MR. ROGERS' McCAIN'S NEIGHBORHOOD

I hope you watched yesterday's video du jour of John McCain flat out lying-- or else proving the frighteningly advanced state of his dementia-- on CNN with Wolf Blitzer. The Straight Talk Express is now a runaway freight train filled with nuts-- or piloted by one. Claiming that there's "significant progress," McCain told a radio audience-- and then reiterated the exact same thing on TV-- that "There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today." That's a)- just not true and b)- a scary thing for a candidate for president to say because he's either consciously lying or utterly clueless and delusional.

Or does he know a neighborhood in Baghdad that no one else does? (It sure ain't the Green Zone, not that that's a neighborhood anyway. McCain who once was a hair-breath away from switching parties, was back on CNN today at first defending his positions and then, confronted with evidence to the contrary, denying they were his positions! Watch the video of a doddering and deceitful old fool committing political suicide.

Other Republicans are abandoning McCain's-- and Cheney's-- hopeless and confused position on Iraq as fast as they can. Our old friend Dr. Steven Porter, who is running for Congress against long-time Iraq War advocate Phil English (PA-03) has been tying to figure out where exactly English stands on the war. English has been the absolute perfect example of the ultimate Bush rubber stamp. Of the 44 Iraq-related votes between October 10, 2002 and May 25, 2005, English voted with Bush 44 times. His voting record is an abomination; no one in the entire Congress has a worse one. Now, though, English is feeling the heat and flipping around like a live trout on hot skillet. Here's what Porter had to say last week:

Now that he is drawing heat from Move-on, our Congressman, Republican incumbent Phil English, representing the beleaguered 3rd district of Pennsylvania, has seen fit to try to con us about his Iraq flip-flops.

English's position on the war has as many twists and turns as a corkscrew.  When Bush was riding high in the polls, nothing was wrong with Iraq, and English supported it-- lies and all-- from day one.

Then, as Bush's position began to crumble, in order to avoid the political fall-out, English began to distance himself from the President by equivocating about the war before the 2006 elections and by siding against the "surge" of troops afterward.

Now, no doubt under orders from the Republican leadership, he refuses to support the bill which might lead to bringing our troops home.

The flip-flops are, of course, purely political. It is doubtful that Mr. English has any reasoned position on the foreign policy he is directed to support, and if he has, he has never articulated it. He is just another Washington politician scrambling to make himself look good and to keep in favor with his party leadership.

By comparison, I opposed the invasion of Iraq from the get-go and did so because my study of history compelled me to reject Bush's arguments for the war. It was clear there were no weapons of mass destruction, that Iraq posed no threat to the U.S., that Saddam-- evil as he was-- had no link to the 9/11 terrorists or to Al-Qaeda, and that the tribal conflicts between Shiite, Sunni, and Kurd were centuries in the making. It was also clear to me that the invasion was far more about oil and money for the likes of Halliburton than the cause of democracy. I have never wavered from these conclusions.

Moreover, I believe that the only viable solution to the mess Mr. Phil and his brainless President have created is to seek a divided Iraq with Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni autonomous regions and with each sharing equally in the oil revenues which have evidently been "divvied up" by the likes of Exxon, Shell, BP, and Chevron through the production-sharing agreements in the new Iraqi constitution.

It is time to send English and his like-minded Congress men and women packing.  It is also time for the press to stop lauding him for his flip-flops and to get on board with a program which will end this horrible war.

Maybe McCain could take Phil English on that stroll through the magical Baghdad neighborhood-- or maybe he'd be too big a target even for the delusional McCain.