Lieberman: Living Symbol of Endless War

John McCain appeared this morning on Meet The Press. He was extremely subdued; almost catatonic. He looked like a man who had just received bad news about his biopsy results. He looked like a man who had championed a cynical policy in Iraq conceived exclusively to pander to the radical militarist wing of his party, and with no expectation that his escalation proposal would ever be implemented. He looked like a man fully aware that his insane policy would soon be tested and revealed in all its abject futility, and that events on the ground in Baghdad would confirm his policy as a complete and irredeemable failure even before the first presidential primaries in 2008.

He did not count on the madman in the White House. He did not understand that Bush and his neocon jesters are deep in the throes of a Masada complex. He simply never expected that anyone would take his ridiculous plan for escalation seriously, and so when Iraq continued to go to hell as the presidential primaries approached John McCain would be able to say "see, if only you would've listened to me and sent more troops...". But instead the disaster in Iraq will be associated with McCain and his failed policy.

McCain said two things (at least two, by my count) that reveal him as a shameless and spineless shill for war: he claimed that he knew all along that Bush’s policy for the last year in Iraq was fated for failure, and he argued that Joe Lieberman’s re-election in Connecticut demonstrates that the polls showing overwhelming opposition to escalation of the war are wrong. He did not explain why he did not tell the American people at the time that he foresaw failure for Bush’s policy. And he did not acknowledge that Lieberman was re-elected in Connecticut only after lying to the voters by purporting to support withdrawal and oppose escalation.

Bad day for McCain. But a red-letter day for our own Joe Lieberman, who has finally become (presumably to his everlasting satisfaction) the very embodiment of undying support for an immoral war and a catastrophic strategic blunder.

Joe Lieberman - the living, breathing symbol of endless war. He must be proud.