Hillary's example of her husband not winning the nomination until the California primary in June 1992 was totally disingenuous; virtually everyone was convinced he was the nominee apparent by then, and would have won the nomination whether he won that primary or not.

If her point was to prove that other primary campaigns had extended into June, there were other, more recent and relevant examples. Gary Hart campaigned hard against Mondale in 1984, effectively splitting the vote and the issue was decided by the super delegates at the Democratic convention in August. Ted Kennedy campaigned strenuously against the sitting president Carter in 1980, and tried to do what Clinton is doing now: persuade the committed delegates to switch their votes to him; Carter was not nominated until the Convention in August. Reagan campaigned against the sitting president Ford in 1976 and the issue was in doubt until the Republican convention in August.

But in each of those cases the winner of the extensive nomination battle lost the general election, hardly making her point that extended nomination battles do not affect the general election.

And her 1968 example was totally irrelevant to her purported point. First of all, President Johnson had not announced his decision not to run for reelection until March 31, 1968, so by June the campaign was only two months old. Secondly, there were only thirteen primaries in 1968, the nomination being effectively controlled by party leaders. Thirdly, the RFK assassination made the point moot; there is no knowing whether his winning the California election would have affected the outcome of the nomination or general election.

And the Democrats lost that election also.

So she tried to make her point with one dishonest example and one totally irrelevant one.

Why did she use the 1968 example if not to bring out into the open what many had been thinking but not talking about, and maybe sway enough delegates to vote her way?

You say it's stupid to think that Hillary's real intent was to bring the JFK assassination out into the open. But you didn't answer my question, why else? She tried to make her case that long nomination contests don't affect the general election with one false example, 1992, and one totally irrelevant one, 1968. There were at least three in between but all of those successful nominees lost the general election.

You seem to believe that it would have been too stupid on Hillary's part to have tried that. It was amazingly stupid, but she's desperate and desperate straits call for desperate measures.

It does seem as if backfired, thankfully.

But although McCain has attempted at many turns to link those terms directly to Iran and the threat it poses to America, they have little relevance to our problems with this adversary. McCain may see Iran as the boogeyman he needs to help him defeat Obama this fall, but solving our real problems in the Middle East will require

a fundamental decision about foreign policy that McCain seems unprepared to make: either negotiate with Iran, or go to war with Iran. There is no other choice at this point that is in the interests of the United States, and to pretend otherwise is pure sophism.

There are other choices besides just talking with Iraq. The present course of sanctions and political pressure could continue, with or without direct talks. Whether they would work or not is another matter.

All this talk about war may be be saber rattling by Bush, and McCain, in attempts to scare Iran into acquiescing. It may be McCain's idea of a bogeyman to win the election. Or he may be dead serious about it. And even if they're bluffing, they could cause Iran to stage its own preemptive strike. Whatever their reasons, they're sure scaring the hell out of me.

Byt even those bozos should realize that we cannot possibly win a conventional war with Iran now, even if it was possible before the Iraq fiasco ruined our once mighty military.

We have 150,000 or so troops in Iraq now, bogged down trying to keep the peace there. It was a major strain to provide an additional 20,000 "temporary" troops for the "surge," and then only by extending deployments. There are no more available without renewing the draft and increasing the size of the Army and Marine Corps; that would take well over a year before they are trained and ready.

Iran has over 500,000 troops available, well motivated to fight the "Great Satan," plus the Shiah militia forces in Iraq. Even if our outnumbered troops could fight them off, they are spread out now in police and training operations, unsuitable for fighting regular forces.

Iran also controls the shipping lanes to Kuwait, our only port of entry to Iraq, including the narrow Strait of Hormuz.

What president, faced with the annihilation of our forces in Iraq, would hesitate in using nuclear weapons against Iran? And how could nuclear weapons not kill many besides the Iranian combatants? The prevailing winds would carry the radiation in a flume directly over Afghanistan -- where our own and NATO troops are currently engaged -- and into other nations already possessing nuclear weapons: Pakistan, India and China and Russia. Would not these countries be tempted to respond similarly in order to protect their own vital interests?

Then there are the global economic effects. If you think $4 a gallon gasoline is bad, think of all the Persian Gulf oil being bottled up. In fact, the mere threat of that now is causing speculators to drive up the price of petroleum.

War with Iraq would be a cataclysmic disaster. And loose talk about is scary indeed.