The Day the World Changed

Sixty-three years ago, America won a war and lost its innocence. On August 6, 1945, the world's first nuclear weapon was detonated over Hiroshima, and six days later, World War II ended.

I was in uniform then in Germany, one of thousands waiting to be sent as foot soldiers to invade Japan. All we knew then was that a mushroom cloud had ended our dread of going to the Pacific to storm beaches and fight through cities. For the first time in years, we could wake in the morning without feeling there was an IOU out on our lives, held by someone unknown and payable on demand.

It was weeks before we learned the moral price for our relief--that over 200,000 would die from that explosion in Hiroshima and another over Nagasaki three days afterward and that our country would forever bear the burden of being the first to use weapons of mass destruction.

Almost two decades later, in August 1963, I was interviewing John F. Kennedy in the Oval Office. "Since 1945," he said, "we have gone into an entirely new period of nuclear weapons. Most people have no conception of what it all means. A nuclear exchange lasting sixty minutes would mean over 300 million deaths. We have to prevent the end of the human race."

This August, as presidential candidates argue over gasoline prices and each other's celebrity status, it's easy to forget they are asking voters to give them a Godlike control over the lives of multitudes of people, not only in our own country but all over the world.

It's too late to anguish over that decision 60 years ago but not too soon to remember how much power of life and death will be in the hands of whoever we choose this November and what qualities of judgment, character and human feeling he will need to make such choices for us in the future.

Money-Making, Mideast Style

Iraq is piling up a projected four-year budget surplus of $80 billion from exporting oil at rising prices, but the government is still too fragile to manage its own reconstruction, requiring US billions to do the job.

That proposition may not thrill Americans feeling pain at the pump, as a bipartisan gripe from Sens. Carl Levin and John Warner foreshadows oncoming outrage: “It is inexcusable for US taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves.”

Back in 2003, Paul Wolfowitz of sainted Neo-Con memory told Congress, "We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

"Soon" has been five years in the making but is still not here, according to the report from the Government Accountability Office, showing Iraqi oil revenue from 2005 through the end of this year adding up to at least $156 billion with much of the surplus sitting in an American bank earning interest.

But maybe we should look at it this way: By investing the money back here rather than elsewhere, Iraq is doing its bit to help the American economy fight the credit crunch.

Isn't that what friends are for?

Preview of McCain's Acceptance Speech

Minneapolis, Sept 4, 2008--In a Capraesque moment for the 21st century, John Sidney McCain III told a stunned Republican Convention tonight:

"I accept your nomination for president of the United States but, in all good conscience, must reject the tactics that are being used to win that office for myself and my party."

To the bewildered, buzzing audience, McCain declared, "I take my text tonight from a source familiar to us all but too easily forgotten in the heat of political battle: 'For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?'

"My friends, I have tried to serve my country all my life with honor, and I will not trade that accomplishment for any office, no matter how exalted.

"In the past months, I have given in to the temptation to allow people who speak for me to paint my opponent as dishonest, deceitful and untrustworthy. From my own experience as his Senate colleague, I know that is simply not true.

"From this moment, all that will stop. In my heart, I believe I am better qualified to lead this country, and I will make my case to anyone who will listen. But I will not be part of a process that demeans others for my own advantage and damages the civilized American dialogue that has been the glory of our democracy for more than two centuries."

Sources close to McCain reveal that, prior to delivering his acceptance speech, the text of which was not made available in advance, the Republican candidate had dismissed all members of his staff associated with Karl Rove and the Bush campaigns of 2000 and 2004.

In what is being called "Operation Straight Talk Redux," the Senator has taped talking-head commercials outlining his positions on the economy, energy, health care and other issues, ending with the statement, "I'm John McCain, and you can bet your bottom dollar I approve this message."

Reaction from Republican convention goers has been mixed. "Even it works for him," said one Congressional candidate who declined to be identified, "there goes eight years of everything the rest of us got from following the Rove playbook."

Seasoned political observers are divided over whether the new McCain can win over enough Independents and disaffected Democrats to make up for expected losses among Conservative Republicans.

"In the long run," says one pollster, "honesty is the best policy. Except when it isn't."

Dumb-Reasons-to-Vote Update

John McCain has inherited George W. Bush's mantle as the candidate you would most like to have a beer with, but Barack Obama is catching up with his choice by Lifetime cable network viewers as the most desirable nominee to carpool and share a vacation with.

Other races are tight. Latest poll information shows Obama leading in the Food Network's contest for the candidate to bring home for Thanksgiving dinner (the other guy could be too cranky), but McCain is well ahead in ABC Sports' race for who to watch the Super Bowl with (Obama might order pommes frites instead of pizza).

No word yet about who AARP members would like to sit next to at Bingo or the MTV vote on most desirable companion for a Rolling Stones farewell concert or the Cartoon Network's competition for the best candidate to caricature.

But voters will be better-informed to make those choices after the presidential debates.

The Inertia Issue

As much as Americans want something new in Washington, Barack Obama's promise of change is colliding with doubts, not all of them raised by attack ads, across the political spectrum.

A new poll reported by the Washington Post shows Obama with a 2 to 1 edge over John McCain among low-wage workers, but "many are unconvinced that either presidential candidate would be better than the other at fixing the ailing economy or improving the health-care system."

At the other end of the political spectrum, George Will in his Post column chides Obama for overblown rhetoric, while conceding that his hero Ronald Reagan was also "incorrigibly fond of perhaps the least conservative, and therefore the most absurd, proposition ever penned by a political philosopher, Thomas Paine's 'we have it in our power to begin the world over again.' No. We. Don't."

In classic conservative mode, Will claims "sweeping changes are almost always calamitous consequences of calamities...Wise voters...hanker for candidates whose principal promise is that they will do their best to muddle through without breaking too much crockery."

But after eight years that produced an unwise war and a damaged economy, both Will and his doubting low-income counterparts may want to look back to the time when Americans put their trust in a president who overhauled a failing financial system with the FDIC and SEC, saved farmers from the Dust Bowl and created Social Security for the destitute old, among other "changes."

Obama may turn out to be no FDR as McCain certainly wouldn't be, but this year is more like 1932 than Reagan's 1980, and "muddle through" won't quite cut it. Inertia is tempting, but it works better in a time such as Eisenhower's with a booming economy after winning a worldwide war. Now there is broken crockery to be swept up.

Too-Easy Answer to the Anthrax Scare

The suicide of a suspect in the post-9/11 anthrax attacks in 2001 seems to have tied up that trauma into a neat package that can be filed away under national scare stories, case solved.

But the subject is too important for such a quick and tidy solution. As shocking as the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon were, it was numbing weeks of public anxiety over deadly letters to the media and US Senators that spread fear across America to create an atmosphere that let Bush-Cheney Neo-Cons take us to war in Iraq and trample the Constitution.

Now, the anthrax story presumably ends with the death of researcher Bruce Ivins in the face of a therapist's taped testimony that he had a "detailed homicidal plan" to kill his co-workers after learning he was going to be indicted on capital murder charges in the mailings.

But secrecy so far, according to Glenn Greenwald in Salon, "has generated far more questions about the anthrax attacks than it has answered" as he cites MSM complicity in efforts to tie the 2001 threat to "Saddam Hussein's biological weapons program."

(A transcript from that time shows John McCain telling David Letterman, "There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may--and I emphasize may--have come from Iraq...If that should be the case, that's when some tough decisions are gonna have to be made.")

In the following years, the FBI hounded another anthrax researcher, Steven J. Hatfill, with leaks labeling him "a person of interest" by Attorney General John Ashcroft that culminated five weeks ago in the government's payment of $5.82 million for wrecking Dr. Hatfill's reputation.

Now, the Army is being evasive about the history of Ivins' security clearance in their labs, where ironically he had been spent years working with dangerous pathogens and viruses, trying to find cures in the event they were used as weapons.

Other doubts are emerging. Today's New York Times reports "at least 10 people had access" to the flask of anthrax in Ivins' lab and that the FBI has "no evidence proving that Dr. Ivins visited New Jersey on the dates in September and October 2001 when investigators believe the letters were sent from a Princeton mailbox."

We have to know much more. The 2001 anthrax episode is far too important in helping us understand how to deal with future threats to be swept under the rug of one man's psychiatric history and cover up seven years of bumbling and possibly worse by the government and media.

The truth may turn out to be scary, but it couldn't be any worse than imagining what it might be.

Bill Clinton's Rwanda Rehab

The comeback this time is low-key and far away as the former president surfaces from his Democratic primary flameout for a Washington Post interview, sounding subdued and philosophical.

Sidelined by the Obama campaign, he is on "a grueling journey across Africa to visit some of the places where his charitable foundation has been active--and in the process re-establish his role as a global elder statesman."

If he is not at the red-hot center of the '08 political action, Clinton can turn his energies to exhorting disappointed Hillary admirers to stay in the game locally--and perhaps for four or eight years from now.

"What we Democrats can't afford to do, even as we support Senator Obama, is try to build one America on the cheap," Clinton tells the Post, explaining that they should not tell themselves, "I voted across the racial divide; I have no obligations to do something in my community or around the world," urging them "to heave-to here. We've got to show up."

Asked about Obama's overseas trip, Clinton somehow manages to disparage it by consoling the candidate: "(T)he benefit Senator Obama may get out of that trip may come later in the course of this campaign in ways that aren't as obvious as having however many people--200,000 people or however many people--showed up in Berlin...

"He should not be either discouraged or encouraged by the reaction of that trip. He should internalize it. It should be a thing that had merit for him in and of itself. And the fact that it had very little political impact in the short run should be of no concern to anybody. Most voters don't have the space for it right now."

It's clear that Bill Clinton is out there trying to internalize his own misadventures on the campaign trail, even though most Americans back here may not have much space for caring about it right now.

Whole Deck of Race Cards

The Issue That Dared Not Speak Its Name is now on everybody's lips, including John McCain's and Barack Obama's own. Is this good or bad? Maybe both.

On the positive side, it's healthy to drag prejudice into the open (fresh air as a disinfectant and all that). Those who vote against Obama because of race should at the very least be made to squirm for it, if they have the capacity for being embarrassed, instead of hiding behind euphemisms.

But we are now involved in a more convoluted debate that threatens to diminish all sides. Let's review the bidding:

After the Jeremiah Wright YouTube rants, Obama made his Philadelphia speech about race, was almost universally applauded for it and prepared to move on.

But Hillary Clinton's sudden enormous popularity with "working-class voters" in the late primaries showed that millions had a wee problem seeing a black person in the White House, and it was inevitable that Republican swiftboaters would notice and act accordingly.

Obama, in effect, challenged them to try. “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run,” he told Americans in June. “They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

For the past month, the McCain campaign has been doing just that, using "different" and "flashy" as its locutions of choice.

Responding to the Britney Spears-Paris Hilton ad, Bob Herbert in today's New York Times muses:

"Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office--say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford--the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates."

When Obama himself hit back, he was accused of playing the race card. “I did not bring up the issue," John McCain says in his best I'm-shocked,shocked style. “Senator Obama...brought up the issue of race, I responded to it...I’m disappointed, and I don’t want that issue to be part of this campaign."

So what we have now is a whole deck of race cards, with double edges, on the table. Once the August silly season is over and the Conventions start, politicians on both sides will be talking about the economy, wars and threats other than Obama's skin tone. But the issue will be there, under the radar, all the way to November.

No-Sweat Nirvana

Shut down the labs, stop all research, drink a toast from the test tubes and beakers--we're there. With the couch potato pill, the Dream has peaked. The free-lunch fantasies of the something-for-nothing society have all come true, and from now on everyone tones up without moving a muscle.

From this new height of American know-how, we look back with pity at the sad efforts of the Olympic athletes who were stripped of medals yesterday for using primitive performance-enhancing drugs. From now on, why bother? When everybody is in great condition effortlessly, all that competitive running and jumping, huffing and puffing will soon be passé.

To stay in shape as a young man, I walked around the world, getting to and from work. Trust me on the math: Forty brisk blocks twice a day came to almost a thousand miles a year for 30 years. What a waste!

Now we can board up the gyms, toss out the treadmills, junk the Stairmasters and settle back in our recliners. To get where we want to go, we can stop running and biking and drive there in style. Unless, of course, we run out of gas.

Playing With Fire in Pakistan

Barack Obama avoided going there and John McCain has trouble remembering where it is, but Pakistan is the hottest spot in the Mideast with today's news that Islamabad's intelligence agency, the ISI, helped plan last month's bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan's capital, Kabul.

A senior US official tells the Washington Post about "significant" evidence that ISI members provided logistical support to the bombers as well as in an attempted assassination of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

In this CIA leakfest, the New York Times gets "new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas."

These revelations, called "hellacious" by the ISI chief, come right after the new Prime Minister's trip to Washington offering assurances that his intelligence agency is above suspicion and asking for more technical aid to help them keep doing their work.

In a sane world, Pakistan with all this duplicity as well as its who-knows-where nuclear stockpile, would be seen as a threat to national security calling for an immediate, bipartisan, continuing response, but sanity is in short supply.

Our current president greets their prime minister burbling about "our common desire to protect ourselves and others from those who would do harm" while the presidents-in-waiting bash each other about failing to understand the problem and then studiously avoid addressing it.

It would be reassuring to believe that, behind the scenes in Washington, some real thinking and planning about how to deal with Pakistan is going on but, from the evidence, there is only political posturing and CYA leaking from the CIA.

GOP Dope Dealing

Three out of four Americans are depressed about the way things are going, according to a new CNN poll, the worst national malaise since 1980, the last days of Jimmy Carter's era of inflation, gas shortages and US diplomats held hostage in Iran.

Ronald Reagan came along back then with a vision of "Morning in America" and the dark clouds lifted, at least for those in the upper tax brackets. Now Reagan's spiritual heir, John McCain, is elevating our mood with inspirational commercials featuring Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, which have the added benefit of provoking nostalgia for the good old days of the OJ Simpson trial with debates over who is playing the race card.

In Congress, McCain's Republican allies, with cheerleading from the Lame-Duck-in-Chief, are raising our spirits with promises to drill for more offshore oil that, in decade or so, could lower gas prices by a few cents and cornering Nancy Pelosi into allowing a vote or being blamed for not taking action to relieve the pain at the pump.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama isn't doing much to cheer us up, dwelling on such downers as the economy, health care, education and chasing down terrorists in Afghanistan or Pakistan or somewhere just as boring.

McCain's mood medication is beginning to show some lift in the polls and, if he keeps it up, we should all be high as kites by fall.

What Biden Could Do for Obama

As the short list dwindles down and Republican attacks heat up, the arguments for Joe Biden as Barack Obama's running mate strengthen.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is the flavor of the week in the media frenzy, but with less than three years in the position and no international experience, his choice would only underscore voter doubts about Obama's readiness to be president.

It is more than Biden's years in the Senate that recommend him. During the Democratic primary debates, the phrase "Joe is right" was heard so often that it became the theme of his ultimately failed campaign.

Since he entered the Senate in 1973 at the age of 30, Biden has embodied the kind of brains, character and compassion that national politics should have but rarely gets. Now, at 65, he would bring to Obama's ticket the good judgment and experience a change candidate needs to persuade wary voters that the best of the past would not be swept away in enthusiasm for the new.

Unlike Lyndon Johnson, who served that role for JFK in 1960, Biden has been no wheeler-dealer in the Senate but a champion of good causes now almost universally accepted--protection of women against domestic violence, a sane policy against drug abuse and, most of all, national security.

In 2001, he had doubts about Iraq yet eventually voted for the resolution but only, by Chuck Hagel's testimony, after working with Dick Lugar and others, in a bipartisan effort to limit the blank check the White House sought. Since then, he been in the forefront of efforts to limit US losses and end the disaster.

Perhaps most persuasive of all, Obama clearly respects Biden and would value him as a partner and, in the quest to convince the candidate's most elusive demographic--the white working class--the Delaware Senator's blue-collar, Catholic background would be a strong asset.

Flagging Down the Forked-Tongue Express

If the campaign continues this way, John McCain may lose not only an election but the respect earned over decades as an honorable soldier and straight-talking politician.

More in sorrow than anger, a New York Times editorial points out what has been clear for weeks now:

"On July 3, news reports said Senator John McCain, worried that he might lose the election before it truly started, opened his doors to disciples of Karl Rove from the 2004 campaign and the Bush White House. Less than a month later, the results are on full display. The candidate who started out talking about high-minded, civil debate has wholeheartedly adopted Mr. Rove’s low-minded and uncivil playbook."

There has been something distant on McCain's face and in his voice ever since as he parrots Rovian attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism. His body language raises questions about whether he can watch the scurrilous 527 commercials without gagging over the sophomoric smears that blame high gas prices on Obama, accuse him of using wounded troops for political gain and denounce him for being popular.

McCain, says the Times editorial, "used to pride himself on being above this ugly brand of politics, which killed his own 2000 presidential bid. But he clearly tossed his inhibitions aside earlier this month when he put day-to-day management of his campaign in the hands of one acolyte of Mr. Rove and gave top positions to two others. The résumés of the new team’s members included stints in Mr. Bush’s White House and in his 2004 re-election campaign, one of the most negative and divisive in memory."

Rove, cited for contempt today by the Senate Judiciary Committee over refusing to come clean about political misuse of the Justice Department, has made a fine art of devising election campaigns based on contempt for voters' intelligence.

The irony now is that the man he destroyed in 2000 to the point that McCain considered switching parties is surrendering to those tactics.

One of the low blows Rove's minions have devised for McCain is the charge that Obama would be willing to lose a war to win an election. How much of himself is John McCain ready to lose?

Pakistan's New Face, Same Old Double Talk

Instead of President Pervez Musharraf, it was Pakistan's new Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani this week posing in the White House, asking for more military handouts and flimflamming the Bush Administration about his country's efforts to root out terrorists across the Afghanistan border.

As American casualties and frustration mount, the New York Times reports, a top CIA official this month confronted senior Pakistan officials with new evidence about ties between the country’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and militants in the country’s tribal areas "responsible for a surge of violence in Afghanistan."

But here is the Prime Minister on PBS' News Hour, insisting that ISI is "a great institution" and such claims are "not believable...because the ISI is directly working under the prime minister."

So much for that, but Gilani is complaining that his country needs advance notice so that his people can deal with terrorists rather finding out after the fact about this week's US missile strike on a border outpost that killed six foreign fighters, one of them believed to be a top al Qaeda operative.

"We believe in sovereignty of the country," he huffed. "And naturally, nobody likes it."

What might calm him, the Prime Minister indicated, would be a gift of Predator drones and FM radio systems to jam the terrorists' communications.

One of the first jobs of the new President in January will be to sort out this Pakistani shell game that has been costing us American lives and billions in wasted military aid since 9/11.

A Look Into Obama's Mind

In unearthing the syllabus and assignments for his seminar in "Current Issues in Racism and the Law" during 12 years of teaching at the University of Chicago, the New York Times offers a preview of how Barack Obama's mind might work in the Oval Office.

For that complex and controversial subject, Obama improvised his own textbook, with key cases like Brown v. Board of Education, and essays by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Dubois and Malcolm X as well as conservative thinkers like Robert H. Bork.

Amid the historical horrors of slavery and lynchings, students recall, Obama made room for discussing the values and culture that Americans of all races grow up sharing, citing his wife, Michelle, a black woman, who loved “The Brady Bunch” so much that she could identify every episode by its opening scenes.

But perhaps most to the point of how a President Obama would conduct his administration's approach to problem solving may be found in his instructions to students for preparing their term papers:

"What I want to see is that you are fully engaged with an issue, and that you've broken some sweat trying to figure out the problem in all it wonderful complexity.

"More specifically, I'll be looking for: a focused, tightly crafted argument, and analytic rigor in working through the legal or policy problems raised by your argument; a thorough examination of the diversity of opinion that exists on the issue or theme; a willingness, after having looked at the various facets of the topic, to take a stand and offer concrete proposals or approaches to the problem."

That sounds like the essence of what he would telling the people he picks to help him run the country. It certainly would be a change from what we have now.

Senate's Grumpiest Old Man Faces Charges

The proponent of the "Bridge to Nowhere" may be going somewhere after all. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska was indicted on seven counts of corruption today involving doubling the size of his home at the expense of lobbyist friends.

They literally raised the roof of what is called Stevens' chalet by lifting the building onto stilts and putting an entirely new first floor under it.

For someone of my generation, the decline and fall of the irascible 84-year-old is a sad reminder that aging is no protection against self-destructive behavior.

Stevens started out as a World War II pilot who received the Distinguished Flying Cross for two years in the China-India-Burma Theater, supporting the "Flying Tigers" and Chinese combat units behind enemy lines.

Now, after 38 years in the Senate, during which he has grown increasingly ornery in pursuit of pork for his constituents, the Alaska Senator will be going on trial for making false statements on his Senate financial forms.

Long before he faces a jury, those constituents will be rendering a verdict on Stevens' continuing in the Senate in November.

While West Virginia's Robert Byrd, who turns 91 that month, is still going strong, the Stevens indictment raises questions about term limits in the Senate. Maybe 40 years is enough.

Victory Gardens and Grassless Lawns

During World War II, Americans grew tons of produce in government-sponsored Victory Gardens. With a 21st century twist, the idea is back, paired with an anti-lawn movement that decries the waste of water, use of an ingredient in Agent Orange and expenditure on fuel for power mowers to make front and back yards look like golf courses.

In New York City, Portland, Oregon and in front of San Francisco's City Hall, vegetables are growing, thanks to a new operation called MyFarm, which does the planting, weeding and harvesting and, for less than it costs to hire people to cut lawns, leaves a box of fresh organic produce on the doorstep.

At the same time, an organization name SALT (Smaller American Lawns Today) has been preaching the virtues of less grass and more trees and meadows, according to the New Yorker, which reports on a number of new books such as "Edible Estates" and "Food Not Lawns" to make American yards more productive.

In the New York Times blog "Designs," a New Yorker describes her own experiences in "swapping out blades of grass for bushels of beans" and recommends sources of information and help for what seems to be a rapidly growing movement.

Food for thought.

Motives for Murder

In Baghdad yesterday, three women wearing suicide vests with bombs killed 24 pilgrims marching in a religious festival and wounded at least 62 others, many of them children.

In Knoxville, Tenn., an unemployed man opened fire with a shotgun, killing two people at a Unitarian church he had never attended. He left a note in his SUV, according to police, about his "frustration" over not finding a job and "hatred of the liberal movement" that the church represented.

The search for serenity through religious worship is not what it used to be.

Obama's Fifty-Percent Barrier

As the new Gallup Poll shows him leading John McCain nationally by 49 to 40 per cent, there is the question. "Where's the Bounce?" from his apparently triumphant tour of the Mideast and Europe last week.

"Why is he not doing better?” the Times' Adam Nagourney asks today. "Even Mr. Obama’s advisers say they are uneasy about his difficulty so far in breaking the 50 percent barrier--a reminder, in poll after poll, that there are many Americans who are not yet ready to cast their lot with him, and may never be."

Some analysts compare Obama to Reagan in 1980, following the unpopular Jimmy Carter but needing to persuade voters he was credible as a president.

“It took a long while for the American public to test and look at Ronald Reagan before they were willing to go with him,” a Democratic pollster points out. “And then, when the dam broke open, it broke open very, very wide.”

It may be too optimistic to equate the comfort levels of American voters over a former actor with those of an African-American with less than a full term in the US Senate, but then again Ronald Reagan didn't have almost two years of exposure in a 24/7 media and internet world to familiarize them with what kind of president he might be.

With more than three months and two national conventions to go, Obama's prospects are looking good, 50 percent or not. Reagan had Jimmy Carter running against him as a living reminder of what the choice was, but John McCain keeps showing voters that he is George W. Bush's heir.

Petraeus' Reality Check

By the end of last week, John McCain was agreeing with Barack Obama that 16 months would be "a pretty good timetable" for withdrawing American troops from Iraq, but now Gen. David Petraeus says no.

The situation in Iraq, he tells an interviewer, is too volatile to "project out, and to then try to plant a flag on, a particular date."

Unlike the candidates, who have condensed their positions to bumper stickers of withdrawal or victory, Petraeus is wary of what Colin Powell called the Pottery Barn rule about Iraq, "You break it, you own it."

It should be sobering to hear from our man on the ground that McCain's claims of victory and belaboring of Obama for defeatism are, to put it kindly, premature.

"We know where we are trying to go," Petraeus says. "We know how we think we need to try to get there with our Iraqi partners and increasingly with them in the lead and shouldering more of the burden as they are.

"But there are a lot of storm clouds out there, there are lots of these possible lightning bolts. You just don't know what it could be. You try to anticipate them and you try to react very quickly...It's all there, but it's not something you want to lay out publicly."

Translation: We just don't know when the US can stop pouring blood and dollars into the fantasy of a free, democratic Iraq because the outcome is not in our hands.

If anything, Petraeus' doubts should reinforce Obama's determination to decide what we can do, give up the pipedream and start allocating our forces to fight terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.