Today's Iraq Roundup

Crooked Talk Express: I'm just boggled by McCain's recent behavior. I mean, you might disagree with him on an issue, but he's usually been honorable and intellectually honest about his position. No longer. This is the sort of flagrant, Bushian baloney-slicing that he ran against in 2000. Is it his faltering campaign? Is it age? It's sad to see a good man embarrass himself in this way.

This is a pretty strange piece from General Barry McCaffrey, in which the general's head and heart seem to moving in different directions. His head says Iraq's a total mess; his heart says that we must succeed lest there be regional chaos. But is that the real choice? I'd like to think that if we concentrated the big brains--civilians like James Baker, elected officials like Senator Jack Reed, military people like McCaffrey and Petraeus--on a creative withdrawal plan we might be able to extricate ourselves, save our Army and prevent a regional war. No chance of that in the Bush Administration, of course. But it's the only vaguely plausible option that remains.