G8, McCain today portrayed Russia as an essential […]
Category: Iraq
Senator John McCain used this Memorial Day to ask Americans to remember others' roles in the calamity that unfolded in Iraq. First proclaiming himself "sick at heart by the many mistakes made by civilian and military commanders" in the run up and conduct of the war, McCain then declared of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, […]
In Columbus today, John McCain made his pitch that he, and not Barack Obama, is the candidate of hope. In a major if theoretical reversal of his commitment to a perpetual 100, a thousand or a million year American presence in Iraq, McCain declared that he "would hope to have achieved" a drawdown of most […]
Last year, First Lady Laura Bush said of the costs of the Iraq war for the American people, "no one suffers more than their President and I do." Now we know why. While U.S. troops were sacrificing life and limb in the battlefields of Baghdad, President Bush sacrificed...golf. In an interview today, George W. Bush […]
From the outset of the Iraq war, Republican leaders and their amen corner in the right-wing media have sought to calm squeamish Americans by favorably comparing the violence there to life in U.S. cities. Now, John March, a developer planning (believe it or not) a "Disneyland-style" theme park in Baghdad, says the carnage in the […]
About a month after President George W. Bush stood on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln before a banner proclaiming, "Mission Accomplished," Fox News' Neil Cavuto asserted to Senator John McCain that, "many argue the conflict isn't over" in Iraq. McCain responded, "Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on […]
Two new reports released Thursday offer a devastating assessment of President Bush's leadership as commander-in-chief. First, the GAO concluded that "al-Qaeda had regenerated its ability to attack the United States and had succeeded in establishing a safe haven in Pakistan's border area." Then just hours later, a study from the National Defense University proclaimed the […]
In their testimony before Congress today, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker began painting a picture of American progress in Iraq. But even as the United States faces a diminishing threat from Al Qaeda thanks in part to former Sunni insurgents the U.S. has largely co-opted, American forces find themselves increasingly engaged in an […]
On Sunday, John McCain renewed his defense of a 100 year American presence in Iraq. Just days after his campaign accused Barack Obama of "dishonesty" and "nonsense talk" over Obama's claim that McCain "willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq," the Republican nominee on Fox News again compared Iraq […]
Events on the ground in Iraq continue to defy the Bush's administration's ongoing misrepresentation of the Iranian threat there. Just one day after Republican Senator Lindsay Graham wrongly claimed Iran was backing just one of the three Shiite forces in Basra comes word that Tehran brokered a deal aimed at halting the carnage there. As […]

