Obama gave a response to McCain’s insipid “Celebrity” ad today while addressing a crowd in Iowa. It not only was artful and exciting but, as is his style, cut the core of why the ad was vile and galvanized people to reject such shenanigans.

“Given the seriousness of the issues, you’d think we could have a serious debate,” Obama said. “But so far, all we’ve been hearing about is Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. I mean, I do have to ask my opponent, is that the best you can come up with? Is that really what this election is about? Is that what is worthy of the American people?”

That is what’s annoyed me the most about the GOP’s campaign - my dismay that they can’t seem to run on the issues.

What is McCain’s plan, exactly, on Iraq? How will his economic policies, set on keeping the financial rules forged by the Bush administration in place, benefit our country better than the Dems? What are his major initiatives?

Instead, we only get his contempt for his opponent - most of which seems arbitrary and manufactured, at best. That kind of contempt breeds contempt - it shows contempt not for Obama so much as for the American people, asking them not to vote because they believe in something, but because they’re afraid of someone.

The crowd yelled: “NOOOOOOOOOO.”

“Even the media has pointed out that Senator John McCain — who started off talking about running an honorable campaign — has fallen back on predictable political attacks and demonstrably false statements. But here’s the problem. All of those negative ads spending all this time talking about me, instead of talking about what he’s going to do, that’s not going to lower your gas prices…”

And how is McCain going to do that? His offshore drilling plan has been debunked as a pure deception. How is he going to handle the rising cost of living for the middle and lower class? He has said he wants to keep the system almost exactly as it is, financially.

Ultimately, this begs the question: Does he even care to tell us? Does he even have the basic respect for voters to give them a choice, rather than scaring them and leaving them to make assumptions that he’s better than the distorted image of his opponent?

Where is his respect for our democracy?

“It’s politics as a game,” Obama said. “But the time for game-playing is over. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.”

Big cheers from the Iowa crowd.

And make no mistake, dear reader, that is why Obama is running, and why he is appealing.

This means that the extremists and ideologues on both sides of the spectrum are going to be disappointed. Already we hear outcry from the left-leaning “progressives” that Obama won’t do enough for them - won’t snatch us out of armed conflicts immediately; won’t stand absolutely against gun rights and for abortion rights; won’t always turn a deaf ear to the GOP.

That is because the very essence of his political career is to do away with that kind of divisiveness - especially on his own side. His chief mentors in Congress have included as many Republicans as Democrats, and his prose speaks not of a desire to push through a particular piece of liberal legislation, but to unite all people, regardless of party, in finding solutions.

That is the greatness of Obama - and that is true change.

McCain, with his deceit and gamesmanship and sentimentalism and fear-mongering and insular, elitist attitudes, is proving more of the same.

Adding his voice of support for Obama’s foreign policy vision to Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s, the Afghan ambassador to the US endorsed a vision for his country identical to Obama’s - and vastly different than John McCain’s.

Obama considers Afghanistan the foremost front in the War on Terror; McCain doesn’t. Obama considers more troops an urgent priority; McCain doesn’t. And while the ambassador agrees on all these points, he is also vocal about the main division between Obama and McCain on Afghanistan: Whether the US should pursue al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas regardless of Pakistani support or not.

“We would appreciate it if Pakistan could take full responsibility in dealing with them,” [Afghan ambassador Said Jawad] said. “But if they can’t, if they don’t have the resources, they should allow the international community to take these elements out, for the sake of Pakistan, for the sake of Afghanistan, and for the sake of the world. These are criminals. We should allow the humanity to go out and eliminate these enemies of humanity. We should not fool ourselves with the legal questions such as sovereignty.”

I’m not sure if I like the phrasing of the last sentence, but I agree with its sentiment insofar as that the GWOT depends on us violating the sovereignty of other nations for the sake of tracking down non-state actors - terrorists. All those Tom Clancy-type scenarios that are the bread and butter of counterterrorism are, by and large, illegal. They throw sovereignty out the window for the sake of beating the bad guys. Heck, that’s the mission definition of the CIA.

So for McCain to criticize that with one side of his mouth while he props up the reasoning behind the Iraq invasion is vile hypocrisy and big time dumb. Fortunately, the rest of the world seems to agree with his opponent.

Now all that needs to happen is for the American electorate to give a listen to the rest of the world.

Obama fired off the closest he’s come to a flat-out attack ad today. Levelled at McCain, it packs in a bit of positivity at the end.

Tragically, it’s true. A piece from the Washington Independent is a good account of my feelings on the McCain candidacy, “Maverick McCain Turns Mean“.

Worse yet, as Obama’s ad points out, you can put “Mendacious” and “Moronic” up there too.

In many ways, Romney is McCain’s best choice on a very short list for VP. He’s erudite, practiced in all manner of political and financial enterprises, and can deliver both youth and policy achievement. He can offer change and claim actual experience in it.

He would also doom the McCain candidacy with that crucial right-wing bloc - Evangelicals.

They say Mr. Romney lacks trust on issues such as outlawing abortion and opposing same-sex marriage and because he is a Mormon.

This is another case of the snarl that right-wing politics has become, post-Rove. Bush’s electoral strength came from wielding wedge issues to get social reactionaries to vote against their pocket books - it blended big government corporate welfare and military belligerence with God, Guns and Gays into a witches brew as unpalatable as it was potent.

Now, without a born-again standard bearer, the GOP finds its ranks turning on itself. Economic conservatives snort derisively at social conservative issues as insipid or intolerant. Social conservatives feel increasingly uncomfortable with big business raiding the tax larder and playing fast and loose with the law. And the Evangelical community, galvanized by politically active preachers to “put a man of faith in the White House,” now finds itself fragmented into the spectrum of political ideas included in its congregation.

So the fact that Romney can present brass tacks plans to counter Obama come fall, all while keeping his conservative cred strong, gives little benefit to McCain. If the Arizona Senator was still going full bore with his maverick image, dismissing the megachurch crowd as “agents of intolerance” as he once did, that would be one thing.

Instead, McCain is driving toward the far right in fifth gear on social issues. He has condemned gay adoption, vowed to overturn Roe v. Wade and stood staunch by the Defense of Marriage Amendment - a platform that would make a libertarian right-winger cringe, but that’s candy for the religious right. Romney would be a lodestone in this scheme, not a foundation of good credentials.

I find that tragic, and not because it cuts Romney off the list. He may still get the nod, though it’s unlikely for the reasons above, because the other two on the list are feebs. One is Charlie Crist, whose formerly rising star is plummeting fast in his Governorship, Florida. The other is Bobby Jindal, a flip-flopping dingbat whose embrace of Creationism as science might win some born-agains, but not enough to offset a pathetic record.

It’s tragic because it underscores how badly the GOP needs a housecleaning. They have gone from the straight-shooting party of Barry Goldwater to a factious coalition of intolerants and greedheads, held together by a thinning party loyalty alone.

We see it in the dialogue of the Presidential campaign most of all, where the GOP candidate won’t talk about issues because, when the chips are down in any economic assessment of his plans, they show him coming up ethically and intellectually short.

McCain has hitched his wagon to this sad, sputtering train: A platform of massive benefits to the economic elite at the expense of services to all, of spiteful and fearful control over people’s moral decisions, of lies rather than legacy. His party needs to wise up to the future and get back to its small government roots.

Until then, talent like Romney is going to be tossed out as a sop to intolerance.

MoveOn.org, always game to defy Obama’s denunciation of 527s and go their own way, moved in the right direction with their latest ad. I present it here for your enjoyment:

I was glad to see it, as much for MoveOn’s sake as for Obama’s. I say this because MoveOn does best following the lesson its name conveys - being a positive, progressive force, rather than a reactive, critical force. I can hardly call to mind a commercial against someone that they did artfully, and a commercial for something that I didn’t like.

Let’s hope they stay away from “Betray-Us” and stick to baby chicks.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear further commentary coming from a leading architect of the new Iraq strategy - a man who seems like a character from one of my novels; a former Australian officer and current counterinsurgency expert know for rough words and deeds, David Kilcullen.

Kilcullen is a clever savage, and was instrumental to constructing Petraeus’ critical counterinsurgency strategy. He has since been hired by the State Department as a top advisor, and his advice is well needed. He gets Iraq; understands its people and understands the obligations of those aiming to occupy their land. This is evidenced in his statement about the idea to invade:

Kilcullen, who helped Petraeus design his 2007 counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, called the decision to invade Iraq “stupid” — in fact, he said “fucking stupid”

That kind of forthright insight is much needed in a muddle like Middle East nation building. It may just sound vulgar, but that’s not the point - dissembling and distracting has only compounded the problems we face. After nearly a decade of strategic geniuses like Scowcroft, Powell and Baker talking into their sleeve while Rove and his ilk get the masses howling, we find ourselves sunk 100,000 corpses and a trillion dollars down.

Blunt talk is now a matter of survival.

For more of Kilcullen, check out his appearance on Charlie Rose.

By request, here is the entirety of Obama’s statements from the guest book at Yad Vashem:

I am grateful to Yad Vashem and all of those responsible for this remarkable institution. At a time of great peril and promise, war and strife, we are blessed to have such a powerful reminder of man’s potential for great evil, but also our capacity to rise up from tragedy and remake our world. Let our children come here, and know this history, so that they can add their voices to proclaim “never again.” And may we remember those who perished, not only as victims, but also as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed like us, and who have become symbols of the human spirit.

In the latest in my increasingly repetitive complaints about media bias, I present you a sigh of relief on my part and the statistical study that inspired it.

This study, released today from The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, one of the leading statistical analysts of media, has been reviewing the the recent content of the three major networks. Its findings were no surprise to me:

…when network news people ventured opinions in recent weeks, 28% of the statements were positive for Obama and 72% negative.

Network reporting also tilted against McCain, but far less dramatically, with 43% of the statements positive and 57% negative, according to the Washington-based media center.

This, when combined with the recent Tyndall report that many McCain supporters have been using as foundation for their gripe of media bias, is what troubles me. Tyndall’s numbers suggested Obama was getting vastly more air time than McCain. Confidants of mine consoled me that the greater air time meant that McCain’s lack of exposure would fatally atrophy his campaign over time.

I was unconvinced, and this study makes me further unconvinced, for if you’re hearing for 72% of a vast amount of time how much a snobby, out-of-touch, vulnerable, presumptuous, you-name-it bum someone is, how does that help their image? It would seem given that kind of content, more air time would hurt, not help, a candidate.

As he inspires the world, Obama is losing the press here at home. This means that, in an essential way, he is losing the election.

Bob Cesca has written a very well-researched article on this topic, and I suggest you read it in full. I disagree with a central tenet of Bob’s thesis, though - namely, that it is the press’ fear of a liberal bias that has them so hot for Obama’s blood and hateful of his dignity.

My take is that it’s the NASCAR-commentary phenomena: That if the press reported diligently, without a mind to insult and denigrate Obama to balance him with the pathetic mess that is the McCain campaign, it would not generate as much ratings. Why just polish the Golden Boy when you can tear him to pieces? In short, you draw better crowds with public executions than you do with press conferences.

The evidence of this is tragically abundant, and if anyone out there has serious proof to counter it, I welcome it. I would love a press bias towards Obama. Instead, with attributions, I have the following coverage of his trip:

AP: “In a speech that risked being seen as presumptuous…”

TIME Magazine: “capable to become the Commander in Chief of a superpower — without seeming presumptuous…”

The National Journal: “He is well aware voters here at home might see that as presumptuous…”

Washington Post: “Whether by the end of this week he will be seen as presumptuous or overly cocky…”

Chicago Tribune: “That means walking the fine line between looking presidential and appearing arrogant and presumptuous…”

Boston Globe: “plus the growing sense in some quarters that the presumptive Democratic nominee is getting a little presumptuous…”

The LA Times covered his Berlin speech today, with the following front page headline: “Obstacles Linger For Obama - The Democrat is winning friends abroad, but is struggling to gain real ground over McCain at home.” The entirety of the front page column is devoted to Obama’s weaknesses. Not a word of the speech is featured.

If we look on sites that compile the Op-Ed columns and punditry, we see more of the same.

On RealClearPolitics, we have David Brooks sneering that “Obama Plays Innocent Abroad.” Then there is Howard Kurtz at the WashPost, dismissively stating, “Obama Abroad: We Get The Picture,” a piece saying that the trip was manipulative, crass showmanship. Then “The Presumptive - And Presumptuous Nominee” and “Pride Clouds Obama’s Vision” and “A Flat Performance In Berlin.”

There is only one positive piece, called “Our First Community-Activist President?”

One could look at this and see a media struggling to maintain objectivity in a time of inspiration. To that analysis, I would ask, “Why is inspiration a bad thing?” But even that conclusion isn’t accurate, as is evidenced by a discussion on Tuesday’s Morning Joe between pundits from a variety of news sources.

…Mika Brzeznski, Andrea Mitchell and Very Serious Mark Halperin … agreed that after three days of reporting the actual news that Senator Obama’s overseas visit was successful, they should deliberately attempt to “trip him up” — to “hold him accountable.”

Apparently they decided not to wait three days. The blood is already in the water, the feeding frenzy is on. But expect a greater slaughter in the days to come, to continue until the press can exclaim in orgasmic delight, “Obama is an underdog in the polls - now we really have a race!”

As Obama roams, gathering glory for the Presidential race and the American nation, McCain is at home bringing shame to our political process.

Harsh words, but that is the point, and if I had any alternative than to write them, I would. But this week, McCain has sunk lower into the mud pit, slinging slime without a sense of moral or intellectual compass. We will begin by reviewing what things that might pass as substantial that he’s said:

Zilch. That’s what. Short list of things. Everything was an attack on Obama.

And folks, even if you’re a McCain supporter or GOP loyalist, you have to admit a candidate should provide a more substantial platform than, “The other guy sucks.”

Problems with this struck McCain directly this weekend, as the New York Times refused to publish his Op-Ed piece “on Iraq.”

This rejection spawned all manner of partisan bickering, but the reason the Times rejected it was because the piece had no plan for Iraq or Afghanistan - it was only an attack on Obama.

[NYT op-ed editor, David] Shipley wrote that McCain’s article would “have to lay out a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate. And it would need to describe the senator’s Afghanistan strategy, spelling out how it meshes with his Iraq plan.”

Why a man seeking to be Commander-in-Chief might need to have a plan to resolve the two debilitating wars we’re in is apparently beyond most of the media, who painted the event like a partisan snub. Any who looked closer than the flicker of the idiot box saw better, noting that McCain’s only “plan for victory” so far - attack Obama as defeatist or wrong on The Surge - probably won’t bring peace to the Middle East. Even Ann Coulter bashed the article as moronic.

Speaking of the Surge, we’re brought to McCain’s next blunder: His citing that it was the Surge that led to the Sunni Awakening, not the Awakening that led to the “success” of the Surge. That is just dead wrong. If you turn the most significant source of our casualties and direct it against the enemy, that is the critical factor - not increasing troop strength.

From there, McCain’s comments only get worse. And again, dear reader, I wish there was something else to say about the guy, but after scouring WorldNetDaily, RealClearPolitics and Human Events all morning, this is what I got:

First was his ad linking Obama with Castro. This is in the same vein as his ad linking Obama with Ahmadinejad.

To both, I note two things: One, nothing is dumber than equating talking to the enemy with weakness or sympathy; sooner or later, before a war or after, you’ve got to talk. And two, if you consider this just part of politics, why should we not hope for better?

Ask why the other side isn’t running ads featuring McCain with the North Vietnamese generals, Saudi extremists or Pakistani dictators.

A quick answer is brought to light by the other ad highlight from the McCain camp this week - namely, that the Press has McCain’s back anyway. McCain’s second ad portrays the media’s “love affair” with Obama - yes, the same guy who they kicked in the ribs for putting his kids on a 10-minute interview and hide positive polls about.

It is McCain, not Obama, who the media is in love with. I will enumerate for those shaking their heads and thinking about Chris Matthews’ “leg thrill.”

First, McCain has continuously been able to say he stands “for victory” in Iraq - supposedly unlike his opponent - while never being asked to define what that means. On the most critical question of our age, a matter we’re investing hundreds of billions-with-a-b dollars and hundreds of thousands of military lives into, he has not been asked to answer when and how we’re going to get a pay off. If you had cancer and went to your doctor, and he wrote a perscription that said, “Get well soon,” wouldn’t you feel a bit slighted? Apparently the press is okay with that.

After all, they love endless war - it means soaring ratings; endless bitching.

But secondly, McCain has more skeletons in his closet than the Addams Family, and the Press is touching on none of them. Obama’s already had his time through the ringer on Rezko and Wright. Pundits still cluck doubtfully as to whether he’ll win without Hillary on the ticket. We hear nothing of McCain’s past.

We don’t hear how he denounced his country when in captivity. We don’t hear how he opposed the POW committee he served on. We don’t hear about the Keating Five. And I’m not saying we necessarily should - I find those things about as irrelevant as Obama’s past - but I do want to point out whose negatives the press is obsessed with and who they’re giving a pass.

So to reiterate, this week McCain shamed the Presidential campaigning process by moronic and harmful guilt-by-association, and he shamed it by masking his attack piece as an op-ed on a critical issue, and he shamed it by complaining about a problem that probably is the opposite of what’s actually the case. He topped it off with downright namecalling:

He ran an ad directly blaming Obama for rising gas prices. The problems with this abound:

It’s dumb, first of all. Even if you support domestic drilling, you have to recognize that those vast domestic reserves here at home will, first of all, not have much effect on gas prices. The USA is a small factor in global gas prices, having 1.8% of the global share. ANWR’s cumulative amount would increase that to 2.2%. And that would take years to develop.

Second of all, it’s a distortion. Obama’s opposition to gas tax suspension and domestic drilling was hardly to blame for soaring gas prices.

But third of all, it could work, because people don’t know any better. And that, in my opinion, is the worst sin of all - exploiting the ignorance of the people rather than helping them understand things better.

Of course, McCain’s campaign depends on that. Every incident above is invested wholly in ignorance. Not in hope, not in knowledge of a better way, not in leadership.

And that is a shame - a shame on McCain and a shame for a country that expects and gets no better.

Obama travels the globe, and would that I had returned to this blog in time to cover its opening phases adequately. Suffice it to say that it has been appropriately heroic.

Here’s why: Like the heroes of old, Obama has demonstrated amazing bravery in visiting the places he has. Like the heroes of old, he has done so with an appreciation of the prestige those visits earn him and the nation he seeks to lead. Like the heroes of old, he has been fearless in who he confronts.

This is not immediately evident. But a full examination of the places he visited, and how, makes it clear:

First, Afghanistan. Obama’s decision to put Afghanistan first on his list of destinations reinforces his message that Afghanistan is the top priority in the war on terror.

Even critics of Obama’s Iraq policy have to admit this by following a simple train of logic: Afghanistan - or, more specifically, the Afghan/Pakistani border - is where bin Ladin is; bin Ladin is who we went to war to get; we need to make Afghanistan our priority to achieve the clearest objective of victory.

Obama visited Afghanistan first in order to invest the prestige of his trip in his foreign policy’s military priority.

Then came Iraq. Here Obama did something that is unbelievably, jaw-droppingly bold and significant - something only Petraeus and his agents have so far had the vision and guts to do.

I don’t mean his saying he came not to criticize Maliki but to listen to him. That was artful, sincere and correct, but it only demonstrated the man’s wisdom, not his, well, audacity.

I refer to Obama’s meeting with the men who were and are the hinge for the war in Iraq: He met with the warriors who turned the operational promise of the Surge into a strategic victory for the nation. He met with the terrorists.

Specifically, he met with the Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province. These leaders are the backbone of the “Awakening” - the sudden and ruthless uprising against al-Qaeda by their former base of support, the Sunni militia community.

Few in American, and virtually none in the media, care to state the significance of this event. It is often presented as a convenient backdrop to, or even a by-product of, the Surge. But looking at the raw economy of the Iraq war, the Awakening caused a shift of dozens of casualties per month being inflicted on us by the Sunni militias into dozens of casualties being inflicted on al-Qaeda, routing the Islamic extremists.

This is a tough pill to swallow for those who see war in sepia tones or action-movie terms: The notion that our worst enemy in Iraq was persuaded by Petraeus, in many ways directly in spite of the White House, to become our best ally - that as powerful as our troops are, they could not have achieved success without the terrorists on our side.

Look at the names made famous in the Iraq war history and it becomes evident: Fallujah, a stronghold of the Sunni nationalists. Haditha, a massacre hyped by the Sunni nationalists. Juba the Sniper, most notorious killer of Americans, a member of the same militias who rose up to scatter al-Qaeda to the hinterlands of Iraq.

Obama met with them, and so demonstrated he not only has the courage to meet with the most dangerous men in Iraq, he also recognizes they represent a critical power in the nation’s fragile future. That takes vision and guts. It got no press.

Then came Jordan, and the press conference at the Temple of Hercules. And this choice of venue showed the third aspect to Obama’s command of the heroic image so crucial to great leadership - that a great leader must appear great.

We see it throughout history - Alexander cutting the Gordian Knot, Caesar standing firm and alone to halt his routing forces at Dyrrachium - and in our modern times. I can understand those critical of Obama, who see his speaking from the awesome vista of a ruined Greek temple to the mortal hero who became a God as grandstanding. But I would remind them of the spiritual value of the Reagan era - the man who, not by his policies but by his prestige, led this country to believe in its greatness again after the bleak compromises of the 70s. He did this in ways both gaudy - lighting the Statue of Liberty with a laser - and grand - yelling out demands from the Berlin Wall. And while they could be dismissed by critics as crass, these actions nevertheless suggested an awareness, an appreciation, of greatness by our leader.

The rest of Obama’s trip has continued to evoke these appreciations, these commands of heroic qualities: He went to the West Wall, visited the Holocaust memorial, visited both the Palestinian hotbed of the West Bank and the leadership of Israel. These are evocative, powerful destinations, and visiting them to talk to people displayed a combination of audacity and modesty.

Even accusations of showmanship must recognize this - that while Obama may be travelling to places perfect for photo ops, he is also going to places that are dangerous, diverse, often forgotten, and always critical to our future in the region.

His latest destination, Berlin, is a model of this.

It is, most assuredly, going to be a pep rally for him. Europeans almost universally love Obama.

In a survey of some 6,200 people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Russia, the senator from Illinois received 52 percent of the vote to just 15 percent for Republican Sen. John McCain.

This support is especially strong in France. 65% polled there favor him; only 8% favor McCain. The biggest support committee in Europe is in France with over 2,000 members on staff, and the papers overwhelming laud him, expressing not just preference, but genuine excitement.

“For the French establishment, Obama represents a new chapter in the Western alliance … For ethnic minorities he embodies the equality of opportunity they crave.”

Thus Obama represents not only inspiration for the hopeful among the African-Americans, but people of color the world over. In a nation like France, where 10% of the population is of African or Arab origin, that has significant appeal.

But it is in Germany that Obama has the most profound support - 67% to 6% over McCain, and papers across their political spectrum hailing him as the salvation for American foreign relations.

It is expected that hundreds of thousands of Germans will flock to see him speak at another heroic location today: The Victory Column. Obama will be capitalizing on the genuine adoration many Europeans feel for America; the desire to see it restored to an ally, rather than a solitary and sullen adversary. This will be a grand photo-op given his international support.

Most importantly to Americans, it restores a measure of grandeur to the Presidency and to the nation. It invests heroic qualities like courage, compassion and majesty to the station.

By doing these great things, Obama is not just telling the world he can be great - he is reminding it how great America is.

Here it is, the Victory Column Speech.

I will never forget that it was John “Let The Eagle Soar” Ashcroft’s Justice Department that spent taxpayer dollars on covering up Lady Justice’s bosoms. Yet more and more these days, Ashcroft is also being indelibly identified as a man who stood by his principles against torture and warrantless spying in an administration that was scrambling for these and other perversions.

An article yesterday revealed that Ashcroft had made a list of five candidates to lead the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 - an office responsible for overseeing the legality of DoJ deeds - only to have the White House shoot down his candidates and insist on appointing a chief architect of pro-torture, pro-warrantless spying policy.

In an angry phone call hours after Ashcroft’s list reached the White House, President Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., quickly dismissed the candidates, all Republican lawyers with impeccable credentials, the sources said. He and White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales insisted that Ashcroft promote John Yoo, a onetime OLC deputy who had worked closely with Gonzales and vice presidential adviser David S. Addington to draft memos supporting a controversial warrantless wiretapping plan and detainee questioning techniques.

Ashcroft’s response, despite ailing health and an uphill battle, was to dig in his heels. He fought hard for a compromise candidate, Jack Goldsmith by name. And it was Goldsmith who went on to help expose and undo a lot of the grim deeds of the Gonzales-Yoo policies.

This has brought an interesting distinction to light for me. This distinction is one that I anticipated to develop after the Bush administration, but considering how long and eventful the administration has been, I suppose it was crafted rapidly. It is the distinction that even among the cliquish Neo-Conservatives, as in practically any group, there are moral true believers and there are self-serving hypocrites.

John Ashcroft is, apparently, a man that does indeed walk the walk. He surely has a few skeletons in his closet, but by all indications he struggled to stick by the Constitution, even when the agenda of his cohorts was pulling hard in a dangerous new direction. He may have wanted to chip away at civil rights progress - there is no painting him as other than a staunch enemy to the ACLU, pro-choice movements and drug users - but apparently believed in his gut that there were certain lines America did not cross.

I would imagine in Ashcroft’s clean-cut, picket-fence America, they may have locked up the hippies, but they did not torture.

On one level, I’m happy to hear it. It’s nice when someone with dramatically opposing views turns out to have fought the kind of fight I’d want fought.

On the other, it strikes me as an eviscerating tragedy that because a fanatical social conservative doesn’t sink so low as to okay sexual assault as a means of interrogation, he stands out as an exceptional hero in an administration the greatest country in the world has lived under for eight of its most critical years.

Obama has come out with an ad explaining how he identifies the threats we face and how he would go about solving them.

Let’s do the list:

One, he identifies the threat of cyber-attacks and loose nukes are critical.

This is good because neither of these topics are discussed much in the news, if at all. They are, however, threats we’ve backburned due to the GWOT. That he brings them up is important to me, as it makes me think he’s actually thought this through better than his pollsters.

Two, he recognizes the immediate solution to the terrorist problem depends on better alliances. As much as we may not like the UN and NATO and such, the reality of warfare is that unless you’re ready to pay a cataclysmically stiff price, it’s not a “go it alone” affair. Even the Romans needed allies in every major conflict they fought. Grumble about inadequate sanctions all one wants, but Iran would not be ascendant like it is now if we had listened to our allies in ‘03.

Third, and most importantly, he points out the strategic solution to global terrorism:

Energy independence. I know it’ll cause heartbreak in Houston - which is why the White House is talking about offshore drilling and ordering the Saudis to open the spigots full blast, rather than trying to wean us from oil - but it’s got to be done. All that money and favor goes right from the pump and into the pockets of the Islamic nations.

What’s more, the reason gas is so bloody expensive is that China needs it more than we do, and is paying top price for it. Thus, if we had an economy and infrastructure based on non-petrofuel energy, China would be stuck with the oil problem and we’d be riding high on the value of a new technology. And believe me, that tech is going to be worth buckets when the rising stars among the developing nations - India, China, the Middle East - realize they may have heaps of petro-industrial wealth, but zilch resources like water, food and energy.

It may sound weird, but the weapon of the 21st century is going to be conservation.

Obama gets that.

These last three days, I have been busy writing about the climax of another war, while a war just as riddled with tribal loyalties and imperial interests reeled out of balance. I refer, of course, to the events in Afghanistan.

Barack Obama, with typical foresight, wrote this Monday about the critical status of Afghanistan. In an Op-Ed piece describing his strategic vision for America’s ongoing conflicts, Obama repeated his belief that forces in Iraq must be reduced and our efforts in Afghanistan bolstered.

Senator Barack Obama is proposing that the United States deploy about 10,000 more troops to battle resurgent forces in Afghanistan, a plan intended to shift the American military focus from the Iraq war to the marked rise in violence from the Taliban.

As if underscoring his point, events in Afghanistan turned gruesome that day, as a vicious Taliban assault hit a US Army outpost in the east of the war zone. The attack not only killed nine Americans and wounded over a dozen more, we lost the ground. For the first time in recent memory, we had to withdraw from the outpost.

That wasn’t the most of it.

Elsewhere in the frontier region, NATO launched artillery and helicopter strikes in Pakistan after coming under insurgent rocket fire, officials said.

To clarify that statement, yes, you read it right: Insurgent rocket fire from Pakistan. If ever there was proof that McCain’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward counter-insurgency operations in Pakistan was intellectually and morally bankrupt, you have it right there. Something has to be done about the fact that our enemy’s base is in a nominal ally’s country, whether that ally likes it or not.

In order to overcome a dumb media, ignorant of anything beyond magazine covers this week, Obama then gave a speech on global security, emphasizing the dire circumstances our troops are all too conscious of abroad.

It was typical Obama: The vision thing, with guts and insight.

The response from the other side was typical McCain. Rather than explaining how on earth he would take the fight to the enemy, McCain took the fight to Obama. He criticized him for everything from inflexibility to inexperience, apparently missing the irony that despite all his considerable experience, he is, unlike his opponent, yet to propose any actual solutions.

Joe Biden laid into McCain in reply.

The speech was a bravura delivery of Biden tour de force, calling the idiocy of the ignorant Iraq-centric strategy to task. As soon as it’s posted in video format, it’s going up on the blog. For now, here’s a small cup of Joe, no cream, certainly no sugar:

President Bush and Sen. McCain lump all the threats together,” said Biden. “Al Qaeda, the Shia militia, listen to them speak. Listen to my friend Joe Lieberman, and he really is a friend, listen to them speak. Find me a distinction that they make. As a consequence of this profound confusion they make profound mistakes. The idea that al Qaeda will cooperate with the philistine, a guy who in fact used to run the country in Iraq, the guy who did away with the caliphate… is completely contrary to anything that the now-dead leader of Iraq had in mind. It’s dangerous. How can we run a sound foreign policy without understanding these decisions? How can we talk about a Shiite-dominated nation cooperating with a Sunni dominated Wahabi sect of Islam as if they had anything in common? Yet listen to my friends, listen to the president, listen to Joe Lieberman, listen to John McCain. Ladies and gentlemen, if they can’t define the enemy we are fighting it is very difficult to define whether we have won or lost.”

It certainly gets the blood going. I can only hope “No Drama Obama” signs on this firebreather.

With a briar patch like Afghanistan waiting us over the horizon past the Iraq mire, we’ll need all the truth to power we can get.