Dear Brian,

So many deserved and targeted shots have been taken at your colleague Tim Russert in the last 48 hours that one curiosity of your own performance at Tuesday's Cleveland debate has been overlooked. You spoke these words to Senator Obama:

you could be going into a general election against a Republican with vast foreign policy expertise and credibility on national security.

What is the nature of Senator McCain's "vast foreign policy expertise"? On which piece of this expertise did he rely while "pushing for Saddam Hussein's forcible overthrow" starting in 1997 (John B. Judis, "Neo-McCain," TNR, 10/6/06)? When he advocated "rogue-state rollback"? When he "welcomed Ahmed Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), to Washington and pressured the administration to give him money"? When he replied to Chris Matthews in March 2003, who had asked him whether the Iraqis would treat Americans as liberators, "Absolutely, absolutely"? Did he acquire it while graduating 894th out of 899 in his class in Annapolis (Matt Welch, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, p. 24)?

So will you pledge to tell us on what basis you speak of his "expertise"?