After the vote

And the bashing goes on...

TPM on John McCain:

John McCain's latest wild and wacky claim: The only people who support withdrawal timetables and enforceable benchmarks are "MoveOn and liberals."

Yeah...so that makes up about 70% of the country. That's heartening.

AMERICAblog on John McCain:

The man who laid out the red carpet for Al Qaeda to enter Iraq in the first place is now accusing us of enabling Al Qaeda. News flash, angry man: If it wasn't for you, Al Qaeda wouldn't even be in Iraq. And now you want to kill more US troops for a failed lie because you're not man enough (or sane enough) to admit the truth. It's over. You wanted this war, and you lost this war. It's on your increasingly disturbed head now.

He knows the history of al Qaeda's movements and when it actually came into Iraq...but he continues with these half-truths...and he continues to seek others to blame...those champagne lunches and cushy express rides have really put an impermeable hide on him. Congrats, you are well on the way to being a worthy followup to this administration.

TPM and Rudy following along behind McCain:

Rudy follows McCain, accuses Hillary and Obama of being "anti-troops." That and other political news of the day in today's Election Central Happy Hour Roundup.

TPM and how conservatives just still don't get it:

Where the right is on the war. From TPM Reader JDG ...

Yes, our war in Iraq is very much like the one in Viet Nam, but not the way its opponents mean the comparison. What's similar is this: Both of these war efforts by the United States have been sabotaged, probably on purpose, and we will probably lose this one as we lost Viet Nam, by the media's practice of showing us the daily body count in color on the nightly news every single day, again and again and again
and again!

It is simply impossible for a democratic country to pursue any war, no matter how justified, to a successful conclusion under those conditions.

No matter what you think of the merits of the present war, it's obvious that two choices lie before America: either we go back to our pre-1950 policy (which most countries in the world still follow) of wartime censorship -- not just of information that would help enemy commanders, but also of information that would undermine our own public's morale -- or we may as well pack it in and invite China to rule our country, since we can never possibly win another war.

Telling on many levels. Perhaps the most revealing is the assumption that we'd be better off, in a better position to bring the endeavor to a successful conclusion if we were still under the illusion that Doug Feith, Paul Bremer and Don Rumsfeld were doing a bang up job -- and in all likelihood that they were still running the show.

AMERICAblog:

As death toll mounts now, Bush says war will get "bloody" -- in August

Six more U.S. soldiers dead in Iraq. Bush has his blank check now, still no plan to get out of Iraq, still no accountability -- just a soaring death toll.

The great war commander, George Bush, said the war could get "bloody" in August. In August?

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And if this Bush quip ain't enough to invoke a gag reflex...What more did the administration know back then, before entering the war, about what would be coming?

AMERICAblog:

Intelligence agencies, yes, U.S. government intelligence agencies, warned their boss, George Bush, that Iraq would embolden Al Qaeda and Iran. Of course, that's proven to be true. Funny, cause that's exactly what Bush is accusing his political opponents of doing now. Bush was so determined to go to war against Iraq, he was willing to sacrifice the safety of the country. And, that's what has happened.

The Associated Press reveals what Bush was warned about in 2003. Amazingly accurate. Figures Bush ignored it:

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