'It's amazing. Not long ago John McCain referred to the media as his "base."  Then, he seemed to be having a time of his life, with the media pandering to him at every turn. As to why this was so, your guess is as good as mine. Now that the media are trying their level best to excercise fairness with respect to both presidential candidates McCain is crying foul. But to what end? Perhaps untill there is course-correction on the part of the media that entails a renewed "most media favored status" for McCain. And untill then we're likely to witness intensified attacks by him and his surrogates against the media. Their first anti-media ad is only the beginning on an assault on the the American media whose spinelessness as well as its temerity to not only capitulate, but to also roll over for the Republican/conservative attack machine are a matter of public knowleddge. There is no going around the fact that this will be a big test for the media as to whether they will remain a media without a backbone, or whether there will be readiness on their part to chart a new course toward journalistic intergrity.  

John McCain has staked his candidacy for president on a refutable assertion that the troop surge in Iraq has succeeded, making this spurious claim solely on the basis of a drop in violence all the more quetionable. Which of course it was never in doubt in the first that the American troops would be able to bring violence under control as they, indeed, have done. The McCain crowd forgets that the rationale underlying the surge had conditioned its success on the emergence of conditions conducive to the creation mechanisms for political reconcliation, as well as the American handing over security functions to the Iraqis themselves. How, then, can the surge be said to have succeeded in the absence of these fundamental prerequisites?