I can't believe how badly McCain has imploded. In a matter of 2 or 3 months, he has gone from front runner to almost certain loser. I'm not sure he's going to make it to the primaries at this rate. He's run a terrible campaign, he can't raise money. I was certain he was going to be the Republican nominee, but it would be a shock at this point, if he were.

Re: the Iraq war in general

(also see this post)

Ever since the months prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there have been a few reports in the newspapers that the Central Intelligence Agency was casting aspersions on the intelligence the White House was relying on to justify the war. The CIA has never given a position on whether the war is needed or justified or said that Bush is wrong to go to war. But doesn't it seem much more likely that the CIA is an extremely right wing organization than a left wing one? After all, even if the people working for them and at least a lot of the leadership really wanted a war for their own reasons, there are a lot of reasons for them to not want to tie their credibility to what they know is faulty information. They and their personnel, present and former, could use other means of promoting the Iraq war, and still be motivated to make the statements in the media. If the CIA got behind faulty information, they would have to make a choice between whether they would be involved in scamming the American people and the world once the military had invaded Iraq and no weapons were found- so: 1) Imagine the incredible difficulties involved in pulling off a hoax that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Imagine all the people you would have to be able to show the weapons to- the inspectors from the UN / the international community, the American press, statesmen, etc. Then imagine the difficulties of substantiating that story to people who would examine it- the lack of witnesses to a production plant that made the weapons or to transportation operations or storage of the weapons during Hussein's regime of them. 2) If the story fell apart upon inspection or the CIA tried not to hoax it at all, imagine the loss of credibility they would suffer. The CIA, it is safe to bet, does not want to be known to the American people as a group that lies to them to send them to war. Even within the CIA there could be disagreement among people about how involved they should be in promoting the war or the neo-con agenda more broadly, so the CIA would have to worry about lying to and managing its own people after trying so hard to get them to trust their superiors in the agency, and perhaps there simply might be too many people in the agency who knew enough about what was going on in Iraq to know if someone was deceiving people to promote this war.

So there is a lot of reason to be cautious against being seen as endorsing what they knew was false intelligence even if they were very strong supporters of going to war.

I love your Darfur visit idea. I can already hear the soundbites from McCain on this one:

"There are many, many 'hoods in Darfur where the Janjaweed don't come and burn your tent down, then bayonet your infant children!!"

Louisa McLennan and Agencies "Bomb kills 13 in Iraq including children" London Times, April 2, 2007:

"A suicide bomber who hid explosives under bags of flour in the back of a truck, has killed at least 13 people and wounded dozens more in the Iraqi city of Kirkuk."

...and now for the buried headline:

"The violence came a day after the American Senator John McCain led a Republican congressional delegation on a heavily guarded tour of a central Baghdad market and declared that a nearly seven-week-old security crackdown to pacify the capital is working."

"The attack comes days after the Iraqi government endorsed plans to relocate thousands of Arabs who were moved to Kirkuk as part of Saddam Hussein’s campaign to force ethnic Kurds out of the city in an effort to undo one of the former dictator’s most enduring and hated policies."