Perhaps you saw the video that Senator John Edwards put up the night before he formally announced on TV that he was running for President. In it, he labeled the plan to "surge" or "escalate" US troops in Iraq the 'McCain Doctrine.' It was clever speechwriting, and it looks like Senator John McCain is starting to feel its sting.

This weekend on Bloomberg TV, apparently McCain is going to show us how curvaceous that Straight Talk has become.

Take it away, Bloomberg News:

Senator John McCain, a longtime advocate of increased U.S. forces in Iraq, said he would support a troop ``surge'' into Baghdad only if it is ``sufficient and sustained.''

McCain said he would judge any surge proposal based on the assessments of people such as retired Army General Jack Keane, who has called for at least 30,000 additional troops. ``If it's not sufficient in the view of'' experts such as Keane, ``then I cannot support it,'' he said in an interview on ``Political Capital with Al Hunt'' airing this weekend on Bloomberg Television.

 

So, the word from Senator McCain has changed. His stated position at one time: "I'll support the policy that will win the Iraq war." His new position: "I'll support the policy that will distance me from President Bush and help me win the presidency in 2008."

Or, to paraphrase Senator Kerry, "I was for the troop surge before I was against it."

Meanwhile: McCain is going to listen to *retired* General Keane? What about all of our generals who are still in uniform? What do they have to say? Is McCain going to listen to them?

I'm cross-posting this over from Bolton Watch, where I wrote it last month.

*** 

I know everyone in the world already knows this, but as we, and (undoubtedly TPMCafe) prepare to decommission Bolton Watch (although, one should never stop watching John Bolton), let's report for a moment on Bolton's successor.

Bob Novak says it will be Zalmay Khalilzad, soon to be ex-Ambassador to Iraq.  Although what no one else is relaying is Novak's "footnote" that says that Andrew Card, former White House Chief of Staff, expressed interest in the job.

What would a Khalilzad ambassadorship mean for America, and the UN?

I doubt we'll see any bruising confirmation hearings over Ambassador Khalilzad - he's been confirmed to multiple embassies by the Senate, and with little dissension.  It would take something pretty shocking to make the US Senate, even under Joe Biden's chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee, change their tone, and that ammunition would have been loaded before he was shipped off to Iraq.

Much will be made about how Khalilzad, as a Muslim, will be a good emissary to the Muslim world.  But if this was true, we would keep him in Afghanistan, or Iraq, where his presence would soothe the Muslims of the world we need to be most concerned with, rather than the ambassadors of Qatar and Indonesia.  With a PhD from the U. of Chicago and a membership in the Project for a New American Century, Khalilzad will be rapidly fingered as a primary neocon player, and that's quite enough to make the Group of 77 and China think you are a loyal Bush/Cheney man.  

Still, Khalilzad will be more likely to play by the UN's rule of diplomatic etiquette, and in this way, it will be a smoother time for the United States at the UN.  The G-77 and China won't just dig in their heels on issues because Khalilzad is Khalilzad - they'll dig in their heels because he represents America.  That's a better situation than where we've been, especially on the critical but underreported UN reform issues that need to be bigger American priorities.

I don't think I'm simply going out on a limb here - check out this report that Dr. Khalilzad signed off to in 2000 when he was still at the RAND Corporation.  The report was supposed to be a bipartisan blueprint to manage national security for the winner of 2000's presidential contest:

In our view, sustaining support for this approach will require rebuilding the effectiveness of the UN as an institution and reestablishing US domestic support for the UN.  This will require paying the dues that the US owes to the UN, while pressing for needed institutional reforms.

That's a heck of a lot better than "losing ten floors."

Well, I hadn't really considered this problem before. Take it away, Financial Times:

In the Senate, the vice-president – who formally presides over the chamber – holds a tie-breaking vote and Mr Cheney could be called to exercise this more often with the Democrats holding only a slim majority, and especially if Tim Johnson, the South Dakota Democrat who was taken ill before Christmas, remains in hospital.

So, we've all heard about Speaker Pelosi's first one hundred hours, and all the things she's going to want to get done. Will the VPOTUS hold it all hostage because the Senate Dems can't count to 51?

The thing is, it's very nice if the Dems pass a whole set of legislation on the House-side. But if it all gets locked up in the Senate, what good is it? Either a)the Dems won't bring it to a vote or b)they will, and Cheney will kill it. Or, the Senate's reputation for ponderousness waters down everything further that had been charged through on the House side.

It'd probably go issue by issue, but there are especially Dems in the Senate who will wander over to the other side on some matters, not to lose sight of Senator Lieberman. (Certainly there are Republicans who will also drift into tactical cooperation with Senator Reid.)

Of course, there's a dynamite article by Carolyn Lochhead in the San Francisco Chronicle that suggests the GOP might not put up such a big fight on many of the one hundred hours issues - cooperating with the Dems and moving them toward the center will help the GOP re-burnish its image for 2008. On the other hand, for the Senate side, see this insight:

These are among the reasons why Pelosi and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada are promising to concentrate on oversight hearings and ethics reform -- which cost no money and do not require Bush's approval -- rather than grand new bargains to reform health care, for example.

(With the variety of major Bay Area-politicians, I suggest political nerds keep an eye on this paper and others in the months to come - I'm guessing they'll be offering some more dynamite analysis and breaking some big stories)

 

So, as usual, don't let those expectations get too big.

By now, millions of people have viewed the hanging of Saddam Hussein. Not just Al Iraqiya's pornographic tease of America's old pit bull just prior to his necktie party. No, I mean millions have watched Saddam actually hang. Take a look at the video up at this website Live Leak, a YouTube clone (Hat tip to No Quarter; you probably don't *really* want to follow this link). How many views? When I clicked it was 134,205 times it had been watched. Meanwhile, the people at Boing Boing found 4 more of these clips at Google Video, guaranteeing that millions more casual internet users will watch Iraq's dead president swing. And I'm sure it will be no time at all before these videos are pressed to a million VCD's sitting on the floor of marketplaces across the Middle East to be viewed as short films prior to one's at home screening of a pirated copy of Dreamgirls.

Clearly, the location of Saddam Hussein's execution was one of the most secure settings for an execution ever constructed. So, why are we finding on the move about this planet a bunch of viral, unrestricted and uncensored videos of what is probably the most controversial execution ever carried out?

Newsweek provided an interesting interview with Ali Al Massedy, the "official videographer" tasked with producing the official record of the execution. He usually does this job for Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Presumably, they brought him in to shoot the film so that there would only be one version of the execution, and the government would then be able to tightly control its distribution. Ali says as much:

Ali said the videotape lasts about 15 minutes. When NEWSWEEK asked to see a copy, Ali said he had already handed the tape over to Maliki's chief of staff. "It is top secret," he said. He would not give the names of officials in attendance, though he estimates there were around 20 observers....He also said that government officials had not decided whether or not to release the videotape.

Well, I guess they decided. It was so top secret that they let multiple men out of that limited group of 20 bring in cellphones with video functions, and then allowed them to record the execution. I bet you couldn't smuggle a gun into that execution chamber. But apparently you could smuggle a cell phone with a video camera into those gallows, and stand out in plain sight 15 feet from the platform and shoot that video of this "top secret event" to your heart's desire.

And just as our fair president raced to wake up Saturday morning and issue a statement about what had been done in Iraq, several of those 20 attendees raced home or to their offices to upload videos of a hanged Saddam Hussein so everyone in the world could see this secretive execution carried out.

What a sham it has been. Pretending at the time of Saddam's capture that now was the time for a trial, and pretending at the time of his sentence that now was the time to order his execution, and pretending at the time of his execution that now was the moment he had to hang, and then pretending that it was a secret act carried out with discretion to avoid antagonizing any of Iraq's population.

Here we are seeing 21st century psychological operations. It's hard to know who is directing this internet traffic, but it can be concluded there were elements within America's government and/or military, working in concert with Iraq's current scarecrow power-holders, who wanted as many people as possible in the world to see Saddam hang. And from that rope hanged not just that bearded old man, but whatever was left of our culture that hasn't been degraded by the 7 years of 'leadership" we've been dragging around with us.