I believe he simply doesn't think about it like that. Sunni, Shi'a, who gives a shit? Them's Muslims, and therefore enemy, and therefore we can label them all Al Qaeda and bomb their ass into the stone age. Everything else is unimportant details. The public (those who may hand him the Presidency in November) isn't watching CSPAN and dissecting what's being said. And the media won't tell them, either. He's safe. He can let his remaining hair down and display not his ignorance, but complete indifference. He doesn't give a fuck who he bombs, he just wants the nuclear football. He wants to be Commander in Chief, to happily move the toy soldiers around a big map in the Situation Room. Like the good ol' days! The rest is not his problem.

He is more dangerous than Bush: unlike Junior who's never had combat, he's been there and liked it. Unlike Junior whom we can shoot down as oblivious and removed from reality, McCain can argue that he was there! he knows! he's experienced! It's all bullshit, and we all know this. My Grandmother lived through the blockade of Leningrad during World War II, enduring hardships that never even entered McCain's worst nightmares in Hanoi Hilton. Does that make her a foreign policy expert? She'd be the first to laugh if I suggested it. And McCain knows it, and he doesn't give a crap. He wants his nuclear football and his toy soldiers and his maps and nice, compliant Chiefs of Staff that can "bomb bomb Iran". Oh yeah. I'd say he'd be the first President who's seen active duty and yet gleefully proceeds to bomb the shit out of anyone who looks at him funny.

Presidential candidates always put their best, most benevolent face on when they're running. They become a lot more scary when they're safely elected. If McCain is so overtly oblivious / indifferent / warmongering right now... what's he going to be like if (oh please, make it an if!) he's elected? I shudder to think.

I've no data to back this up. But I see it clear as day. Please, if there is a God, make me wrong about this.

Front page on the New York Times website: this just in, Ambassador Crocker admits that for the last six years the war on Terror has been fought in the wrong field! The Bush administration is publicly humiliated! Biggest foreign policy blunder in U.S. history is publicly exposed!

Oh wait. I've been dreaming. Instead we get: "Hearings Rife with Political Overtones" by Elizabeth Bumiller. And that's the major LIBERAL newspaper. Nice.

To be fair, maybe the New York Times hasn't caught on to this just yet. Maybe. Though in the past they could post breaking news with split-second rapidity. Not this one, though. This one requires some thought lest (Booji forbid) they print something the Administration may not like. Hoo boy.

Permanent bases in Iraq could become a reality for many reasons and they would be there for the duration.

Uh huh. And those "permanent bases" will of course be nuclei for world peace, right? Pal, keeping American troops in Iraq equals keeping the war going. Keeping American troops in Iraq for a hundred years equals keeping the war going for a hundred years. When McCain envisages keeping American bases in Iraq for a hundred years, he is, therefore, envisaging a hundred-year-long war in Iraq. Do I really have to spell this out?

You're splitting hairs. Everyone who says the Democrats are wrong to call McCain on those words (yes, and that especially includes my fellow liberals) is splitting hairs. He may have said it, subtly, this way or that. The meaning, in the end, is the same: keep the status quo, which is, um, WAR. You can paint in all kinds of various colors, but in the end McCain is a WAR-MONGER. He either likes the current situation just fine, or is too much of a chicken to admit that change is necessary. Most likely, the former, since he keeps yammering about how he woulda done it better if he were in charge back in 2003.

So, just to keep this discussion straight: let's stop the sanctimonious bashing of whoever dares to not like McCain's "100 years" comment and let's keep to the issues at hand, shall we?