The Gospel of St. John 0

St. John “Hundred Years War” McCain seems to have figured out that a hundred years of war may not be a good plank for his campaign.

So now he has scaled it down to five.

Like most predictions emanating from the Republican Party, this one appears also to have been snatched directly from thin air. Concomitantly (I’ve waited years to work that into a post), he has shown that he has truly turned into McBush:

“He laid out what his dream was … without offering one single solitary concrete way explaining how he’d do the things he stated,” said Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Having studied the Iraq situation probably as much as anyone who also has to, like, you know, work for a living, my personal opinion is that, if we leave tomorrow, the damn place will go up in flames; if we leave in five years, the damn place will go up in flames; if we leave in 20 years, the damn place will go up in flames.

Why? Because we never should hadda oughta been there in the first place, and, by going there, we’ve opened a can of worms that will wiggle for generations. It wasn’t our can, it’s not our worms, but it sure as heck was our can opener.

This column offers a trenchant analysis of St. John of the Hundred Years’s new way of counting the days, as well as his full conversion to Bushieness (emphasis added):

If he believes what he is saying, then McCain is again showing only a passing understanding of the conflict in the Middle East. Even by the most generous assessments, it would take at least sixteen months to withdraw our troops from Iraq. To have the bulk of our troops home by January of 2013, with his preconditions having been met, would require that McCain somehow achieve this functioning democracy and dramatic decrease in violence within two years of taking office. From where does he imagine he will find political reconciliation? In what sense can he expect a reduction in violence, given no evidence that a long-term reduction is sustainable? It is simply not feasible to assume that our exit from Iraq, if it were to coincide with the happy ending McCain portends, could possibly happen in either 100 years or on his new shortened timeline.

It is far more likely, however, that McCain does not believe what he is saying, that he has not in fact, had a genuine change of heart. The conditions on the ground in Iraq have not changed. But the political conditions for this election have. This is not an honest assessment from the self-appointed king of straight talk. It is rather yet another false promise, uttered with a straight face, as an attempt to survive an election, and with no intent to follow through.

With comments that break with himself and the GOP, McCain is showing yet again that he has a willingness to lie that truly makes him a Bush Republican.