Obama v. McCain v. Barr v. Baldwin v. Nader....

I'll start this off with my favorite. Here's some recent Bob Barr video:



Now onto "the maverick". One thing (other than the experience factor he constantly brings up about Obama) McCain often brings up is the absolute necessity of victory in Iraq and how his major opponent didn't support the surge. McCain would NEVER EVER support a timeline. However, one interesting piece of news in recent days is that the final details of a semi-"status of forces agreement" were hammered out between the US and Iraq. Lo and behold, one of the details contained therein is kind of a timeline (looking out to 2011). I wonder what McCain thinks of that. Regarding the surge thing (which was where all of this was going anyway), McCain knocks Obama on it often. The surge itself seemed like a tacit admission that there were NEVER enough troops to FULLY COMPLETE the mission in the first place. In fact, I hope that future administrations remember the lessons of cases like that of General (ret.) Eric Shinseki. Another facet of the "surge" discussion? I was listening to a story about how the US pays money to a number of the "Al-Sahwa councils" in Iraq and how that duty is being transferred into Iraq hands (with what I believe to be Iraqi funds). The US military folks discussed in the story had some concern because some people in the Iraqi military didn't seem to believe the urgency of continuing the program. Ironically, payment to back these Sunni militias started around the end of 2006/beginning of 2007. We were paying folks who were involved in the insurgency. I'm absolutely sure that these payments also had to do something with the downturn in violence in the country through 2007. We were paying people to not perform criminal acts. It will be interesting to watch what develops with the transfer of responsibility for payment into Iraqi hands. Will the money continue to flow? If it doesn't, will there be an upswing in violence? What other factors played into Iraq becoming seemingly more stable over the last 1.5 years? McCain's continued rhetoric regarding the largely irresponsible conflict seems to hold less merit as time goes on....