You remember Rudy's "9/11" mantra repeated ad nauseum? It looks like McCain has got one of his own.

McCain has had it easy. He won one highly contested congressional primary race in 1982. That's it! Since then McCain has won 1 congressional and 4 Senate Races by margins ranging from 20 to 52%. His curent performance on the campaign trail is, in my opinion, sophmorish, and likely the result of 5 easy elections over the past 24 years.

During his first primary election the issue of carpetbagger came up as he had just moved to Arizona the year before. When confronted, McCain responded with

Listen, pal. I spent 22 years in the Navy. My father was in the Navy. My grandfather was in the Navy. We in the military service tend to move a lot. We have to live in all parts of the country, all parts of the world. I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the First District of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived longest in my life was Hanoi.

His defense du jour "I'm a POW ..." a replay of what has worked for him in the past, has already been used several times, in one form or another. during the past weeks in defending himself against Obama. I was surprised to see him use it so soon as it is his strongest suit. When responding to Obama's criticism of McCain's lack of support for the GI bill, McCain responded 

"And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did ... "

pushing the "inexperienced" moniker on Obama. McCain's implication that Obama's lack of lack of service, disqualifies him from questioning his judgment on military issues, is silly, elitist, reveals a disdain for Obama's candidacy and does nothing to forward the discussion. I'm sure that some in his base agree with McCain's assertions of superiority in all things military. While McCain's service is admirable, it does not entitle him to the Presidency, which he seems to think, against Obama, it does.

According to MCain, casualties are important but when we leave isn't. Why, is one important and not the other?

It seems to me that McCain attaches importance to casualities not only for obvious humanitarian reasons, but politically because low casualities reduce media resources and coverage of Iraq; out of site, out of mind so to speak. He has injected the idea that with low or no casualities, it ok for us to stay indefinitely as long as necessary, maybe even 100 years. Missing from this calculation is the effect that this occupation, agreed upon or not by the current Iraqi government, helps to raise a new generation of anti-US jihadist, as well as an economic and stateside toll of maintaining troops indefinitely. We are effectively paying off Iraqi not to fight against us, and the large national guard deployments have left us vulnerable in the case of a national disaster. This underscores why tying the US economy to Iraq makes sense for Democrats.