Excellent post!
They number not in the thousands, or tens of thousands, but in the hundreds of thousands. They are two-faced, feigning cooperation except when we turn our backs.
On this point I do agree with McCain, and believe the Adminstration was guided by the Sesame Street "surgical strike" mindset popularized under Bill Clinton in not hitting hard enough and declaring the opening phase complete prematurely.
Winning will be tough now, and will demand we make better decisions about local on-the-ground alliances based on more and better intelligence. Impossible, no. But pulling out wastes a golden opportunity to establish forward bases in the region and begin looking toward the Mullahs to the east.
Just my opinion.
The media talking heads have their opinions which are filtered through their desire for certain leaders to take control of this country.
I don't believe for one minute that the McCain supporters in the liberal media want him to be president. I think they believe, probably rightly, that he cannot defeat whoever the Dems put up. More importantly, I think they support him because it allows them to say they are "fair" because they praise a Republican who supports the war.
Yet, they support him because they are all swoony with their "Greatest Generation" BS. I'm not saying the WW2 generation weren't great, I'm saying the mythology the Brokaws and Russerts and Matthewses are foisting over is longing for the days when FDR was in charge and made everything perfect. McCain is somehow linked to this dreamy past because of his attitude and the fact that he doesn't like Bush, and he seems to FEEL like a WW2-era type.
This writer is one of those who's always claiming to be so unbiased, yet he coincidentally always supports the Dems and is against Republicans--except for McCain, of course, who's harmless. For once I'd love to see one of these guys support someone else on the right, who's a conservative and pro-war, but without the camera-love.