Get ready for Bush's 3rd term!

It "would be fine with" McCain if the U.S. military stayed in Iraq for "a hundred years."

Did you hear about McCain's 2007 stroll through a market in Iraq?

Abu Samer, a kitchenware and clothing wholesaler, scoffed: “He is just using this visit for publicity. He is just using it for himself. They’ll just take a photo of him at our market and they will just show it in the United States. He will win in America and we will have nothing.”

During McCain's 2007 visit, he wore a bulletproof vest. Attack helicopters circled above, sharpshooters stood ready on rooftops, and 100 soldiers in armored Humvees protected him on the ground. And for good reason - the market was bombed several times in the year before their visit. Yet, McCain said of this market (implying the streets of Baghdad are safer now than they were before):

"There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today. . . I just came from one."

A year later, in 2008, McCain visited Iraq again. This time, it was too dangerous for him to visit the same market, even with the heavy security measures of the year before. Yet, with security conditions even worse than before, McCain gave this rosy (if not reality-based) statement about Iraq:

“Anybody who believes the surge has not succeeded, militarily, politically and in most other ways, frankly, does not know the facts on the ground.”

What did the Iraqis think of McCain's more recent trip to Iraq?

“If the Republicans win the election, then nothing will really change in Iraq, and we need a big change to kick the occupiers out of the country,” said Abu Mohammed, a 30-year-old barbershop owner in Samarra, north of Baghdad. “I would like to show him the schools and hospitals and how the children and women suffer.”