Senator McCain has many fine qualities, but his judgment on military matters has been questionable before. (Certainly his perception of and prior face saving cover he gave to John Kerry was a preipheral example.)

He's outmatched by GEN Abizaid. I woulkd think Baghdad will be enough of a challenge, and as Baghdad goes, so goes the Nation. If it fractures, so does the rest of Iraq.

Main effort, if we still seek victory.

The only thing McCain can't understand is how come one of the best, brightest, and respected of military generals doesn't agree with him and give him fawning attention.

This man will be trouble. He's stabbed his party in the back before, I'm quite sure he'll do it again. Bush tried to run right, McCain will run left. (If only because George went the OTHER way.)

"You probably don't have 4 1/2 hours to watch the whole thing."

Transcript here...

http://www.centcom.mil/sites/uscentcom1/Press%20Briefings/Nov%2015%20SASC%20hearing%20Abizaid%20and%20Hayden.pdf

"Bush tried to run right, McCain will run left. (If only because George went the OTHER way.)"

That is my major problem with McCain, and the reason he is the darling of the MSM. McCain typically sees himself as a voice of reason when many of us see him as a contrarian. McCain has one true love and that is John McCain.

In behavior therapy, we reward small increases in the behavior we want to see. By providing him attention and ink when he shifts a bit towards the contrarian (read left) you can almost see him brighten and shift a tad bit more to the left. He is so easily manipulated by attention, he thinks they (the MSM) are following him, not leading him. And that, my friends, is precisely why he would make a dangerous president.

Yes, GM, clearly McCain is led to his decisions on the basis of his calculated media coverage. Sadly, there are few doing otherwise.

I particularly liked his exchange with Senator Hillary, the '08 Dem Prez hopeful.

Hillary: "Hope is not a strategy, General."

Abizaid: "Despair is not a method, Senator."

John McCain is an empty suit. He is not very bright. He looked good once upon a time and had a rich wife. His reputation comes from his losing campaign when he had nothing to loose and courted reporters who were bored (and stuck on his bus).

McCain does not/cannot thing a subject all the way through before opening his mouth. Watch him, what he says and does. This man is being poised to take on (and lose) to Hillary. Either way he is a disaster.

The Emperor is not wearing any clothes.

Our two biggest (maybe insurmountable, depending upon events) impediments to victory in Iraq and the larger war on militant Islamic Facsism are the lack of political amongst our political class and the population at large.

Impatience and faltering will are our enemy's best ally.

It is for this sort of thing that Washington lobbied hard to vest the CinC with sole authority of Command. War by committee tends to get you to the point of lots of people around a table trying to figure out where to actually *fight*... and then astonished that the enemy has taken over the place where the meeting was being held.

The Armed Forces of the US have performed a miracle or 10 and now these folks want more from Iraqis than we demand of ourselves? When one of these wonderful Congresscritters can tell me how long they think it will take to stand up a competent and trustworthy Iraqi NCO Corps, then I might listen to them. Until then they are talking to hear themselves speak, and doing no good with that.

I think some clarification may be in order.

McCain is advocating for more combat troops in Iraq - those who will go toe-to-toe with the insurgents. This position probably won't endear him to "the Left" - or even the center.

General Abizaid is calling for more troops too - but he wants more troops assigned to Iraqi units to act as advisors - not more combat batallions.

Senator Nelson - a Florida Democrat - is making good on a campaign promise from many Democrats to "listen to the Generals". For the record, here's Senator Nelson's position on Iraq, from his Senate home page: "...we cannot leave Iraq until the Iraqi security forces are fully trained and the Iraqi government is both stable and representative."

Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, over in the House, next year's majority leader (elected by his Democrat colleagues in a landslide over John Murtha) is being excoriated by Left Wing extremists for comments like this: "I believe that a precipitous withdrawal of American forces in Iraq could lead to disaster, spawning a civil war, fostering a haven for terrorists and damaging our nation's security and credibility."

For my part, here's something from an earlier entry in this series:

This fits in with another aspect of that "media invasion" - divide and conquer America. Sap the will of half the people, and the other half will not be able to confront a (seemingly) distant enemy while being obstructed on the home front. Until now that split has been defined by political party affiliation. But any upcoming "compromise" will likely have the interesting impact of alienating half of Republican voters and half of the Democrats -each for different reasons, of course, but this promises a potentially interesting variation from the pre-election partisan separation.

...as individuals shift their positions on Iraq (centrist Dems, Repubs, and Independents seek common ground while extremists and "party uber alles" types on both sides move to the fringes) I predict the media will pander to the minority - those extremists, who will make great headlines.

You'll be able to identify the extremes - one side will call for "troops home now" while on the other side "don't listen to Democrats - they want the troops home now!" will rally the faithful.

The rest of us will work to "fix" Iraq.

How does any of this differ from what Rumsfeld said or did?

edh: shhhhhhhh... they'll hear you...