Plus Ca Change

The New York Times explains why they knocked backed MCCain's Op-Ed: if you want to talk about "victory" in Iraq, you have to explain what you mean by that. Jason Linkins says the Times was actually doing McCain a favour (again):

The Times put bros before prose, and in so doing, spared McCain no end of embarrassment, because the op-ed is rivetingly dumb and laden with inaccuracies.

Dumb and inaccurate? That's McCain's whole campaign strategery, isn't it? Who cares if it makes sense, as long as it's red, white and blue! The reality-based community is for wimps! Hey, it worked for Dubya for nearly 8 years...

Funny how the NYT calls McCain "the presumptive Republican nominee". Is anybody else still in the race?

Also, it looks like Condi might be angling for a job under President Obama. You go, girl! But first get those stains off your dress.

Elsewhere, Juan Cole notes that - for all the talk about less violence in Iraq after Teh Surge - there were actually more deaths in the month before this Obama visit than in the month before his January 2006 visit.

Why a return to the bad situation in late 05 and early 06 should be greeted by the GOP as the veritable coming of the Messiah is beyond me. You have people like Joe Lieberman saying silly things like if it weren't for the troop escalation, Obama wouldn't be able to visit Iraq. Uh, he visited it before the troop escalation, just fine.

The troop escalation, which actually allowed the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis of Baghdad and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis from the country, has largely been pushed as propaganda by the White House and the AEI.

I guess it's like the price of oil. After going so high for so long, a little drop in prices is hailed like a return to the 1960s. "The sense of relief throughout the land is palpable," says a wary Raymond J. Leary. Yeah, we have all been there before.