Dear John...it's not me, it's you.

Once upon a time I was an enthusiastic John McCain supporter. Let's just get that out of the way right now. Back in 2000 he was the first political candidate from any party who I gave my hard-earned law student money to.

Now granted, some of that might have been because I was so terrified by the evident nincompoop that George W. Bush would turn out to be that I desperately wanted to get him knocked off in the primaries. (So much for that plan.) And part of it may be that my boyfriend at the time had a cousin who worked for McCain. And part of it may have been that in that over-consulted 2000 race in which Gore sounded like a gay robot and W. sounded like a 9 year old who'd recently been hit by a pitch at Little League, McCain was a surprisingly fresh articulate alternative with an IQ in the triple digits. I say this not to explain away my inexplicable mistake in supporting him, but just to put things back into a year 2000 context. (You remember 2000...the lockbox, the smirks, McCain's black baby rumors, people learning to pronounce Haddassah...yeah, it sucked. I'm sorry to bring it up for you but this lesson requires a painful flashback.)

People often wonder where McCain's crossover appeal to independents and moderate democrats went. Um, I'm here to tell you. We wised up. It's almost inconceivable to me now to imagine myself actually respecting and admiring McCain, because the last 7 years have revealed so much of his true character, or rather the lack thereof. After he embraced Jerry Falwell and his wacky beliefs like intelligent design and fearing the gays, and after I've seen him actually hug George W. Bush like a little kid hugging the Easter Bunny, it's pretty tough to muster even a modicum of respect for McCain. So now, when I see things like his little "stroll around Baghdad" stunt, I just shake my head and marvel at my own naive blindness. I want my damn $25 back.

McCain knows better than almost anyone the horrors of an unwinnable war, which is why it is all the more appalling to those of us with a whole brain who can clearly see that Iraq has become the gigantic clusterfuck we predicted lo those 4 years ago, but one which McCain continues to insist along with the president not only can be won, but must be won. Boys, stop sharing each others' drugs.

And so, with all of this background, I come to find out that today McCain made a little policy speech at VMI that included these choice quotes:

Given our security interests and our moral investment in Iraq, so long as we have a chance to prevail we must try to prevail. As General Petraeus has repeatedly stated, it will be several months or more before we know with any confidence whether we can turn this war around.

So basically, as long as it is not statistically and mathematically impossible for us to come out of Iraq OK, we should continue to throw money and human lives into that sinking quagmire. And then we should wait at least several months despite all evidence that things are continuing to suck, because it might just be a severely delayed reaction of success.

But whether or not al Qaeda terrorists were a present danger in Iraq before the war, there is no disputing they are there now, and their leaders recognize Iraq as the main battleground in the war on terror.

Yes, we practically invited them in by creating this lawless outpost full of angry Arabs and outnumbered American soldiers. Great job, boys.

Oh, but this is the best part:

I hope Democrats in Congress will heed the advice of one of their leading candidates for President, Senator Obama, and immediately pass a new bill to provide support to our troops in Iraq without substituting their partisan interests for those of our troops and our country.

That's funny, John. The part where you ignore that maybe the Democrats believe that the best way to support and protect the troops and our country is to get out of a war we will not win before more lives are lost needlessly. And it's their insistence on a little timeline for troop withdrawal, and associated opposition by you and others in the Republican party, that is holding this whole shebang up. But good job invoking the golden boy with the subtle hope that his popularity will rub off on you, since your efforts to tie yourself to the President's approval rating haven't gone so well.

Meanwhile, the afore-invoked Barack Obama had this to say in response, whereupon I immediately fell madly in love with him and made a mental note to send him all of my disposable income for all eternity:

Progress in Iraq cannot be measured by the same ideological fantasies that got us into this war, it must be measured by the reality of the facts on the ground, and today those sobering facts tell us to change our strategy and bring a responsible end to this war.
...
No matter how much this Administration wishes it to be true, the idea that the situation in Iraq is improving because it only takes a security detail of 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships to walk through a market in the middle of Baghdad is simply not credible or reflective of the facts on the ground.

SMACKDOWN! I don't think Obama wants to be BFF. Poor John. First I and about 20 million other Americans dumped him, and now the popular kid just showed him up in the cafeteria. Maybe Jerry Falwell is bored and wants to go to the mall or do each other's nails or something.

Except, John, I think you'll find that Jerry and his boys aren't really your friends either. They may make a show of forgiving you for what you said in 2000 but the fundies are like the mob, they never really forget. You probably won't be the nominee in 2008, and they won't make it obvious that they dinged you, but it will in large part have been their doing. They'll let you live (politically of course) only if you're the last alternative standing to that babykiller and serial divorcer Giuliani. The only thing the fundies hate worse than a guy who once turned his back on them is a guy who turned his back on them while wearing a dress and fishnets.