McCain mentioned his plan for throwing an additional 30,000 troops into the Iraq quagmire might be unpopoluar with the American people. Yep:

Nearly three-quarters said Bush administration policy needs a complete overhaul or major changes. But only 11 percent of those polled backed calls to send more American troops to Iraq, as President Bush is said to be considering.

Who ever said running for President of the United States was a popularity contest anyway?

Courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

POWELL: Let’s be clear about something else, Bob, that gets a little confusing. There are really no additional troops. All we would be doing is keeping some of the troops who were there there longer and escalating or accelerating the arrival of other troops.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you about that because… do we have the troops? You seem to be suggesting that we don’t.

POWELL: I’m suggesting that what general Shoemaker said the other day before a committee looking at the reserve and national guard, That the active army is about broken. General Shoemaker is absolutely right. All of my contacts within the army suggest that the army has a serious problem in the active force.

Check out the video.

Nothing raises morale like extending soldier’s tours of duty…

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson this morning ripped into the “McCain-Bush Way Forward in Iraq” saying:

“The leading advocate for escalating the war is Senator John McCain. I have served with John in Congress and I respect him. But John McCain is wrong, dead wrong to think that we can solve Iraq’s political crisis through military escalation.”

“There are no quick or easy answers to the crisis in Iraq. Our choices are between bad options and worse ones. Some prefer military escalation. Some choose staying the course. These options are illusions. The only realistic choice we have is to stand down militarily and let the Iraqis stand up and face the political crisis which only they can resolve.”

“The leading advocate for escalating the war is Senator John McCain.” It is hard to make it clearer. If / when Bush increases troop strength in Iraq, McCain’s chances for being President will go down the drain along with the country of Iraq.

It seems Senator John McCain only knows how to apply the American Military force. Now he is calling for more troops in Afghanistan, albeit less forcefully than his demand for more troops in Iraq:

Washington will send more troops to Afghanistan “if it’s necessary,” U.S. Senator John McCain said Saturday using measured words, as he urged increased training for Afghan security forces and the movement of European troops to the country’s insurgency-plagued south.

Asked if the U.S. would send more troops to Afghanistan, McCain responded, “The British have said that they will be sending additional troops, taking troops out of Iraq and into Afghanistan.

“If it’s necessary, we will, and I’m sure we would be agreeable, but the focus here is more on training the Afghan National Army and the police, as opposed to the increased U.S. troop presence.”

Where are the additional troops for the McCain-Bush Iraq and Afghanistan Plan going to come from? More guard and reserve troops kept longer from their families and jobs? Longer deployments?

Angry, unstable St. John McCain needs to re-assess what the American people want. Support for the war is in the dumps and families are being torn apart by constant redeployments.

But if he really wants to hitch his presidential horse to Bush’s Iraq debacle, it can only benefit the Democratic candidate in 2008.

Trouble for McCain is brewing, and as usual Digby is remarkably prescient. He wrote last Tuesday:

[McCain’s] rationale for winning in 2008 hinges on his calling for more troops and the Bush administration not listening. (Whoever wins the Republican nomination in 08 must run against both Bush and the Democrats.)

McCain made a tactical error when he asked for a specific number recently. If they give him what he wants and it fails, which it will, his rabid support for the war becomes a huge liability.

Now comes the Saturday edition of the New York Times:

Military planners and White House budget analysts have been asked to provide President Bush with options for increasing American forces in Iraq by 20,000 or more. The request indicates that the option of a major “surge” in troop strength is gaining ground as part of a White House strategy review, senior administration officials said Friday.

Discussion of increasing the number of American troops, at least temporarily, has coursed through Washington for two months, as a possible way to reverse the deteriorating security situation in Baghdad. But the decision to ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff to specify where the additional forces could be found among overstretched Army, Marine and National Guard units, and to seek a cost estimate from the White House Office of Management and Budget, signifies a turn in the debate.

McCain must be sweating bullets. If Bush decides to add troops, the strategy going forward in Iraq will be known as the McCain Doctrine. The Senator never thought Bush would actually go through with it.

For Bush, this presents an excellent opportunity to work on his legacy. Go with war hero John McCain’s plan for Iraq and it suddenly becomes his problem. Bush gets good press for trying something new, and John McCain watches his presidential hopes go down the drain.

What can McCain do now? One option would be to escalate the number of troops and add other stipulations that he could later claim were the reasons for failure. Look for him to do that on Sunday with the morning talk shows. To avoid having Iraq hung around his neck like a rotten albatross, he needs to move quickly.

The real question that is left unanswered in the NYT piece is the rationale the Bush administration has for throwing another 20,000 - 30,000 troops into the quagmire. The generals have come out against it, in fact the article even mentions Abizaid’s belief that a troop surge could easily make the situation worse. So why do it?

What do you think?

From Talking Points Memo:

McCain has now become the latest hawk to pre-emptively attack the forthcoming proposals of the Iraq Study Group, which is reported to favor withdrawing troops from Iraq. McCain told conservative radio host Michael Smerconish that he’s sticking by his position that more troops need to be sent to Iraq, and rejected any notion of “compromise” that may be floated by the Baker-Hamilton group, elaborating as follows: “Well in war, my dear friends, there is no such thing as compromise; you either win or you lose.“

I would love to hear a detailed explanation from McCain of what exactly would constitute winning in Iraq. They have a government, they have had elections. What other benchmarks are you going to set? When do we tell the Iraqis that they need to stand on their own?

Digby takes note of McCain’s strategy for ending the civil war in Iraq:

“One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit,’” said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and two other guests.

Brilliant. What’s he got in mind for Darfur, smacking the Janjaweed around a little? I’m sure that’s the problem in Iraq - no one’s ever told those guys to just cut it out…

Poor old man never had a chance when student Jean Rohe took him head on in her address:

“The senator does not reflect the ideals upon which this university was founded,” Rohe proclaimed to loud cheers, with McCain sitting just a few feet away.

She added that she knew what McCain would be saying to the graduates since he had promised to deliver the same speech he gave at Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University last weekend and Columbia University on Tuesday.

“He will tell us we are young and too naive to have valid opinions,” Rohe said. “I am young and though I don’t possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that pre-emptive war is dangerous. And I know that despite all the havoc that my country has wrought overseas in my name, Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction.”

When McCain got up to speak, it was to a smattering of boos and hisses.  Many graduate wore or carried orange to signify their disapproval of McCain’s war-mongering stance and his continued support for intolerance.

Thank you New School graduates for exhibiting the disgust at McCain that all moral Americans would if they new the straight truth.

Senator McCain, have we really come to this?

“We must win in Iraq. We cannot fail. If we lose in Iraq, they’re coming after us. We will fight them somewhere else - like here,” he said. “It’s all part of a gigantic, titanic struggle between good and evil.”

Has McCain been reading a little too much Huntington?

This guy is clearly on the very edge of insanity. When it comes to war it seems McCain’s proclivity for emotion makes him a loose cannon.

Following are Senator John McCain’s remarks at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University graduation. Play-by-play commentary is in Italics.

Thank you, Dr. Falwell. Thank you, faculty, families and friends, and thank you Liberty University Class of 2006 for your welcome and for your kind invitation to give this year’s commencement address. I want to join in the chorus of congratulations to the Class of 2006. This is a day to bask in praise. You’ve earned it. You have succeeded in a demanding course of instruction. Life seems full of promise as is always the case when a passage in life is marked by significant accomplishment. Today, it might seem as if the world attends you.

Yeah, I’m sure their coursework was truly rigorous considering Liberty is a 4th Tier School as ranked by US News & World Report in their college guide.
But spare a moment for those who have truly attended you so well for so long, and whose pride in your accomplishments is even greater than your own – your parents. When the world was looking elsewhere your parents’ attention was one of life’s certainties. So, as I commend you, I offer equal praise to your parents for the sacrifices they made for you, for their confidence in you and their love. More than any other influence in your lives they have helped make you the success you are today and might become tomorrow.

Unless you happen to be gay or lesbian, in which case your parents would disown you.
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