This is a test, only a test.

Another disappointment in the performance of the main stream media. The MSM and the pundits (including some liberal pundits) keep repeating the talking points of the Bush administration and McCain campaign that the “surge” was a resounding success which can not be disputed.

However, there are other factors (facts) at play regarding the so-called Surge.

Joe Conason at Salon.com summarizes a few of the historical factors related to the success of the surge.

There is no doubt that the surge has coincided with diminishing violence in Iraq, although kidnappings and bombings continue daily. As many critics have pointed out, surge proponents always compare the present period with the worst months of 2006 and 2007 — and the arrival of 30,000 troops is not necessarily why the killing has ebbed.

Perhaps the most plausible reason is that there are many fewer Iraqis to kill in the places where the worst violence occurred, because so many of them have abandoned their homes or left the country altogether. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that roughly 5 million Iraqis have fled, with nearly half of them now living in Syria, Jordan or other neighboring states. Others belong to the cohort known as the “internally displaced,” who have sought refuge from the militias “cleansing” Baghdad in either the northern or southern provinces. When there isn’t anybody left to kill, the murder statistics tend to improve.

Another fortunate coincidence was the decision of Muqtada al-Sadr, the rebel Shiite leader, to order his militia leaders to stand down in August 2007, just as the surge troops were arriving. That cease-fire broke down last spring in southern Iraq but was then reinstated, in part at the instigation of Iran and in part because of Sadr’s own political ambitions.

Read more at : John McCain and the surge in Iraq | Salon

July 4, 2008 | Nobody has denigrated the service of John McCain or his suffering in captivity as a prisoner of North Vietnam, as much as his supporters wish to pretend that someone did. Nobody has denied that his valor in captivity offers insight into his character. But so far almost nobody has asked the most important question about McCain’s military experience, which is how his past might influence his future as president.

The most pertinent issue is not what McCain did or didn’t do during the war in Vietnam, but what he learned from that searing, incredibly bloody and wholly unnecessary failure of U.S. policy. Clearly he learned that torture is morally wrong, illegal and counterproductive, and he has spoken with great moral authority on that issue. But listening to him now and over the past decade or so, he also seems not to have learned why that war itself was a tragic mistake — and why we needed to leave Vietnam long before we did. - Joe Consaon, Salon.com

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