People in Glass Houses shouldn’t throw stones

No matter how many glass houses they own, or even if they can’t remember how many they own.

But McCain continues to toss rocks over Iraq:

“Let me be very clear: I am not questioning his patriotism; I am questioning his judgment,” McCain said. “Sen. Obama has made it clear that he values withdrawal from Iraq above victory in Iraq, even today with victory in sight. Over and over again, he has advocated unconditional withdrawal – regardless of the facts on the ground. And he voted against funding for troops in combat, after he said it would be wrong to do so. He has made these decisions not because he doesn’t love America, but because he doesn’t think it matters whether America wins or loses.”

McCain on the other hand, seems to value the presidency more than honesty, honor or integrity, with his insistence on trying to sell the American people on “winning” a war in Iraq which is already a strategic debacle, and willing to sacrifice more lives and more American dollars to perpetuate our presence and the myth of a “victory” emerging from the ashes of neocon interventionism, just to boost a campaign which is inextricably tied to Iraq.

Even as McCain disingenuously accuses Obama of valuing “withdrawal over victory,” the Bush administration he has so ardently supported on Iraq is agreeing to a withdrawal timeline, albeit covered with semantical fig leafs like “aspirational goals” or “time horizons.” Condi Rice conflated the two and actual called a timetable a timetable in describing the US-Iraqi agreement calling for the withdrawal of US troops.

“We have agreed that some goals, some aspirational timetables for how that might unfold, are well worth having in such an agreement,” Rice told reporters after meeting with Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The two sides had come together on a draft agreement earlier this week and Rice made an unannounced visit to Baghdad to press officials there to complete the accord.

Mc-Bush keep pointing to “conditions on the ground” and repeatedly lie about Obama’s willingness to ostensibly withdraw troops no matter what conditions on the ground exist and regardless of whether such a withdrawal would endanger US troops — a position Obama has never taken.

And McCain is even more willing to distort what may be temporary improvements in Iraqi security obtained by paying Sunni gunmen formerly employed as insurgents as real strategic progress rather than a simple expedient way to delay future warfare which will occur absent reconciliation and concessions by the Shiite central government with close ties to Iran and an unwillingness to integrate Sunni militias into its armed and security forces.

A key pillar of the U.S. strategy to pacify Iraq is in danger of collapsing because the Iraqi government is failing to absorb tens of thousands of former Sunni Muslim insurgents who’d joined U.S.-allied militia groups into the country’s security forces.

American officials have credited the militias, known as the Sons of Iraq or Awakening councils, with undercutting support for the group al Qaida in Iraq and bringing peace to large swaths of the country, including Anbar province and parts of Baghdad. Under the program, the United States pays each militia member a stipend of about $300 a month and promised that they’d get jobs with the Iraqi government.

But the Iraqi government, which is led by Shiite Muslims, has brought only a relative handful of the more than 100,000 militia members into the security forces. Now officials are making it clear that they don’t intend to include most of the rest.

“We cannot stand them, and we detained many of them recently,” said one senior Iraqi commander in Baghdad, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue. “Many of them were part of al Qaida despite the fact that many of them are helping us to fight al Qaida.”

He said the army was considering setting a Nov. 1 deadline for those militia members who hadn’t been absorbed into the security forces or given civilian jobs to give up their weapons. After that, they’d be arrested, he said.

Some militia members say that such a move would force them into open warfare with the government again.

Of course, if that occurs and Iraq goes south again after November, that timeline will work for McCain — because it won’t impact American perceptions of Iraq until after his campaign for the presidency is over, a campaign based on the premise that “his” plan for Iraq has produced real and lasting progress rather than a temporary ceasefire between Sunni and Shiite factions still at odds with one another.