Keith Olbermann is kind of awesome.

Responding to John McCain’s remark that a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq is “not too important,” the MSNBC commentator called the GOP nominee’s perception of the war “a figment of his imagination.”

He proceeded to dissect the so-called context John McCain says his Iraq statements - both past and present - are always being taken out of!

He can be an extremist at times, but in this “Special Comment,” Olbermann simply let an assortment of John McCain quotes on Iraq to do the talking.

A mission where success would be fairly easy, he said. An overwhelming victory in a short period of time. Americans cheered as liberators!

The list of lies, false promises, misconceptions and absurd policy positions straight from Sen. McCain’s mouth goes on and on and on.

Here’s some “context” for you …

Follow the jump for Part II of Keith Olbermann’s scathing June 12 “Special Comment” on John McCain’s Iraq war policies and statements …

Continue reading this article …

With each passing day, Sen. John McCain furthers abandons his “maverick” persona and becomes more like the least popular president in U.S. history.

That’s fine with us, if it ends in his resounding defeat.

The Republican nominee was asked yesterday by Today host Matt Lauer if he had an estimated date for U.S. troops to begin returning home from Iraq.

McCain’s response:

Whatever John McCain’s message is (click here for his full interview with Lauer) in all of this, he’s not doing a terrific job of proving he’s the one who’s in touch with our troops and our national security needs.

Not to mention our economy, environment, civil liberties, and so on.

This isn’t his “100 years” remark, either, which was taken somewhat out of context. This is quite straightforward - and our soldiers and their families would probably take issue with McCain’s assertion that it’s not too important.

Dennis Kucinich is a phenomenal human being.

The scrappy Ohio Congressman and two-time Democratic presidential hopeful has 35 different reasons for the impeachment George W. Bush.

Atop his list of impeachable offenses is “Article I: Creating a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false case for war against Iraq.”

Determined to see Bush thrown out of the White House, Kucinich took to the House floor a 35-count impeachment resolution against the President on Monday, the most thorough and powerful such case made to date.

He outlined a litany of high crimes and misdemeanors and showed without a shadow of a doubt that George W. Bush deserves to be impeached.

Dennis Kucinich made clear that Bush has violated his oath of office and his Constitutional duty that the laws be “faithfully executed.”

Kucinich and others argue that Bush and Dick Cheney lied to Congress and America about Iraq (up to 935 times, some believe), thus committing crimes against this nation and facing a laundry list of clearly defined impeachment grounds.

The rest of Congress may not have the spine to back him up, but Dennis Kucinich is still going after George W. Bush out of pure principle.

As of this posting, 4,100 Americans are dead and a staggering 500,000 (at least) Iraqis have also died as a result of the Iraq war.

If these travesties have occurred as a result of lies and deceit, as Scott McClellan corroborates in his new book, then Kucinich isn’t merely posturing. He is pushing for something just - and something few have the balls to stand for.

Say what you will about the 61-year-old political oddball - he is nothing if not honest, refreshingly courageous and principled.

While it’s easier to take such stands when your seat is safe and you have no chance of winning the presidency, Dennis Kucinich deserves our respect.

For a change, Scott McClellan isn’t answering questions about the news.

The former press secretary to George W. Bush is making it.

In his new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, McClellan holds little back. He writes that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated “political propaganda campaign” led by President Bush and aimed at “manipulating sources of public opinion” and “downplaying the major reason for going to war.”

Harsh, accurate words for sure.

McClellan admits to standing at the White House podium and attempting to lead reporters in the wrong direction on issues such as the Valerie Plame case. Watch his exercise in tap dancing around questions regarding it below:

Unsurprisingly, some of those criticized in McClellan’s book - such as Karl Rove, who McClellan says he unknowingly exonerated when discussing the issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - aren’t pleased with this turn of events.

Rove responded to the book by saying it sounds like it comes from the mind of a “left wing blogger.” Here he is on his home away from home, Fox News:

The American media has, for better or worse, embraced the criterion that if a given subject tells us anything - no matter how broadly - about the kind of president a particular candidate might be, it’s fair game.

That’s how it’s been for Sen. Barack Obama in the past several months, and for rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton a lot longer than that.

Sen. John McCain, meanwhile, has been more or less exempt from such scrutiny, in large part because won the GOP nomination long ago.

The honeymoon’s over, though.

As we shift towards general election mode, the Boston Phoenix came up with a list of 10 John McCain stories worth pursuing in the next few months …

1. He doesn’t “get” economics.
Not that we do, but we’re not running for president - and he himself said this! More than once! Beyond a wide array of tax cuts, what makes John McCain think he can keep America’s economic woes from worsening?

2. He doesn’t “get” Islam.
McCain touts his experience hammers Obama for his willingness to meet with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but McCain’s foreign policy aptitude is also highly questionable. He’s confused Sunnis and Shiites on multiple occasions. Understanding Islam and the Middle East is essential to our national security. Does McCain grasp them well enough to be president?

3. His “reformer” rep is questionable.
Hatchet-job hints of extramarital affair notwithstanding, the New York Times‘ Vicki Iseman story posed a valid question: does John McCain’s reputation as a reformer dedicated to reducing the influence of money on politics really correspond with the man’s own actions? Or is it just a contrived act?

Continue reading this article …

President George W. Bush warned in an interview that Democratic candidates’ plans to withdraw abruptly from Iraq could “eventually lead to another attack on the United States” and would embolden terrorists.

“The United States pulling out of Iraq or pulling out of the Middle East or not maintaining a forward presence would send all kinds of signals throughout the Middle East,” he told the Politico and Yahoo! News.

“And it would shake everybody’s nerves, and it would embolden the very same people that we’re trying to defeat.”

For the first time, Bush revealed a deeply personal and important choice he made to acknowledge the sacrifice of soldiers and their families.

Bush said he made this critical policy decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad:

“I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

NOTE #1: Starting an unnecessary and endless war, however? That signal is cool. This is also the first time we’ve seen the act of playing golf equated with disrespect for U.S. soldiers. Anyone want to buy a set of used clubs?

NOTE #2: The picture above was taken in 2004! Not only is Bush’s argument probably the dumbest thing we’ve ever heard, it’s not even true!

Follow the jump for more amazing George W. Bush quotes from the interview …

Continue reading this article …

The Iraq war and the U.S. economy are both in a desperate state, yet the brilliant Bush administration doesn’t see a connection between the two.

Some media reports have estimated the cost of the war in Iraq at around $5,000 per second. Despite this staggering cost, there’s been no apparent effort to figure out how we should pay for it.

Nor is there an end in sight. Details, right?

The political cartoon below addresses this issue - and the insignificance of the supposed economic stimulus plan put into effect this spring.

NOTE: This political cartoon was created by and is property of journalist and cartoonist Andrew Wahl. Visit his blog, Off the Wahl, for more of his work.

The more he opens his mouth, the clearer it becomes that John McCain’s views on global affairs are rather consistent with those of the great George W. Bush.

Much like Bush, McCain sees the world in oppositional terms - us vs. them, good vs. evil. He speaks of taking the lead “in fighting the transcendent issue of our time” - an unending, undefined crusade against “evil.”

Really, we could end this post right now. But we’ll continue.

During the Cold War, the new, central tenet of neo-conservatism emerged - that America is locked in a battle with evil. The U.S.S.R. was evil - but this hazardous way of framing any and all conflict has prevailed ever since.

Bush’s foreign policy - his refusal to think for more than five seconds about any situation or consider diplomacy, his outright dismissal of the United Nations, his increasingly aggressive nuclear posturing - is a function of this.

John McCain maintains the same outdated, epically disastrous world view, no matter how “maverick” or “independent” he fancies himself.

DON’T KID YOURSELF: George W. Bush and his aspiring successor, John McCain, share the same bellicose, inherently dangerous world views, no matter what “criticism” the latter supposedly has regarding the former’s policies.

Like many conservatives during and since the Cold War, Sen. McCain has embraced this “moral” attitude that the United States is a force defending all that is good, battling the forces of evil. As if it could possibly be that simple.

• He has morphed this into an laughably simplistic, strategic guidebook.

• He rejects negotiation and coexistence out of hand. Even if this means mass casualties, unending conflict and unstated goals.

• He confuses our enemies - Sunni Al-Qaeda with Shiite Iranian extremists - not because he’s old (well, maybe a little for that reason), but thanks to the narrow-minded ignorance that assumes evil is a single, uniform entity.

John McCain may lambast Donald Rumsfeld and nitpick Bush on foreign policy, but that’s all it is. The fundamental principles, or lack thereof, are essentially the same, and cannot be allowed to continue in such reckless fashion if our once-respected nation is to repair its relationships with the rest of the world.

In a world of ambiguity, marred by deep-rooted and rapidly-transforming threats such as terrorism, nuclear proliferation and, yes, global warming, such a dumbed-down, overly nationalistic approach will inevitably fail.

It has, and it will. Vote for this man at your peril.

Former Secretary of State and retired Gen. Colin Powell, 71, insists he hasn’t yet decided who he’ll back in the 2008 presidential election.

“I’m looking at all three candidates,” Powell told Diane Sawyer in a new interview scheduled to air on Thursday’s Good Morning America on ABC.

“I know them all very, very well. I consider myself a friend of each and every one of them. And I have not decided who I will vote for yet.”

Colin Powell, who served as President George W. Bush’s first secretary of state, is a Republican, but that apparently is not enough to sway him (at least right now) toward Arizona Sen. John McCain, the GOP’s presumptive nominee.

McCain has staked much of his presidential prospects on the success of the surge strategy in the Iraq war, a subject of great debate in Washington this week as Gen. David Petraeus took to Capitol Hill for hearings on the conflict.

“The United States Armed Forces are very, very stretched. It appears that after the surge is over, we’re going to go down to 140,000 troops in Iraq. That’s 10,000 more than we had before the surge,” Powell told Sawyer.

The former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that reductions in troop levels going forward isn’t just an option, but the reality:

“What they’re all going to face — whichever one of them becomes president on January 21, 2009 — they will face a United States military force, that cannot continue to sustain, 140,000 people deployed in Iraq, and the 20-to-25,000 people we have deployed in Afghanistan, and our other deployments,”

On other hot topics, Powell rejected the idea of boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in China later this year, and condemned controversial remarks by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barck Obama’s pastor of 20 years.

He complimented the Democratic Senator for Illinois for his “A More Perfect Union” speech on race that followed in the aftermath, however.

“Rev. Wright is somebody who made enormous contributions in his community and has turned a lot of lives around, and so, I have to put that in context with these very offensive comments that he made, which I reject out of hand,” Powell said.

“I think that Sen. Obama handled the issue well … he didn’t look the other way. He didn’t wait for the, for the, you know, for the storm to go over,” he added. “He went on television, and I thought, gave a very, very thoughtful, direct speech. And he didn’t abandon the minister who brought him closer to his faith.”

Colin Powell, along with Condoleezza Rice, has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential candidate in this election for the Republicans.

One thing is clear: Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, testified before our nation’s next commander in chief yesterday.

What wasn’t clear was which one of the presidential candidates sitting in two packed hearing rooms on Capitol Hill will be in the Oval Office in ‘09.

Sens. John McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama all took detours from the campaign trail to hear status reports on the Iraq war.

The hearings turned the spotlight on the candidates‘ wide differences on the most important security issue that will face the next president.

It was a critical show of strength for the Democrats in particular, although the questioning remained mostly respectful and low-key, lacking fireworks.

No references to 935 lies, in other words.

At the morning hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, John McCain argued that it was “reckless and irresponsible” to call, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have, for the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops.

He did not remain in the room long enough to hear Mrs. Clinton’s response - that it’s even more irresponsible to stick with the current strategy.

“It might well be irresponsible to continue a policy that has not produced the results that have been promised time and time again,” she said.

John McCain enjoyed a bit of a tactical advantage in that as the panel’s senior Republican, he was one of the first senators to question Gen. David Petraeus.

He used his time to underscore the pillar of his campaign:

Progress is being made via the troop surge, and U.S. withdrawal will cause irreparable damage to Iraq and to American interests.

“To promise a withdrawal of our forces, regardless of the consequences, would constitute a failure of political and moral leadership,” John McCain said.

Sometimes overtly and other times not, both Clinton and Obama have referred to the seemingly interminable Iraq conflict the Bush-McCain War.

Barack Obama, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, attended the general’s second, afternoon hearing before that panel.

Continue reading in the Los Angeles Times …