One thing most pundits agree on is McCain has made inroads in the polls partly because he has siezed the initiative on energy policy and national security, recent polls are now even showing McCain catching up on economic issues.

 If this trend continues we can say hello to 4 (8?) years of President John McSame which should be good only for the "usual suspects"

I haven't found this diaried yet and plan on updating throughout the day, so tell me if I'm wrong so I can delete this.

HuffPost via the AP is reporting our obstinate, stubborn, pathetic White House has finally agreed to what We the People (both here and in Iraq) have been demanding for years.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Iraqi leaders Thursday to agree quickly to a U.S.-Iraq security deal that outlines the withdrawal of American troops.

per APNews

Iraqi and American officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday that negotiators had completed a draft agreement that extends the legal basis for U.S. troops to remain in Iraq beyond the end of this year, while calling for them to move out of Iraqi cities as soon as June 30.

Remember this?  Presnit-wit Bush and all his neo-con buddies saying over, and over, and over and over, and, you get the picture...  
"When the Iraqi's can stand up, we will stand down.  There will be no timetables!"

If I heard that once from someone in the Bush Administration or their "media" contingent, I heard it five thousand times.  So, what happens when the Iraqi's stand UP faster than Bushie and the boyz want them to?  Bushie continues to try to stand ON them to keep them down.

Good stuff (well, horrible, scary stuff really, since our troops are still in the middle of it, but good reporting nonetheless-

Key U.S. Iraq strategy in danger of collapse

A sample, Courtesy of McClatchy

So Bush is about to "cut and run":

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators reached agreement on a security deal that calls for American military forces to leave Iraq's cities by next summer as a prelude to a full withdrawal from the country, according to senior American officials.

The draft agreement sets 2011 as the date by which all remaining U.S. troops will leave Iraq...

Teams of American and Iraqi negotiators spent months haggling over the deal, which represents a remarkable turnaround from just a few months ago, when talk of timetables and deadlines was routinely dismissed by the Bush administration and other Republicans in Washington...

President George W. Bush is almost certain to accept the agreement, according to U.S. officials. The administration believes that the deal doesn't require congressional approval and won't present it to U.S. lawmakers.

The war is real, the ultimate reality show, and we don't get to watch it, because we forgot to create checks and balances on the cooption of the fourth estate, because in the days of the framers we didn't have journalism, we had a half-crazy nudist vegetarian with a printing press and illegitimate children all over the place. Fast-forward a few centuries, and you have a war that's been going on since my college graduate sister was in junior high, without a single body on TV, because reporters can't ask or tell about the war, or else they won't get access to anything else. You've got Evan Wright, for whom this enterprise is a career-maker, and... that's about it. Half the guys in the original article got discharged for talking about real shit. But there's the filter of memory, and then the next filter, of Evan Wright telling about this. And then the filter of words on paper, into a book, which is taken and filtered through the dramatic sensibility into a TV show whose only mandate is to match up to the original Xerox as well as possible. From all accounts, it feels the same even if the facts are different, which is the only important thing if you're the original article, the book, the script, or the performance of the show itself.

The Wall Street Journal is just reporting on their site, that negotiators for the Iraqi government and the US have come to a draft agreement on troop withdrawals.  

Kevin Drum has the breaking news from the Wall Street Journal:

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators reached agreement on a security deal that calls for American military forces to leave Iraq's cities by next summer as a prelude to a full withdrawal from the country, according to senior American officials.

The draft agreement sets 2011 as the date by which all remaining U.S. troops will leave Iraq, according to Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Haj Humood and other people familiar with the matter.

...."The talking is done," one U.S. official said late Wednesday night. "Now the decision makers choose whether to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down."

....U.S. President George W. Bush is almost certain to accept the agreement, according to U.S. officials. The administration believes that the deal doesn't require congressional approval and won't present it to U.S. lawmakers.

You know the story.  Johnny McCain is banking on his support of the splurge to push him over the top.  Barack Obama understands that there are many, many variables at play in bringing some calm to Iraq.

One of the components creating the calm may be unraveling:

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...with undercutting support for the group al Qaida in Iraq and bringing peace to large swaths of the country... 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.

[Sorry for Short Diary, but I did not see anywhere on DKos and I think this is important in framing the military experience issue for the rest of campaign.]

That's right! Courtesy of right wing "Vets For Freedom" (Think Progress):

his experienced is based on what? The Mekong Delta. It’s based to Vietnam, a totally different fight, a totally different enemy, and by the way, it was 30 years ago.

John McCain is scoring points on Barack Obama by touting the alleged "success" of the "surge," and Obama is reduced to arguing that there hasn't been "political reconciliation" in Iraq, and that the U.S. should be focusing on escalating (a word he avoids, just as Bush and McCain avoided using it with respect to Iraq) the war in Afghanistan, and increasing the U.S. response to Iran (where Obama continues to lie by claiming that "Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons") and Russia (where Obama also lies by claiming that "There is no possible justification for Russia’s actions" - he should read this article by a Canadian professor of philosophy if he's looking for a "possible justification") and Pakistan.

. . . why Obama isn't all over the fact that the Iraqi government has basically endorsed his pullout timetable plans? When this hit the news a couple months ago, I took a little baby step toward thinking the election was in the bag. After all, hadn't Maliki just taken the central plank of McCain's campaign away from him? And it could quite easily be argued that it was pressure from the Obama campaign that brought the withdrawal-timetable narrative to the fore. It didn't require "negative" campaigning to say that McCain's "if it takes 100 years" ideas ran counter to what the Iraqis themsevles wanted, which was quite close to what Obama has proposed. But it seems to me that by now this opportunity has pretty much been squandered.

Image: Blank Black Screen for 3 seconds
Audio:Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick (Old alarm clock/bomb style ticking sound twice per second. Ticking continues thru ad.


Announcer(soft non-attack voice): "Which John McCain are you going to vote for?"


Image on screen for 15 seconds: Boots/Helmet/Rifle fallen soldier image.
Text overly: 4144 american heroes dead
Audio: only the audio clips of John McCain: "Bomb bomb bomb Iran" "Iraq" "Russia" "War" "War" "War" "That's not too important. What's important is the casualties" "Q:Troops in Iraq for 50 yrs? A:Make it a hundred...that would be fine by me." "...cold war. This is an act of aggession"


Image on screen for 9 seconds: Distraught 50yr old couple at kitchen table with bills image.
Text overlay: # Jobs lost
Audio: only the audio clips of John McCain: "The issue of economics is not something I've understood" "Q: At what point do you move from middle class to rich A:How about $5 million"


Image on screen for 3 seconds, split screen: One side McCain hugging Bush, other side McCain and Bush holding birthday cake.
Text overlay: Large ? mark in middle of screen.
Audio: Old alarm clock goes off ringing loudly.

There are apparently some liberals, and some Democrats, and some independents out there, who claim that the media is not only not "liberally biased," but that it in general slants its coverage in order to make the facts come across as less biased to the right and far right. (Most often accomplished, so this claim goes, by largely ignoring or glossing over them, but other times, by miscontruing them or simply parroting misleading arguments with little objective context.)

TPM has posted some of McCain's prepared remarks to be delivered later today. They are framed as McCain's response to Obama's complaints from yesterday about attacks on his patriotism.

Yesterday, Senator Obama got a little testy on this issue. He said that I am questioning his patriotism. Let me be clear: I am not questioning his patriotism; I am questioning his judgment. Senator 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 saying it would be wrong to do so.

He has made these decisions not because he doesn't love America, but because he doesn't seem to understand the consequences of an American defeat in Iraq, how it would risk a wider war and threaten the security of American families.

The National Security Archive has just released a Load of Files Electronic Briefing Book No. 253 Posted - August 20, 2008 under the title: 1998 Missile Strikes on Bin Laden May Have Backfired with a subtitle: Extensive 1999 Report on Al-Qaeda Threat Released by U.S. Dept of Energy, Taliban Told U.S. They Wanted to Bomb Washington

With backlinks to the PDF's and more links in the sidebar on the left.

Despite the bloviating by the CiC about 'time horizons,' the Iraqi government and the US appear to have come closer to an agreement on withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. First is a pullout from the cities by June 30, 2009 and a complete withdrawal by 2011. I'm guessing that the 2011 is for 'combat troops' and that US troops will remain in Iraq for training, ISF combat support, counter-terrorism operations, and defending US assets in the country.

U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have finished a draft agreement that would see American troops removed from Iraqi cities by June 30, an Iraqi official said Wednesday. But the draft has not been approved by the Cabinet and some members have expressed opposition.

The official, who was involved in the protracted negotiations, said the agreement calls for U.S. troops to fully leave the country by the end of 2011.

He said a compromise was reached on the contentious issue of immunity for American troops from prosecution under Iraqi laws, but he did not give details. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to release the information. ...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/...