In response to Barack Obama's address today on Iraq and Afghanistan, Republican presidential nominee John McCain declared, "I know how to win wars."

Now for the first time, the man who brought you Ahmad Chalabi and 100 years in Iraq offers all his war-winning secrets in How to Win Wars for Dummies.  Insightful chapters like "How to Be Greeted as a Liberator," "Victory Will Be Rapid," "Declaring Mission Accomplished" and "Telling Shiite from Sunni" will get you up and running fast in your own global war on terror. And with helpful tips like "McCain's Guide to the Safe Streets of Baghdad" and "Overstaying Your Welcome," you don't have to be a septuagenarian war hero to be commander-in-chief.

Here are just some of the pearls from John McCain's How to Win Wars for Dummies:

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said Obama needs to "understand that his words matter." This is in response to Barack Obama:  "I was a little puzzled by the frenzy that I set off by what I thought was a pretty innocuous statement," he said. "I am absolutely committed to ending the war."  

Bounds' words were without apparent irony.

Some words that do matter:

"Mission Accomplished."  (5/1/03)
"Bring 'em on"  (7/2/03)
"The Army we have"  (12/9/04)
"Last throes"  (5/31/05)
"Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran"  (4/19/07)
"I don't care if we're there 100 years."  (1/4/08)

New York Times, 14 October 2001
''If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he'd turn off the tap,'' said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. ''He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel'' -- about six times what it sells for now.

As you may have heard, oil prices went above $144 this week.

Memo to Camp Obama:  WTF?

Please tell me the person who thought this was a good idea has been fired.  And PLEASE don’t tell me Obama signed off on it.

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, "I cannot be complicit in it."  But as his words and deeds over five years show, John McCain is not merely complicit in propelling the American invasion and occupation of Iraq; he has been wrong at every turn.

I've had an unbelievably busy few days since last Thursday.  Work has been through the roof, and I had two gigs this weekend to boot (for those who don't know already, I sing in a band).  In a way, it's been a forced break from the punditry that dominates network and cable news.

I was exhausted last night, and found myself thinking that I might need to post an apology diary of sorts.  My last diary generated a LOT of responses - from Obama and Clinton supporters alike - and much of it was critical of me personally (and perhaps rightfully) for "stirring the pot" when it appears Obama is so close to securing the nomination.

This morning that wavering changed for me - again - when I listened to Howard Wolfson himself on Morning Joe.  Over the fold with you.

The latest Suffolk Univ Polls.

In Kentucky, Hillary Clinton (51 percent) led Barack Obama (25 percent) by 26 points, followed by John Edwards (6 percent) and "uncommitted" (5 percent), while 11 percent were undecided.  

In Oregon, Obama (45 percent) led Clinton (41 percent) by 4 points, with 8 percent undecided and 6 percent refusing a response.

I think before Oregon & Kentucky counting begins on May 20th, Obama should give a Victory speech with a "Mission Accomplished" somewhere in the background. The math says that there is no way for Hillary to become the Nominee.

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 U.S. forces by the end of his first term in 2013.  But given McCain's unbroken record of error of forecasting when it comes to Iraq, Americans should rightly view his new 10 year prediction with suspicion.

The media have stopped covering the war. Bush has given up trying to accomplish his mission. Meantime, PFC George Delgado may very well have been the 4,000th American death in the war.

This week the White House remained resolutely silent about the fifth anniversary of George Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech. For this administration, it was an especially appropriate way to commemorate the infamous event.

After all, five years ago the White House had remained resolutely silent about the actual situation in Iraq for a period of 50 days after the "Mission Accomplished" speech. During May and most of June 2003, there wasn't a word from Bush about the mayhem in Iraq. In fact the administration focused on everything but Iraq - pretending that all was well until the scale of the unfolding disaster finally forced Bush to abandon his silence and acknowledge publicly that our troops were indeed facing "deadly attacks" there.

That fifty days of silence was fatal in more ways than one. It reflected the determination of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld to ignore the unfolding fiasco in Iraq, to remain wedded to their own triumphalist propaganda. It's well known that this triumvirate was addicted to propaganda during the rush to war. And the danger of believing your own propaganda could hardly be more obvious, particularly when you've gone to great trouble to spread misinformation on a global scale. But George Bush evidently is pathologically incapable of moving beyond wishful thinking, of facing up to unwelcome facts or re-examining flaws in his thinking, no matter how urgently introspection is needed. It's why Bush never acknowledges mistakes; he can't see them.

"Bush is Johnson squared, because he thinks he can win. Bush is the one true believer, a man essentially cut off from all information except the official line.”

So the fifty days of silence was both a destructive period of paralysis in the American occupation, in itself, as well as a harbinger of many more years of policies toward Iraq based on wishful thinking. Bush's failure to address the burgeoning violence in Iraq following his "Mission Accomplished" speech was not accidental. It was characteristic of his refusal to live outside his own propaganda.

Last week WH Spokeswoman Dana Perino, when asked whether the president planned to recognize the milestone, complained that "the media is going to play this up again" even though Bush had learned the appropriate lesson from the debacle. And the lesson evidently is that ship-board banners need to be more specific:

That's the anniversary of when that banner flew on that ship. President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said "mission accomplished for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission." And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner.

Let's set aside the absurdity of the excuse that the "mission" referred only to the USS Abraham Lincoln's crew - an excuse invented only in July of 2003 after reporters started asking embarrassing questions. More to the point, there was not a peep from Perino or the White House about the President's claim in that May 1, 2003 speech that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." That is what the Bush administration rightfully ought to be made to answer for.

It simply wasn't true that Iraq had been pacified when Bush delivered his speech.

When Mr. Bremer landed in Baghdad on May 12, 2003, a month after the city fell, government offices were still burning and looting had not stopped.

But Bush had just rendered his judgment on the end of the war, and few administration officials were willing to contradict him - except anonymously.

Mr. Bremer was due to arrive in Iraq on Monday, and had sent an advance team that was in Baghdad today.

Officials said the impetus for the overhaul stems in part from urgent warnings that the escalating violence and a breakdown of civil order are already paralyzing the effort to rebuild Iraq.

''Unless we do something in the near future, it is likely to blow up in our face,'' one official said...

Since the onset of the war in March, security has been the chief obstacle to General Garner's mission, officials said. His teams of administrators have had to live in isolation behind razor wire and machine-gun positions at Mr. Hussein's Republican Palace.

The occupation of Iraq was already on the brink of disaster at the start of May 2003, but Bush didn't want to know anything about it.

[When Jay Garner was] recalled from Iraq, in May, 2003, he was taken by Rumsfeld to the White House for a farewell meeting with the President. The conversation lasted forty-five minutes, he told me, with Vice-President Dick Cheney and Rice sitting in for the second half, and yet the President did not take the chance to ask Garner what it was really like in Iraq, to find out what problems lay ahead.

Bush kept his head firmly in the sand for more than a month. On June 5, speaking to troops in Qatar, Bush hinted ever so gingerly that there was the occasional problem in Iraq.

Our forces are taking aggressive steps to increase order throughout the country. We are moving those Baathist officials that are trying to hang on to power. There are still pockets of criminality. Remember, the former leader of Iraq emptied the jail cells of common criminals right before the action took place. And they haven't changed their habits and their ways. They like to rob and like to loot. We'll find them.

The obscure phrase "right before the action..." refers to two massacres of demonstrators in Falluja in late April, which greatly inflamed the Iraqi resistance. That's as close to acknowledging the chaos in Iraq as Bush would permit himself to go, a month after his "mission accomplished" speech.

It wasn't until June 21, 2003 that the President finally broke his silence to the American public about continued violence in Iraq. By June 21st, the news was full of reports of the daily grind of guerilla war, as well as the need to postpone elections in Iraq. And yet, even then, Bush wasn't particulary forthcoming about the nature and scale of violence in Iraq.

The men and women of our military face a continuing risk of danger and sacrifice in Iraq. Dangerous pockets of the old regime remain loyal to it and they, along with their terrorist allies, are behind deadly attacks designed to kill and intimidate coalition forces and innocent Iraqis...

For the first time in over a decade, Iraq will soon be open to the world. And the influence of progress in Iraq will be felt throughout the Middle East.

That is the great breakthrough for George W. Bush, his long-delayed admission that things were less than perfect in Iraq. It's no coincidence by the way that the expression "progress in Iraq" first appears in that very same address as a justification for Bush's policies. "Progress" would be trotted out again and again in subsequent weeks as other administration officials sought to blunt the admission by Bush that the US was still mired in war. In other words, Bush & Co. leapt directly from "mission accomplished" to the equally absurd propaganda of "progress", that leitmotif of quagmire.

Within days of Bush's breakthrough speech we were told by Donald Rumsfeld that the insurgents were "dead-enders" from the regime of Saddam Hussein; we learned that the insurgency represented the last desperate acts of a dying regime. The full weight of propaganda bore down again upon us, and upon the Bush administration as well.

I dwell upon this history because we are still living it. The refusal of the White House to address the fifth anniversary of the "Mission Accomplished" speech is scarcely to be differentiated from the White House refusal to acknowledge in the immediate aftermath of the speech that chaos persisted. The administration's prescription for Iraq in May/June 2003 was to stall, to deny reality, to evade responsibility, to avoid doing what was necessary but politically embarrassing. To hope for a miracle.

And that continues to be the basis for Bush administration's policy in Iraq.

My head hurts.  Today's NY Times Week in Review has a distinguished symposium titled How to See This Mission Accomplished.

Wow, I thought naively.  A diverse group of opinions on what to do about Iraq on the fifth anniversary of the most shameful, bitterly ironic "celebration" in US military history.

Then I looked at the distinguished conspirators [oh, I mean contributors]: Fred Kagan, Daniel Perle, Danielle Pletka, Ken Pollack, Paul fucking Bremer, for chrissake!  Yes, NY Times.  The Mission will finally be "accomplished" by taking the advice of the rogues and criminals who engineered the initial "Mission Accomplished."

Not a single "dirty fucking hippie" [n. phrase: someone who had the sense to oppose the war before it started] (unless you consider Nathaniel Fick, a Marine infantry officer in Iraq and Afghanistan and a fellow at the Center for a New American Security, to perhaps be a dirty fucking hippie).

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This week was Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. It also was the fifth aniversary of Bush's infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech. This aniversary was unique in that for the first time the Bush administration has admitted that the banner was a huge mistake...though John McCain blamed it on the military, excusing Bush for the fiasco. The Republicans are finally acknowledgig the dismal failure of "Mission Accomplished" but refuse to take the blame. Typical. Absolutely typical. Republicans wouldn't know responsibility if it bit them in the ass.

This is from the blog, Last Kaul.

Distracted by the fun of watching the Obama/Clinton steel cage, death match in North Carolina this week, I almost missed the opportunity to celebrate the five-year anniversary of "Mission Accomplished."  Five years ago Thursday, George Bush dressed up as a fighter pilot and had a real one set him down on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.  All decked out in his costume, he paraded in front of the assembled crew and press, like a kid getting ready for Halloween, and then stood in front of the now infamous banner and told the nation, "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended."

John McCain's presidential campaign has apparently found help to battle its extreme case of Bush separation anxiety.  Desperate to distance the Republican nominee from the most unpopular president in modern American history, the McCain camp is closely coordinating with the White House to create the facade of separation between John McCain and George W. Bush.

We often hear about news outlets slashing their budgets and downsizing their operations in an effort to save money, but there's one thing that the traditional media really needs to invest in and that's a dictionary, because it doesn't seem like they know what the word "clarify" means.

Twice in the past two days, the media has reported on outrageous or downright disturbing claims made by John McCain on the campaign trail to whip up the faithful, and then have described his backpedaling as "clarifications," rather than the flip-flopping, damage control that they are.  On Wednesday, McCain said:

The bridge in Minneapolis didn't collapse because there wasn't enough money. The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects.

That's pretty clear, right?  A definitive statement that the bridge collapsed because of pork barrel spending.  But after the national co-chairman of his campaign, who also happens to be the Governor of Minnesota, objected, McCain was allowed to clarify and say what he really meant was:

...only that earmarks divert money from necessary projects toward unneeded pork-barrel ones.

Obviously we all misunderstood when he said "the bridge collapsed because..."   And then yesterday McCain said:

My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.

My friends, that's a straightforward statement.  But damn, it does sound bad.  So the media allowed him to clarify it:

No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons.

Oh, he meant that other war...the one we fought 17 years ago.  Well, sure.  It's a shame that "the word 'again' was misconstrued."  Because he certainly never meant that it's happening today...or that it's ever happened before.  

"Again" doesn't mean again, "the bridge collapsed because," doesn't mean the bridge collapsed because, black is white, up is down, move along, there's nothing to see here...and the straight talking, moderate, maverick express rolls on.  

And of course there are other issues that have popped up during this campaign that McCain hasn't had to clarify, but that's only because the media chooses to ignore them.  But if they ever finish writing that novel and get back to doing their day jobs, perhaps they could get McCain to explain:

• What he meant when he said, on three occasions, that Iran was training Sunni extremists to fight in Iraq?  Since he is the self and media appointed foreign policy candidate, it would be nice to know if he's aware of the difference between Sunnis, Shiites, and their respective relationship with Iran.
• Which of Reverend John Hagee's positions does he endorse?  That the Catholic Church is a cult that conspired with Hitler, that Hurricane Katrina was a just punishment for the people of New Orleans, that America is cursed and doomed, or that abortions are available in public schools?
• Why he is now saying that the "Mission Accomplished" banner was a mistake when in 2003 he cited it as proof that the conflict was over?

And if that's too much hard work for the media, can they at least ask McCain to clarify exactly how many years he is willing to have American soldiers attacked, wounded or killed in Iraq?  So far we only know for sure that it's less than a 100 years.
   

On the fifth anniversary of George Bush's aircraft-carrier extravaganza, John McCain claimed that in spring of 2003 he rejected the administration's "mission accomplished" boasts as mere propaganda. He now says he thought those boasts were contradicted by the facts and "wrong".

"To state the obvious, I thought it was wrong at the time. I thought phrases like ‘a few dead-enders,’ ‘last throes,’ all of those comments contributed over time to the frustration and sorrow of Americans because those statements and comments did not comport with the facts on the ground...and I think that history will judge me that I thought it was wrong and I knew what was right."

Asked if Bush bore responsibility for the placement of the "Mission Accomplished" banner posted above him at the speech, McCain took a big picture approach.

"Do I blame him for that specific banner? I have no knowledge of that. I can’t blame him for that. But I do, do say statements were made-’a few dead-enders,’ ‘last throes’...(that) were contradicted by the facts on the ground."

Here is the video of McCain's comments.

McCain has a penchant for rewriting history in such a way that he turns out to have been the hero of every story, though usually unrecognized as such "at the time". So what was McCain really saying in the spring of 2003 about "mission accomplished"?

The DNC has posted a Fox "News" interview from June 11, 2003 in which McCain invoked the "Mission Accomplished" banner as proof that the war in Iraq was indeed over, despite public skepticism of the claim. In fact, McCain went on to argue that it was "very appropriate" for the Senate Armed Services Committee to hold post-conflict hearings.

NEIL CAVUTO (host): Senator -- after a conflict means after the conflict, and many argue the conflict isn't over.

McCAIN: Well, then why was there a banner that said mission accomplished on the aircraft carrier?

Look, the -- I have said a long time that reconstruction of Iraq would be a long, long, difficult process, but the conflict -- the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished, and it's very appropriate. In two weeks, General Franks is going to come before the Senate Armed Services Committee, and we're going to have his overall assessment of the conflict. I think that's entirely appropriate because we'll be -- we'll be taking up the needs of the Defense Department and the men and women in the military on the Armed Services Committee.

But I'm looking for an overall review of the conflict, what we did right, what we did wrong, and what the needs are, including the issue of weapons of mass destruction. I remain confident that we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And as Media Matters points out, on the same evening in an interview with Jake Tapper at Salon McCain again endorsed the propaganda:

"Now, I think it's entirely appropriate now that regime change has been orchestrated -- and though the danger is certainly not over, the mission is 'accomplished' -- it's appropriate to have a hearing."

So five years ago John McCain was endorsing propaganda about victory in Iraq that he now claims he knew to be false at the time.

As for the prospects of ever being able to say "mission accomplished" in Iraq, on Thursday McCain seemed to admit that it would impossible if he's elected president.

Though when he was asked if he foresees a day when he would declare the mission in Iraq "accomplished," he said he would try to be more careful with his words.

"I would hate to use that kind of language, because I think it’s going to be one of these situations which is the classic counterinsurgency, that we’ve seen in conflicts around the world in the past, that there is slow, gradual progress and there is two steps forward and one step back," McCain said. "I don’t know if you could ever say quote ‘mission accomplished’ as much as you could say ‘Americans are out of harms way.’

The way to get American troops out of harm's way in Iraq is to withdraw them from Iraq, the one thing McCain insists he won't do. It looks to me as if McCain prefers to run for the presidency under this new banner:

"Mission Impossible"

Yesterday, amid all of the Mission Accomplished "nostalgia" and reports on the April death toll in Iraq hitting a new recent high of 50, one particular fatality in Afghanistan nearly escaped attention.  I did an item about it over at Editor & Publisher which did get widely linked, but I will now bring it to you here.  

Meanwhile, let's keep in mind that as of May 1, according to the Pentagon, at least 425 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan since late 2001.  Of those, the military reports 292 were killed by hostile action.

Now here's the latest casualty in Afghanistan:

Fifty-two American military personnel deployed to the Iraq occupation went to premature graves in April. Male, female, black, white, Latino. The oldest was Colonel Stephen K. Scott, 54. The youngest was Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter, 19.

Those 52 came from Ardmore, Oklahoma. From St. Paul, Minnesota. From Mesquite and Hull and Fresno and Buchanan Dam and College Station and El Paso and Magnolia and San Antonio and Hempstead and Cedar Park, Texas. From San Juan, Puerto Rico. From Littleton and Colorado Springs, Colorado. From Springfield and Perryville, Missouri. From Dover, Delaware. From Bakersfield and Culver City and Fort Irwin and Hanford and Lake Tahoe and San Diego, California. From Oakmont, Pennsylvania. From Boise, Idaho. From Zephyrhills and Clearwater and Jacksonville and Miami Lakes and Coral Springs, Florida. From Sauk Village, Illinois. From New Market, Alabama. From Cudahy and Waukesha and Racine, Wisconsin. From Lafayette, Louisiana. From Mount Airy and Apex and Teachey, North Carolina. From Commerce, Georgia. From Gaylord, Michigan. From Morris Plains, New Jersey. From Sag Harbor, New York. From Burkeville and Dublin and Norfolk, Virginia. For each of these departed, a candle.

If the past is any guide, for each of the Americans who died in April because of the war and occupation, between 50 and 350 Iraqis died. We can't be any more exact than that because every attempted count is called into question. The constraints of the software template for this site won't allow me to post enough candles to mark the passing of those Iraqis even using the lowest probable tally.

Whatever the number, it is horrendous. All the more so because the deaths of the Americans, of the Iraqis, of the other members of the coalition, have all resulted from a war of choice, an unnecessary war, a war of the new imperialism. A war founded and continued to this day on exaggerations, distortions, fabrications, concoctions and lies. A war which a smirking, strutting, absurdity of a president told us 60 months ago was Mission Accomplished.

Progressives should never declare our mission accomplished until justice is delivered to those who lied us into this war. Justice for the 52 Americans who died last month, for the 4065 who have died since March 2003, for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have also died. Without justice, they truly will have died in vain.