We involve ourselves, officially, in what we deem to be our business. So when the Soviets wanted to put missiles in Cuba, we got involved. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, we removed the invaders. We have security interests. Big ones.

By the same token, to the extent that GS Chandy wants President Bush taken out, and to the extent that his is actually a serious request (I don't consider it a serious one, but whatever), I say, I want Hugo Chavez taken down in Venezuela.

Fair enough? At a personal, single-citizen level, I have about as much right to expect that freedom-minded Venezuelans take down their leader, as GS Chandy has to ask us to remove ours. As for what the U.S. leaership does to advance our national security interests abroad, that is a very big, very complicated question. Ask Democrat LBJ, or Republican Nixon, about bombing in Laos and Cambodia. Ask Democrat JFK about assasinating Castro. Ask Democrat Bill Clinton about bombing factories in Sudan, or valleys in Bosnia. All of those things were okay in my view; it is a bipartisan thing, you see.

I know that you're never going to get over the 2000 election. And that therapy isn't even a likely option in your case. But there is always medication, to alleviate some of the more debilitating effects of "Bush-rage."

Best wishes in your recovery.

As long as the Democrats would be willing to be the "the party of the Iraq surrender." Actually, that is not entirely genuine. We won, militarily. Mission Accomplished. The Iraqi Army was vaporized.

What we have now, while quite serious, is a civil war; a dispiriting kind of police action. In some ways not worthy of our military, but nevertheless hugely important.

So if the Democrats want to hang blame on Iraq and call it the Republicans' war, so be it. If the Democrats remove our military hastily, they will be "the party of the Iraq genocide."

In other words... we'll take credit for the part of the war we knew how to do, the initial victories, the other part that came after, which we didn't, the slow grinding losses, we'll give away the blame...

-- ondelette

No. Nobody -- that is to say, nobody that is serious -- is giving away any "blame." The serious people are not talking about "blame" at all. The serious people are talking about how to best advance American interests in a complicated region. The people talking about "blame" are the ones trying to score points in the runup to an election.

I opposed John McCain's 2000 primary bid. I opposed McCain-Feingold. I thought it was a huge mistake to compromise on the unionization of TSA workers, a deal brokered by McCain. And I disagreed with McCain when he called for Don Rumsfeld's resignation. But I respect McCain, almost alone among the candidates, for now saying, "We need to be serious about completing the stabilization of Iraq."

Can anyone give a fifty-word answer as to what positive result we can expect from a large-scale troop withdrawal starting in October?

We know the John Conyers answer to that question. The Conyers answer is, "I don't know. It's not my problem. It's Bush's war." Which is why Conyers is such a useless old fool. So, Salonistas... 50 clear words on the positives of an immediate withdrawal.

What newspapers have you been smoking?

How about "Thousands of Iraqis dead in civil bloodbath"? Are we to pull out of Afghanistan as well, where the result might be "fewer Americans dead"?

Is there anyone with the chutzpah to say, "Let's get rid of Dick Cheney so we can wage a REALLY tough fight on the terrorists." Huh?

"Thousands of Iraqi dead" is the expected result of of a US troop pullout. And no, it's not a good thing. Thousands more dead anywhere is a bad thing. Thousands more American dead in another attack, planned in Afghanistan or Iran or Syria or Iraq Pakistan would also be a bad thing.

And wouldn't it be a good thing to acknowledge all the thousands of Iraqi dead to date? The thousands rounded up and killed by Saddam. The thousands slaughtered by other Iraqi fanatics, and Iranian terrorists, etc., etc., etc.

I don't mind if people want to has out strategic differences with the administration. But let's not foget who the real enemy is. American troops aren't slaughtering Iraqis. Terrorists are slaughtering Iraqis.

When was the last time that Salon devoted some of its website space to an indictment of the people and the ideology responsible for the suicide bombings, the market-square bombings, the train station bobmings, the roadside IED bombings, the airport bombings, the nail bombings, the truck bombings. You get the idea.

It may be the first and last time. But what the hell...

Yes, McCain's support for the war makes me favor him, not disown him.

Some have observed that McCain had a "ceiling" of support in the Republican party, and that it wasn't that great. I don't know that I agree with that. But he had some huge fundraising hurdles. His ill-advised sponsorship of McCain-Feingold, and the bitterness of his feud with Mitch McConnel, made him one of the most unlikely campaign fundraisers in American history.

I really think that McCain found it attractive to make his mark in campaign finance reform because he was so bad at fundraising and he so hated prostituting himself for donors. And there was McCain's honor thing with avenging hi involvement as one of the Keating Seven. All along, I thought it was more personal than ideological with McCain. He wanted a world where no Senator had to go around sucking up to people for their money. Mitch McConnel, a smarter politician, knew that McCain-Feingold was baloney and that it would hurt the parties and be a fountain of unintended consequences. McConnel was right, and, in a way, so was McCain. He sucks at fundraising.

Ironically, in my book, that is one big reason to love McCain.