On Sunday, Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) showed once again that President Bush, John McCain and their conservative amen corner can't tell the players in Iraq even with a scorecard. Even as Graham proclaimed of the fighting in Basra, "the militias that we are fighting are backed by Iran," President Bush and Vice President Bush continue […]

George W. Bush is suffering from another severe case of premature Iraq elation. That's the inescapable diagnosis after a week which featured sunny statements from the President even as Baghdad and Basra descended into chaos. On last week's fifth anniversary of his invasion of Iraq, President Bush was blissfully unaware of the tumultuous three-way Shiite […]

In another unfortunate case of premature Iraq elation, the Wall Street Journal last week celebrated the decline and fall of Iraqi Shiite leader Moqtada Al-Sadr. Echoing the "bring 'em on" taunt of their former boss, ex-Bush advisers Dan Senor and Roman Martinez triumphantly asked "Whatever Happened to Moqtada?" But as the renewed turmoil in Baghdad […]

Over the past two days, the fawning American media has provided rave reviews of John McCain's visit to France. While the New York Times lauded "McCain's soothing tones," Time gushed about "McCain's Paris romance" and the transformation of Franco-American relations made possible by his warm embrace of French President Nicolas Sarkozy. But lost in these […]

If the contest for the White House followed the rules of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," John McCain would be going home empty-handed. At last four times in the past month, George W. Bush's would-be Republican successor sounded the alarm over a non-existent Al Qaeda-Iran alliance in Iraq. But for a lifeline from Joe […]

Over the course of its five-year fiasco in Iraq, the Bush administration in vain has tried to sell this conflict by referencing glorious American wars past. Its revisionist history has included failed parallels to the American Revolution, World War II, Korea, the Cold War and even Vietnam. Today, Vice President Cheney joined the conservative chorus […]

As I documented just two day ago, John McCain has been wrong from the start about virtually every aspect of the Iraq war. From Ahmed Chalabi and Saddam's WMD to the prospects of Americans troops being greeting as liberators and the certainty of a "rapid" U.S. victory in "three weeks," John McCain had it wrong […]

Just one day after John McCain's drive-by photo op in Baghdad, Vice President Cheney too made a surprise visit to Iraq. Announcing "it's good to be back," Cheney no doubt reminded Americans that John McCain represents the third term Bush agenda on Iraq. And to be sure, Dick Cheney's latest pronouncements reminded Iraqis on one […]

Just in time for the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain made an unannounced visit to Iraq. While McCain deemed the visit a "fact-finding" mission, his secret visit to Baghdad is just part of an extended photo opportunity in the Middle East and Europe designed to highlight his national […]

On Thursday, President Bush once again provided fodder for generations of psychology graduate students to come. For the second time in just six months, the same man whose dubious Air National Guard service kept him out of the jungles of Vietnam announced he was "envious" of U.S. troops now on the frontlines in Iraq and […]