ouch!

Obama was wrong. McCain was right.
Who’s best to lead us on this going forward?

Thing is, McCain wrote his thoughts just like he speaks. He isn’t a writer. My first thought was, whyn’t he hire himself a writer? My second thought was because he’s a down-to-earth guy.

Obama is a very strong writer–I’m reading both his books right now. He borders on a sort of philosopher-poet persona, with a graceful, creative voice.

I don’t know a single writer or philosopher I’d vote for.

best, Kay

I would argue that “a Majority” of Americans do not support retreat, but in fact, especially given the turn of events in Iraq, support finishing the job. I can imagine that you will post some CBS, NYT, LA Times polls that show that the Americans they interviewed prefer defeat over victory, but I would hurry and publish them, as each day even those organizations are having a hard time finding enough people to say withdraw at any cost.

I also digress though, the fact is that McCain was entirely correct in his position. He was an advocate of the surge even when unpopular. The surge has been an unmitigated success, even the NYT would have a hard time disagreeing with that statement. Fortunately enough Americans see that McCain was in fact correct and that Mr. Obama was wrong in his desire to get out many months ago.

In fact, your entire post loses all credibility when you start to mention the humanitarian factor. If we had listened to Mr. Obama and not Senator McCain, the humanitarian situation would have been substantially more dire and the prognosis grim. Suffering, Violence, Crime, Inhumanity would have been rampant on a far greater scale than what is prevalent now in Iraq.

I would consider the facts a bit more before making statements that have little or no merit.

As a request from someone who does not read the NY Times very often, can you provide a link or summary of the Unicorn riding Nobama editorial that McCain wanted to respond to. Not as defense or support of the NY Times, but I do tend to like to understand the full context on some of these issues so a bit more information would be helpful…please.

But The Times should be listed as a big contributor, that’s for sure.

Violence is finally down and there is hope of a peace of sorts, but this is by no means a rousing success. Those numbers would be labeled a humanitarian disaster in other areas.

Of course, things would have probably been worse if we had left immediately after dismantling the power structure, and now that the various factions have withdrawn to their respective territories the Iraqis are making progress. The problem is going to be convincing the American people that McCain was right when a majority supports withdrawal regardless of the situation on the ground.