MSNBC has an interview with Senator McCain in which he reveals he is just as stupefied about Islam and just as blinded by wishful thinking as the most hopeful we-are-the-world liberal. The Republican Party, and his candidacy, are doomed if McCain doesn't get out from under his kagans, kristols, boots, and other advisers determined to cling to what Hugh Fitzgerald has called "Tarbaby Iraq." He needs to see that effort as a squandering, with goals that "are both wrong and unattainable." It is easy to see Obama running with this all the way to the White House: "McCain wants us to endure another 2-3 trillion dollars in expense, another 4,000 dead, another 50,000 wounded.  And for what? How does this make us safer?" The fact that Obama may be against the war for all the wrong reasons -- and certainly not in order "to exploit the fissures, and divide and demoralize the Camp of Islam"-- won't matter. What will matter is he wants us out, and McCain keeps mindlessly talking about "winning" a war without being able to explain the nature of that "winning."  

McCain, running in the November election to succeed Bush in 2009, described a scenario he thought he could achieve within his first four-year term.

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom," McCain said in prepared remarks he was to deliver in Columbus, Ohio.

"The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced," McCain said.

The Republican senator said that although the United States would still have a troop presence in Iraq, those soldiers would not need a "direct combat role" because Iraqi forces would be capable of providing order.

McCain also predicted that al Qaida leader Osama bin Laden would be captured or killed within four years and the militant group's presence in Afghanistan would be reduced to remnants...