As Sarah Palin's serial lies start to come unraveled (Bridge to Nowhere, state jet on eBay, etc.), John McCain faces a much larger problem: Iraq.  The old Senator from Arizona doesn't have much to run on besides his experience (which has been thoroughly blown apart in this amazing article by Phil Vogels -- http://www.politicalpeon.com/2008/08/experience-v-inexperience-that-is.html) and his tenacious clinging to the motif of Islamofascism, with Iraq as the main front in the Global War on Terror.  A few months ago, it would have seemed that McCain had the advantage in foreign policy experience and commander-in-chief bona fides.  But ironically, with the apparent "success" of the surge, the grounds for McCain's only advantage may actually be crumbling away beneath his feet. 

McCain has been a strong supporter of the surge, and he has been browbeating Obama over the latter's unwillingness to grant the easy analysis of the surge as a "success."  And indeed, Juan Cole has skewered the simplistic trumpeting of the surge here: http://www.juancole.com/2008/07/social-history-of-surge.html.  As it turns out, as in most complicated issues, there are likely many causes for the relative decrease in violence in Iraq (keeping in mind that Iraq is still one of the most dangerous places on the planet).  But to the average voter not prone to reading articles on middle-eastern sociopolitical conditions, it definitely seems that the surge has worked.  So a valid question for McCain in this framework is, "if the surge worked, then why aren't we making the most speedy plans possible for getting out of dodge?"  Isn't this the very "victory" that McCain says we have to stick it out to achieve?  Of course, McCain obviously has a much more robust idea of "victory" in Iraq than most of the American people.  What does he see as constituting victory?  Well, these things, from his website:

• Defeating Al Qaeda in Iraq
• Establish a stable, prosperous, and democratic state in Iraq that poses no threat to its neighbors and contributes to the defeat of terrorists
• Successful elections in late 2008 and 2009
• Getting Iraq's economy back on its feet
• Stopping Syria and Iran from supporting violence in Iraq

There are some other things in there, but you get the general idea.  How long would it actually take to get all these things done?  Decades, likely -- and more probably, never.  After all, we can't keep the US economy on its feet, so how are we going to do it in Iraq?  And how many more hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, will it cost the American taxpayer to do all this?  Are you ready to foot the bill for this?  I'm not.  And if you look closely, most of the things that McCain sees as signs of victory are actually only corrections of things that we caused with our illegal invasion and occupation in teh first place.  There was no Al Qaeda in Iraq before we showed up.  The economy is in the toilet because of our destruction of Iraq's infrastructure.  And despite Saddam's brutality, Iraq was actually a relatively stable, secular counterweight to Iranian and Syrian mischief in the area, before we strode on the scene.  McCain's blueprint for "victory" will take decades to unfold, and cost the US taxpayers trillions.  And in the end, will it even work?  Highly doubtful.  And there's the slightly uncomfortable issue that both the American public and the Iraqis themselves want us out.  If we're truly there to create a stable democratic state, how can we ignore the overwhelming popular will in Iraq that we get the hell out of there?  And the official government stance in Iraq, from Prime Minister Maliki, is that all US troops need to leave on a specific time line, no exceptions. 

Of course, McCain and his staff know all this, but that won't change anything.  No matter what the popular will in either Iraq or the US, Bush and company are still in charge right now, and they will certainly scuttle any agreements that put limits on the American presence.  And McCain can ignore the facts as long as he wants, painting any early departure as reckless and certain to have "terrible consequences," as he describes it.  He can do this because the actual goal of the US in Iraq has nothing to do with terrorism or democracy.  We are in there to establish a permanent presence in the region, which just happens to contain most of the world's remaining oil.  Let's not forget that one of the main reasons for 9/11, as stated by bin Laden, was the offensive presence of US military personnel and bases in Saudi Arabia, the home country of Islam.  Our troops in the Muslim Holy Land was a profoundly insulting phenomenon.  And very quietly since 9/11, we have indeed closed down all of our bases in Saudi Arabia, moving everything into Afghanistan and Iraq.  So we have been building the infrastructure in Iraq to support the permanent military presence in the region that used to be provided by Saudi Arabia.  We will not leave Iraq anytime soon as long as this permanent presence is our goal.  And coincidentally, John McCain's unrealistic concept of "victory" in Iraq just happens to require a substantial permanent home base from which to operate.  How convenient. 

This permanent presence in Iraq is the 800-lb gorilla (or is it elephant, in this case?) in the room.  Bush administration officials don't want to talk about it, because it would likely upset the American public to know that we're planning to endlessly lavish billions on a country halfway around the world, while our own bridges and schools crumble into dust.  And the Iraqis keep insisting that there be no permanent US presence in Iraq, with the resulting American silence being the equivalent of saying, "that's nice, real nice -- anywho....."  And it's all papered over by the increasingly unusable rubric of the Global War on Terror, a theme that is starting to look more and more like the sophomoric bullshit that it always was.  As we sink further into the Long Emergency of Peak Oil, we'll have to be more concerned with a Global War on Socioeconomic Collapse than with the lunatic dreamings of Islamic extremists.  The US does simply not have the overall economic health to support a sprawling global military presence, in hopes of controlling the world's dwindling petro-reserves.  We can bluster all we want about Islamofascism and victory, but we can't fight the laws of physics and economics. 

The Iraq misadventure is over.  The American people want out.  The Iraqis want us out.  It's far too expensive,  and it can never be "won" because it was started on false pretenses (fruit of the poisonous tree, anyone?). And the current "objectives" are at best impossibly unrealistic, and at worst blatant misrepresentations (lies) about what our long-term goals in the region are.  McCain can dance for a while, but Obama should be able to absolutely hammer him in the debates on these issues.  Who woulda figured that the surge's "success" would be McCain's undoing?