That news comes in the wake of calls from Democratic Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) for Jackson to step down over charges of cronyism in public housing deals in Philadelphia. But as I first detailed back in May 2006, Jackson was already in hot water for past admissions that political loyalty was an essential (and, of course, illegal) litmus test in how Jackson awarded contracts.

"He didn't get the contract. Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Alas, we won't have Alphonso Jackson to kick around anymore. He simply will fade into history as perhaps the least effectual of the incompetent, scandal-plagued bunglers like Michael Brown and Harriet Miers who came to define the Bush administration. But like Rick and Ilsa always had Paris in Casablanca, the American people will always have this image of George W. Bush and Alphonso Jackson.

Events on the ground in Iraq continue to defy the Bush's administration's ongoing misrepresentation of the Iranian threat there. Just one day after Republican Senator Lindsay Graham wrongly claimed Iran was backing just one of the three Shiite forces in Basra comes word that Tehran brokered a deal aimed at halting the carnage there.

As McClatchy, USA Today, the New York Times and others are reporting, Iraqi lawmakers traveled to Qom where a general of the Iranian Qods force helped negotiate the agreement to try to end the fighting between the Maliki government, his allies in the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, Basra's Fadhilla party and Moqtada Al-Sadr' Mahdi Army. (Sadr has been pursuing his religious studies in the Iranian city.) As McClatchy reported:

There the Iraqi lawmakers held talks with Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Qods (Jerusalem) brigades of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and signed an agreement with Sadr, which formed the basis of his statement Sunday, members of parliament said.

Ali al Adeeb, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's Dawa party, and Hadi al Ameri, the head of the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, had two aims, lawmakers said: to ask Sadr to stand down his militia and to ask Iranian officials to stop supplying weapons to Shiite militants in Iraq.

All of which suggests the complexity of the American position in Iraq, one which President Bush and his allies can't - or won't - acknowledge . Contrary to McCain ally Graham's statement about Sadr's Madhi Army ("The militias that we are fighting are backed by Iran"), Iran is providing arms, training and logistical assistance to all of the Shiite factions involved in the recent fighting. (And the Qods force is recognized as a terrorist organization by the United States.) As ThinkProgress noted Sunday, no Shiite military/political group is a bigger beneficiary of Iranian largesse than the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council of Sayyed Abdul Azziz al-Hakim. And Hakim isn't merely an ally of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki. He also happens to have had high-profile meetings with both President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Regardless, the agreement is fragile, to say the least. An unnamed Iraqi official worried, "I will not be surprised if the whole thing collapses." Osama al Nejafi, a legislator from an Iraqi parliamentary committee created to address the Basra crisis, concluded, "Iran was part of the problem and an effective part of the negotiations."

Back in Washington, no doubt, the Bush White House only heard the first part Nejafi's assessment.

UPDATE: As I noted above, the Iranian Qods force is on an American list of terrorist organizations. McClatchy is now reporting that Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani mentioned above appears by name on U.S. Treasury and United Nations terrorism and nuclear materials watch lists.

Just days after John McCain erroneously spoke of an Al Qaeda/Iranian alliance for the fourth in a month, Lindsay Graham had this to say about the U.S.-backed Iraqi government offensive in Basra against the Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr:

"Now we have a battle with militias who are operating outside the government...We must win this fight. The militias that we are fighting are backed by Iran. So this is an effort by Iran to destabilize Iraq."

Sadly for Graham, and Democrat Jack Reed quickly pointed out, Iran has been providing arms, training and logistical assistance to all three of the Shiite factions fighting for control of southern Iraq.

"The Iranians have close associations with all the Shia communities, not only with Sadr but also Hakim...The notion that this is fight by American allies against Iranian-inspired elements is not accurate."

Truer words were never spoken. After all, in December 2006, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim warmly received by President Bush at the White House. And just days ago, Vice President Cheney met with Hakim at his compound in Baghdad.

As ThinkProgress detailed this morning, Hakim is not only an ally of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri-al Maliki. His SIIC and affiliated Badr Brigades militia is one of the largest beneficiaries of Iranian largesse in Iraq:

Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations noted the ISCI "was essentially created by Iran, and its militia, the Badr Brigade, was trained and equipped by the Revolutionary Guards" - which the Bush administration calls a "terrorist" organization.

Journalist Gareth Porter added the Badr militia is the "most pro-Iranian political-military forces in Iraq." In fact, ISCI leader Abdul Aziz al-Hakim "met with [Iranian Revolutionary Guard] officers to be his guests in December 2006, apparently to discuss military assistance to the Badr Organization."

That same December, Hakim had another meeting with one of his highest-profile supporters, George W. Bush. In the White House, Bush praised the SIIC leader's role in Iraq:

"I appreciate so very much His Eminence's commitment to a unity government. I assured him the United States supports his work and the work of the Prime Minister to unify the country. Part of unifying Iraq is for the elected leaders and society leaders to reject the extremists that are trying to stop the advance of this young democracy. I appreciated very much His Eminence's strong position against the murder of innocent life."

"We appreciate the important role that Sayyed Hakim has played in that effort, together with Iraq's other leaders, and we look forward to continuing to build on the partnership between our two countries."

And so it goes. Despite John McCain's depiction of a mythical Al Qaeda-Tehran nexus, the enemy of our enemy is not our friend. But according to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the friend of our enemy is our friend.

In the Washington Post today ("Disloyalty That Merits An Insult"), Clinton adviser James Carville gave his best Dana Perino impersonation. Defend his hyperbolic denunciation of surprise Obama endorser Bill Richardson, Carville mirrored Perino's famous "once a Bushie, always a Bushie" code of political ethics. By proclaiming loyalty a cardinal virtue above all others, James Carville sounded like a member of the very Bush administration his candidate - and her party - are trying to replace.

A week ago, Carville reacted angrily to the former Clinton energy secretary and UN ambassador's defection to the Obama camp. Calling Richardson's endorsement of Barack Obama an "act of betrayal," Carville got biblical:

"Mr. Richardson's endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."

Today, Carville took to the pages of the Washington Post with a double mission. First, Carville in the wake of the Samantha Powers/Geraldine Ferraro dust-ups wanted to offer a lesson in political desensitivity training:

"I decried the political environment in which, by whining about every little barb, candidates seem to be trying to win the election through a war of staff-resignation attrition."

So he chose to accomplish his second goal, making an example of Richardson, " by demonstrating what constitutes a real insult."

But in defending his Richardson-as-Judas slur, James Carville offered a standard of political morality that could have come right out of the mouth of Karl Rove:

"I believe that loyalty is a cardinal virtue. Nowhere in the world is loyalty so little revered and tittle-tattle so greatly venerated as in Washington. I was a little-known political consultant until Bill Clinton made me. When he came upon hard times, I felt it my duty -- whatever my personal misgivings -- to stick by him. At the very least, I would have stayed silent. And maybe that's my problem with what Bill Richardson did. Silence on his part would have spoken loudly enough...

...If Richardson was going to turn on the Clintons the way he did, I see no problem in saying what I said. Because if loyalty is one virtue, another is straight talk. And if Democrats can't handle that, they're going to have a hard time handling a Republican nominee who is seeking the presidency with that as his slogan."

Absolute, unswerving fealty to the President is the defining trademark of the Bush administration. Just ask any of the former Bush White officials who felt the wrath of Rove and the Republican amen corner in response to their supposed transgressions of disloyalty.

When former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill revealed that President Bush sought war with Iraq well before the 9/11 attacks, he too was labeled a Judas and found himself the subject of an investigation. When counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke highlighted the Bush team's feeble preparation for the Al Qaeda threat, he was called "that little fop" and much worse. As for General Eric Shinseki, who presciently told Congress that the occupation of Iraq would require "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers," he was simply forced into retirement.

The flip-side, of course, is the politics of payback the Bushies use to seek vengeance against those disloyal few who reveal the administration's secrets and criminal wrongdoing. Convicted felon Scooter Libby was lauded a hero for outing covert CIA operative Valerie Plame. (Fox News' John Gibson raged about an anti-Bush cabal at the CIA" and announced " I'm the guy who said a long, long time ago that whoever outed Valerie Plame should get a medal. And if it was Karl Rove, I'd pin it on him myself.") In December, failed Bush Labor nominee Linda Chavez, too, wanted to pin a medal, this time on Jose Rodriguez, then-head of the CIA's clandestine service, for his destruction of the CIA interrogation videotapes. Meanwhile, the Bush White House and its right-wing allies seek to prosecute the whistle-blowers who shone a spotlight on the administration's illegal NSA warrantless wiretapping scheme.

No doubt, Governor Richardson handled his endorsement of Barack Obama clumsily. His apparent refusal to return phone calls from President Clinton also suggests a lack of courage under fire.

Regardless, in the pantheon of political virtues, several qualities rate above loyalty. Concern for the national interest, fidelity to the Constitution and the law, honesty and integrity and fundamentally, doing what one believes is right (and legal!) for the American people all trump loyalty to the Supreme Leader.

Sadly, in his denunciation of Bill Richardson's disloyalty to Hillary and Bill Clinton, James Carville sounds like any of the sycophants of George W. Bush. As Dana Perino aptly said last year, "Once a Bushie, always a Bushie."

George W. Bush is suffering from another severe case of premature Iraq elation. That's the inescapable diagnosis after a week which featured sunny statements from the President even as Baghdad and Basra descended into chaos.

On last week's fifth anniversary of his invasion of Iraq, President Bush was blissfully unaware of the tumultuous three-way Shiite conflict just days in the offing. Now, Bush is portraying setbacks as proof of success and escalating violence as a sign of a healthy democracy.

Even as the battle between Iraqi security forces and Sadr's militia was raging in Basra, President Bush on Thursday concluded, "normalcy is returning back to Iraq." (That normalcy includes a three-day curfew in Baghdad, intermittent shelling of the Green Zone, casualties at the U.S. embassy, and warnings to American diplomatic personnel to stay inside "reinforced structures") By Friday, the President called the carnage in Basra and elsewhere "a defining moment in the history of a free Iraq."

Bush also jumped the gun on the Iraqis "standing up." On Thursday, President Bush lauded the ability of the Iraq security forces to operate independently of U.S. troops, a development which lasted less than 24 hours.

"Prime Minister Maliki's bold decision -- and it was a bold decision -- to go after the illegal groups in Basra shows his leadership, and his commitment to enforce the law in an even-handed manner. It also shows the progress the Iraqi security forces have made during the surge. Iraqi forces planned this operation and they deployed substantial extra forces for it. They're leading the operation. Prime Minister Maliki has traveled to Basra to oversee it firsthand."

By that night, however, Maliki's offensive had ground to a halt. U.S. jets flew missions in Basra to support the Maliki government and its Shiite allies in battling Moqtada Al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Back in Baghdad, American armored units and aircraft fought Sadr's militia in the Sadr City and Kadhamiyah neighborhoods.

Even as his Iraq surge stands on the brink of unraveling, President Bush on Friday declared it a success. Deploying the "return on success" White House talking point (which last fall displaced "we're making progress"), Bush cited the looming Australian departure from Iraq as a positive sign:

"And by the way, we are withdrawing troops. It's called return on success. And our intention is to pull down five - you know, five battalions by July. Troops are coming out - five brigades, excuse me. Troops are coming out, because we're successful. And so, I would view the Australian decision as return on success - returning home on success."

So successful, in fact, that President Bush is all but certain to accept General Petraeus' recommendation to halt any further drawdown and maintain U.S. troops levels for the rest of 2008.

Of course, George W. Bush is far from alone in suffering from Iraq-style dysfunction. On Wednesday, the Pentagon itself echoed the President, citing the rising violence in Basra as a "by-product of the success of the surge." On Monday, surge architect Fred Kagan proclaimed "the civil war in Iraq is over." Just last week, former Bush officials in the Coalition Provisional Authority Dan Senor and Roman Martinez took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to announce the decline and fall of Moqtada Al-Sadr in a provocatively triumphant piece titled, "Whatever Happended to Moqtada?" And John McCain, George W. Bush's would-be successor, merely complained on Monday:

"We're succeeding. I don't care what anybody says. I've seen the facts on the ground."

Sadly, Americans have seen the symptoms of this Republican ailment before. On May 1, 2003, after all, President Bush stood before a banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished" and announced "the U.S. and our allies have prevailed." Two months later on July 2, 2003, Bush taunted would-be Iraqi insurgents, infamously challenging "bring 'em on."

Now, no doubt, President Bush and his Republican allies will once again try to treat their problem of premature emancipation by getting the American people to think about something else.

(Note: I first used the title expression in a piece Tuesday, "Moqtada Al-Sadr Answers the Wall Street Journal." Doubtless, others used it earlier. In any event, that and other puns and innuendos ("Iraq-style dysfunction, etc.) in this piece were entries in the 2005 "Name That Bush Scandal Contest.")

In excerpts from his upcoming book (Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice) published in Slate, Eric Lichtblau describes the surreal effort of the Bush White House to squash the New York Times' revelations regarding its patently illegal warrantless wiretapping. Lichtblau describes a last-ditch effort by the administration to dissuade the Times during a December 2005 meeting at the White House:

As New York Times Editor Bill Keller, Washington Bureau Chief Phil Taubman, and I awaited our meeting, we still weren't sure who would make the pitch for the president. Dick Cheney had thought about coming to the meeting but figured his own tense relations with the newspaper might actually hinder the White House's efforts to stop publication. (He was probably right.) As the door to the conference room opened, however, a slew of other White House VIPs strolled out to greet us, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice near the head of the receiving line and White House Counsel Harriet Miers at the back.

For more than an hour, we told Bush's aides what we knew about the wiretapping program, and they in turn told us why it would do grave harm to national security to let anyone else in on the secret. Consider the financial damage to the phone carriers that took part in the program, one official implored. If the terrorists knew about the wiretapping program, it would be rendered useless and would have to be shut down immediately, another official urged: "It's all the marbles." The risk to national security was incalculable, the White House VIPs said, their voices stern, their faces drawn. "The enemy," one official warned, "is inside the gates." The cliches did their work; the message was unmistakable: If the New York Times went ahead and published this story, we would share the blame for the next terrorist attack.

The Bush administration's claims, of course, were without foundation. But faced with the failure of its baseless fear-mongering in preventing the New York Times from shining a spotlight on President Bush's clear wrongdoing, the White House then commenced a campaign of retribution.

After the revelations about the NSA program by the New York Times on December 16, 2005, President Bush raged three days later about what he deemed "a shameful act" that is "helping the enemy". Claiming he didn't order an investigation, Bush added "the Justice Department, I presume, will proceed forward with a full investigation" At a subsequent press conference that same day, Alberto Gonzales suggested the retribution that was to come:

"As to whether or not there will be a leak investigation, as the President indicated, this is really hurting national security, this has really hurt our country, and we are concerned that a very valuable tool has been compromised. As to whether or not there will be a leak investigation, we'll just have to wait and see."

Americans didn't have to wait long. In August 2007, a team of FBI agents raided the home of Thomas M. Tamm, a veteran prosecutor and former official of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) within DOJ. As Michael Isikoff detailed in Newsweek:

The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files. Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media. The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants.

The Bush administration's amen corner among the conservative chattering classes was not content to rest with a witch-hunt for the NSA whistle-blowers. They wanted revenge against the New York Times itself.

In 2006 testimony before Congress and again in an August 2007 rant, Commentary editor Gabriel Schoenfeld urged prosecution of Lichtblau, Risen and the paper:

"With the investigation making progress, the possibility remains that even if the New York Times is not indicted, its reporters - James Risen and Eric Lichtblau - might be called before the grand jury and asked to confirm under oath that Tamm, or some other suspect, was their source. That is what happened to a whole battalion of journalists in the investigation of Scooter Libby in the Valerie Plame fiasco.

If Risen and Lichtblau promised their source confidentiality, they might choose not to testify. That would potentially place them, like Judith Miller in the Libby investigation, in contempt of court and even land them in prison."

To date, neither Risen nor Lichtblau have faced criminal sanctions for their Pulitzer Prize winning coverage of the illicit NSA warrantless surveillance. And while that may be yet to come, that doesn't mean the reporters aren't already in legal hot water.

On February 1, 2008, the Times revealed that Risen had been subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in an effort to force him to reveal his confidential sources. But that subpoena did not concern his 2005 reporting on the NSA domestic spying program. Instead, the Justice Department wants Risen to divulge his sources for a chapter on Iran's nuclear program in his 2006 book, State of War. In it, Risen describes CIAs unsuccessful efforts during the Clinton and Bush administrations to infiltrate the Iranian nuclear program. So while conservatives were quick to applaud the news of the subpoena for Risen, many still fume that it concerned the wrong offense.

No doubt, the Bush administration's war on the New York Times is far from over. The right-wing rage machine groused over the paper's publication of revelations that the United State clandestinely helped Pakistan secure its nuclear arsenal. (Again, the Times deferred to the White House for over three years before printing the story.)

For his part, Eric Lichtblau concludes that the New York Times' decision to proceed with the NSA domestic surveillance story was undoubtedly the right one:

"More than two years later, the Times' decision to publish the story - a decision that was once so controversial - has been largely overshadowed by all the other political and legal clamor surrounding President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program: the dozens of civil lawsuits; the ongoing government investigations; the raging congressional debate; and the still-unresolved question, which Congress will take up again next week, of whether phone companies should be given legal immunity for their cooperation in the program."

Almost on cue, Attorney General Michael Mukasey last night reached a new low in hyping the need for telecom immunity. Speaking in San Francisco, an emotional Mukasey choked up while playing the 9/11 card on President Bush's behalf:

"We've got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn't come home to show for that."

That shameless fear-mongering and duplicity shows the Bush administration mindset that the New York Times - and the American people - are up against.

News that Mitt Romney has joined John McCain on the campaign trail is fueling speculation that the Arizona Senator may tap his defeated rival for the Republican VP slot. Which would make perfect sense. Back by the Bush braintrust and conservative chattering classes, Romney claims to know something about the economy, a topic on which John McCain admits to knowing little. Both men conflate all Muslims worldwide into a single, unified terrorist threat while sharing a common desire to follow Osama Bin Laden to the "gates of hell." And that hatred is exceeded only by their disdain for each other.

As the AP reported this morning, Romney will accompany McCain on a series of campaign events over the next two days. The two will attend a Salt Lake City fundraiser before traveling to Denver together.

Despite his transparent intent to launch another bid for the White House in 2012, Mitt Romney is putting his contempt for McCain aside in the hopes of locking up the #2 spot on the ticket. And to be sure, the disdain is mutual.

That became abundantly clear during the run-up to the decisive Florida primary in late January. As Time detailed ("The 'I Hate Romney' Club"), all of the GOP candidates detested Romney for his sharp attacks and bottomless pockets. An aide to one of the GOP candidates said their dislike of Romney "cannot be underestimated." A Giuliani staffer told a McCain counterpart, "Just tell us what [you] want us to do - we've got to stop him."

Over the next several days, the gloves came off. Before the Florida vote, Romney and McCain argued bitterly over the issue of a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq. McCain blasted Romney, even resorting to the dreaded H world:

"If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, then there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher."

Romney, insisting that any U.S. timelines would never be discussed publicly, fired back:

"That's simply wrong and it's dishonest, and he should apologize."

Their bitterness exploded on stage during a California debate just days before the Super Tuesday primaries that ended Romney's campaign. In addition to the simmering Iraq feud, McCain lambasted Romney's business background while Mitt dismissed Mr. Straigt Talk's conservative credentials. As CNN detailed:

"I think he managed companies and he bought and he sold and sometimes people lost their jobs," McCain said. "That's the nature of that business."

"He's a good Republican; I wouldn't question those credentials at all," Romney said of McCain. "But there are a number of pieces of legislation where his views are out of the mainstream, at least in my view, of conservative Republican thought."

Still, in Republican and conservative movement leadership circles, pressure has been building for a McCain/Romney ticket. Jeb Bush and much of the Bush machinery have waged a none-too-subtle campaign for Romney. Mouthpieces of the right, including Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol, have extolled Romney's vice presidential virtues. And despite his born-again adoption of hard right positions on many social issues, Romney has enjoyed the backing of many Christian conservatives.

On one issue, there is no disagreement between the two. As his smarmy February 14 press conference endorsing John McCain, Mitt Romney made it clear that he would love to tag along as President McCain followed Osama Bin Laden to the "gates of hell:"

"I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating Al Qaeda and terror."

The McCain/Romney worldview features a shared ignorance of friend and foe, the guilty and the innocent, ally and adversary within the global Muslim community. Senator McCain, after all, confused Al Qaeda-Iranian enmity for an alliance four times in under a month. For his part, Mitt Romney has been conflating all Muslims in speeches, debates and ads for the past year. Ignoring national rivalries and the Sunni-Shiite schism, Romney has warned "their goal is to unite the world under a single jihadist caliphate."

More than helping John McCain cement his support among the suspicious Republican base, businessman Romney might be the perfect complement when it comes to the sputtering American economy. Over the past two years, John McCain has repeatedly acknowledged his glaring weakness on the economy. In November 2005, McCain owned up:

"I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."

Two years later, McCain admitted making little progress in grasping Economics 101:

"The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should. I've got Greenspan's book."

Given the near meltdown of the American financial system and the deep crisis of the housing market manufactured during the former Fed chairman's tenure, McCain's reliance on Alan Greenspan's crib notes will hardly be reassuring to American voters.

In contrast, Mitt Romney ran for the White House by proclaiming his experience as an venture capitalist and executive. Hoping to succeed George W. Bush in becoming America's second MBA president, Romney repeatedly announced, "I've spent my life, 25 years...in the world of business. I know why jobs come and go." (Especially why jobs go, as his company's record of slash and burn acquisitions shows.)

Despite their differences, a John McCain/Mitt Romney pairing would be a dream ticket for many Republicans. And while Romney may not have had McCain at hello, it wouldn't be the first time the "Maverick" reversed course and swallowed his pride on the way to the White House.

Politics, they say, produces strange bedfellows. After Hillary Clinton's visit with the Pittsburgh Tribune Review editorial board today, truer words were never spoken. That Senator Clinton chose that of all venues to weigh in on Barack Obama's pastor controversy would have been unthinkable in the years past. After all, the Tribune Review is owned by none other than Clinton grand inquisitor himself, Richard Mellon Scaife.

In recent days, the Tribune Review's opinion page featured reliable right-wing mouthpieces such as Pat Buchanan and L. Brent Bozell vilifying Barack Obama over his association with Pastor Wright. Responding to questions from the paper's editors and reporters today, Hillary broke the Clinton's camp's relative silence on the Jeremiah Wright uproar:

"He would not have been my pastor. You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."

While the liberal blogosphere is abuzz over whether and to what degree Clinton's comments constituted the Tonya Harding treatment for Obama, it is the location she chose to first make them that seems so surprising.

As People for the American Way details, the Trib-Review's billionaire owner, Richard Mellon Scaife has poured $340 million over the past 30 years into the vast right-wing conspiracy Hillary Clinton once decried. He helped fund both Judicial Watch and the Landmark Legal Foundation, conservative legal organs which targeted the Clinton administration with lawsuits during the 1990's. As PFAW notes, Scaife argued that the Bill Clinton's Lewinsky bimbroglio was perhaps the least of his crimes:

In a rare interview in 1999 with John F. Kennedy, Jr. in George Magazine, Scaife spoke openly about his belief that there is truth behind the accusations that the Clintons were involved in the deaths of 60 friends and employees. His newspaper, Pittsbrugh Tribune-Review, also printed allegations suggesting that certain officials in the Clinton administration were murdered.

In retrospect, Hillary Clinton's appearance at the Scaife paper is not as incomprehensible as it might have once seemed. After all, back in July 2007, Bill Clinton and his former tormentor Richard Mellon Scaife met for a two-hour lunch during which the ex-President secured a check for his foundation's work on AIDS in Africa. For his part, Scaife said of his one-time enemy #1, ''I never met such a charismatic man in my whole life." (Even more ironic, given his central role in the Arkansas project to publicize Clinton's personal peccadilloes, Scaife admitted, "I don't want people throwing rocks at me in the street. But I believe in open marriage.")

None of which is to suggest that Hillary's statements at the Pittsburgh Tribune Review today constitute an emerging Clinton-Scaife nexus. But in this strangest of elections, Hillary Clinton and Richard Mellon Scaife would be strange bedfellows, indeed.

The cease fire declared last summer by Sadr's Mahdi army militia has been one of four crucial ingredients driving the drop in violence in Iraq, especially against American troops. (The U.S. troop escalation itself, improved counterinsurgency tactics and the American funding of Sunni "awakening councils" to battle Al Qaeda are the others.)

Senor, Paul Bremer's one-time Baghdad spokesman turned Fox News contributor (and husband of CNN's Campbell Brown), gloated over the diminishing fortunes of Sadr, the man who "came very close to establishing a state within a state inside Iraq, much like Hezbollah had done in Lebanon."

Moqtada al-Sadr -- the radical cleric dubbed "The Most Dangerous Man in Iraq" by a Newsweek cover story in December 2006 -- has just unilaterally extended the ceasefire he imposed on his Mahdi Army militia last summer. And on the eve of the Iraq War's fifth anniversary, Sadr also issued a somber but dramatic statement. He not only declared that he had failed to transform Iraq, but also lamented the new debates and divisions within his own movement. Explaining his marginalization, Sadr all but confessed his growing isolation: "One hand cannot clap alone."

Perhaps, but it can still make a fist.

As events in Iraq this week demonstrate, that's the clear reality on the ground. In Baghdad, Mahdi army militiamen forced shops to close in many neighborhoods as part of a nationwide "civil disobedience campaign" against efforts by U.S. and Iraqi government units to crack down on "rogue" Sadrist elements backed by Iran. Sadr's forces engaged in sporadic gunfire in Baghdad and Kut, and shelled U.S facilities and Prime Minister Maliki's compound in the Green Zone. Still, Nassar al-Rubaie, head of the Sadr party in parliament contended, "This does not mean the ceasefire is over. Such a decision is for Moqtada al-Sadr to take."

But it is in the southern city of Basra, handed over by British troops to Iraqi authorities last fall, where the situation is rapidly spinning out of control. 22 people were killed and 58 wounded in fighting between Sadr's men and forces aligned with the leading Shiite bloc -in the government, the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council. As MSNBC reported, the unilateral Sadr cease fire now looks increasingly shaky:

With tensions rising, al-Sadr's headquarters in Najaf ordered field commanders with his Mahdi Army militia to go on high alert and prepare "to strike the occupiers" and their Iraqi allies, a militia officer said.

The growing chaos in Basra and building challenge from al-Sadr threatens the very success of the U.S. surge to date. As the New York Times reported, President Bush is all but certain to pause the drawdown of American forces in Iraqi, likely maintaining at 140,000 the troop level requested by General David Petraeus through the end of 2008. Meanwhile, the United States has asked the Brown government in London to lead a "British surge" back into Basra and southern Iraq. While one anonymous British source told the Sunday Mirror "we do not have enough troops for a surge ourselves," an unnamed senior American military source described the stakes for the U.S.:

"If they do not have enough troops, then they will be offered US Marines to help out.

"The feeling is that if southern Iraq is hugely unstable, it will affect the success of the surge in the north and destabilize the whole country."

Which is precisely the concern raised by the McClatchy papers on Monday. Noting the growing Shiite conflict fueled by Sadr, stepped-up attacks on military and civilian targets and rising U.S and Iraqi casualties, McClatchy asked, "Is 'Success' of U.S. Surge About to Unravel?"

On the fifth anniversary of the ill-fated invasion of Iraq, Americans can only hope the answer is no. As for Senor and Martinez, critical cogs in the Coalition Provisional Authority that utterly failed to anticipate the rise of Moqtada Al-Sadr, they like their boss were too quick to pop the champagne corks and pronounce "mission accomplished." (As even they feebly acknowledged, "So while the progress made against Sadr has been remarkable, it may also be fragile.") As for Sadr himself, rumors of his demise were apparently premature.

A new study released last week revealed a Republican Party ever more out of touch with the mushrooming crisis of the American health care system. Predictably, 68% of Republicans believe the U.S. has the best health system in the world, compared to only three in 10 Democrats. Ironically, those findings come just as new studies show a growing "income gap" in Americans' life expectancy and the painful impact of rising health care costs on Americans' stagnant wages. Most ironic, the failure of the health care system is at its worst in precisely those states that voted for George W. Bush.

The survey from the Harvard School of Public Health showed sharp partisan cleavages in perceptions of the U.S. health care system. While 45% of Americans claim the U.S. has the best health care in the world, only 32% of Democrats and 40% of independents compared to 7 in 10 Republicans believe that is the case. (39% of all respondents believe other nations provide superior health care, 15% didn't know or didn't answer.)

Unsurprisingly, Americans of all political persuasions made these claims despite knowing little to nothing about the systems in other nations. Large percentages answered that they didn't know how the United States compared to France (53%), the UK (40%) or even Canada (26%).

The division between Democrats and Republicans is just as pronounced when it comes to both what is ailing the American health care system and what to do about it. Followers of the GOP seemed to believe that access to medical care is not a problem for Americans. "Four-in-ten (40%) Republicans believe the U.S health care system is better than other countries when it comes to making sure everyone can get affordable health care, compared to just one-in-five Democrats (19%) and Independents (22%) who share that belief." Predictably, 56% of Democrats and 37% of independents say they would support a presidential candidate wanting to make the U.S. system more like those in Canada, France and Great Britain.

Which is a tragedy for Red State America. While the GOP's country club class no doubt suffers little from or knows even less about the chronic failure of the American health care system (George W. Bush dominated the 2004 vote among every income group earning over $100,000 annually), the Republican base has it the worst.

That health care is just another major red state failure is the inescapable conclusion of a 2007 analysis by the Commonwealth Fund. As it turns out, Americans' health care varies dramatically from state to state. It should come as no surprise that in general Southern states ranked at the bottom in almost every category.

The Commonwealth Fund report, "Aiming Higher: Results from a State Scorecard on Health System Performance," examined states' performance across 32 indicators of health care access, quality, outcomes and hospital use. Topping the list were Hawaii, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Bringing up the rear were the Bush bastions of Kentucky, Louisiana, Nevada, Arkansas, Texas, with Mississippi and Oklahoma. The 10 worst performing states were all solidly Republican in 2004.

The extremes in health care performance are startling. For example, 30% of adults and 20% of children in Texas lacked health insurance, compared to 11% in Minnesota and 5% in Vermont, respectively. Premature death rates from preventable conditions were almost double (141.7 per 100,000 people) in Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi compared to the top performing states (74.1 per 100,000). Adults over 50 receiving preventative care topped 50% in Minnesota compared to only 33% in Idaho. Childhood immunizations reached 94% in Massachusetts, compared to just 75% in the bottom five states. As the report details, federal and state policies, such as insurance requirements and Medicaid incentives, clearly impact health care outcomes.

Sadly, conditions have only deteriorated further since the Commonwealth Fund study was published. In November 2007, research from the Economic Policy Institute showed that employer-provided health care in the United States has dropped sharply, with workplace insurance covering only 59.7% of Americans now, compared to 64.2% in 2000. As the New York Times reported this morning, premiums for family health insurance have surged 78% since 2001 to over $12,000 a year. That cost explosion comes even as Americans' salaries and wages have barely moved: "inflation-adjusted median family income has dipped 2.6 percent -- or nearly $1,000 annually since 2000." It should come as no surprise that the wealthiest Americans now live 4.5 years longer than the least-well off, a startling jump from just a 2.8 year gap reported in 1982.

Despite their own worsening circumstances, followers of the GOP seem blissfully unaware - or unconcerned - about an American health care system on the brink of breakdown. Perhaps, as Jonathan Chait and Thomas Frank among others suggest, social and national security issues real or imagined trump economic self-interest for working Republicans. In 2008, they risk once again enabling the agenda of their country club cousins. After all, it's impossible to cure the disease that is weakening the American health care system without first acknowledging there is have a problem.

(For more background, see "Health Care the Latest Red State Failure.")

But you'd never know from the reporting of McCain's excellent European adventure. Time described a "love-fest" with Sarkozy and McCain's "mix of quips, conviction, and clear interest in international affairs" that journalists "largely impressed."

It was, however, John McCain himself who hinted at his true feelings regarding his French hosts. In essence, McCain implied, relations with the United States would improve solely due to the deference to the U.S. properly restored by President Sarkozy:

"I think relations with France will continue to improve no matter who is president of the United States because this president is committed to greater cooperation and values our friendship."

That is a revealing comment indeed coming from John McCain. After all, McCain's bitter words toward France regarding the U.S. invasion of Iraq showed the last thing he valued was friendship with Paris.

As President Bush prepared to pull the trigger on the Iraq war in February 2003, John McCain was at the forefront of those browbeating the Chirac government for France's refusal to back the U.S. at the United Nations. On February 11, 2003, McCain co-sponsored a Senate resolution praising 18 European nations backing U.S. enforcement of UN demands for Saddam's disarmament. In his press release, McCain echoed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in thundering at the France and Germany of "old Europe:"

"The majority of Europe's democracies have spoken, and their message could not be clearer: France and Germany do not speak for Europe...most European governments behave like allies that are willing to meet their responsibilities to uphold international peace and security in defense of our common values. We thank this European majority for standing with us."

McCain's venom towards the French was on full display two days later during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. On February 13, 2003, McCain warned of "new threats to civilization [which] again defy our imagination in scale and potency" portrayed Iraq as "threat of the first order." He proclaimed that "the United States does not have reliable allies to implement a policy to contain Iraq" and pointed the finger squarely at France:

"Compare our great power allies in the Cold War with those with whom we act today in dealing with Iraq.

France has unashamedly pursued a concerted policy to dismantle the UN sanctions regime, placing its commercial interests above international law, world peace and the political ideals of Western civilization. Remember them? Liberte, egalite, fraternite."

Just days later on February 18, 2003, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline program showed a furious McCain foaming at the mouth over France:

Here's how influential Senator John McCain sees the French.

JOHN MCCAIN, REPUBLICAN SENATOR: They remind me of an aging movie actress in the 1940s who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it.

NORMAN HERMANT: Many in Washington are now saying relations with France have been a problem going all the way back to the end of World War II.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Perhaps Churchill and Roosevelt made a very serious mistake when they decided to give France a veto in the Security Council when the United Nations was organized.

McCain's feud with the French continued even after the start of hostilities and President Bush's May 1 declaration of "mission accomplished" in Iraq. But in a cynical July 2003 keynote address to the Atlantic Partnership (which promotes "the benefits of a strong and stable Atlantic community of nations"), Senator McCain acted as if he had never uttered his seething words of condemnation. Even in papering over the schism he helped foster, McCain couldn't resist taking a potshot at France:

"France and Germany shared the goals of our campaign to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime. We obviously disagreed over the means. Now that we have achieved our common objective of ending the threat posed by Saddam's Iraq, it's time to stop quarreling over the way we did so and move on. European nations that opposed the war must resist the tendency to say "I told you so," sit on the sidelines as the United States and our partners attempt to transform Iraq, and hope we find ourselves in a sandy quagmire that, in the eyes of some war opponents, would give us our just due...

...The United States must resist the tendency to punish our friends who did not support how we went to war, because things could have turned out differently. By the admission of Germany's leading opposition figures, who lost a close election to the current chancellor's coalition, a government in Berlin led by them would have stood with the United States in the diplomatic campaign preceding the war. France would have been isolated in its opposition, unable to claim to speak for Europe."

But that was five years ago. The United States, humbled by its humiliating fiasco in Iraq, is in no position to say "I told you so" to anyone. French President Chirac, a persistent thorn in the side of the Bush administration, is gone, replaced by the more complaint conservative cheerleader in Paris, Nicolas Sarkozy. And most importantly, John McCain is now running for the White House and needing to project a presidential image during his European tour. Which means it's time for John McCain to reverse course yet again and discover his "friendship" with France.

(Note: While the U.S. media has ignored John McCain's past frying of the French, thanks to the Campaign for America's Future, Americans are learning more about McCain's instrumental role in inadvertently helping France's Airbus win the $40 billion tanker deal at the expense of U.S.-based Boeing.)

UPDATE: ThinkProgress provides more examples of John McCain's past venting towards the French.

That, at least is the message from Delay's former spokesman, Jonathan Grella:

"I think it's going to be a slow but successful path toward the top again, but in a different venue. To expect or hope that he's disappeared or somehow dispirited is to misunderstand the man. He's the last person in Washington anyone would bet against."

To be sure, Delay has a lot of pans in the conservative fire, if not in Congress. He has returned as a frequent guest commentator and analyst on Fox and MSNBC. (No friend of John McCain and his campaign finance reforms, Delay said only "we'll see" when asked if he would vote for the Arizona Senator come November.)

Last year, Delay authored his own bilious right-wing screed, No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight. With former Ohio secretary of state Ken Blackwell, he launched the Coalition for a Conservative Majority as a counterweight to the progressive MoveOn.org. Unsurprisingly, the organization is housed in the same Capitol Hill building as his consulting business, Delay's First Principles.

Delay's one-time conservative allies are optimistic about his chances for a return to right-wing glory (provided, of course, he doesn't go to jail first.) Former Christian Coalition poster child and Jack Abramoff crony Ralph Reed said simply, "Tom gets it like few others do." And Americans for Tax Reform president and conservative ubermensche Grover Norquist said Delay "has the name ID and the trust to help make this work."

By "this," Norquist could very well be speaking of Tom Delay's resurrection from the political dead. But for a man who once compared himself to Jesus ("People hate the messenger. That's why they killed Christ") and said on the day of his booking in 2006, "let people see Christ through me," Tom Delay apparently has no doubt that he, too, will be risen.

For more Easter reflections on Tom Delay, visit here and here.

While all eyes this week focused on Barack Obama the repercussions of the Jeremiah Wright imbrolglio, conflicting stories about the two sides of Hillary Clinton seemed to get lost in the noise. On Saturday, the AP offered a positive assessment of Clinton's record of hard work in the Senate. But new revelations regarding her histories on NAFTA and Bosnia suggest Hillary may be telling some tall tales. And by seemingly exaggerating her role during her days as First Lady, Hillary Clinton may be exhibiting symptoms of Giuliani Syndrome.

Back in August, then GOP frontrunner Rudy Giuliani ran into trouble with a revisionist history that put him at the center of the American fight against terrorism spanning a generation. Just days after the Village Voice thoroughly refuted Giuliani's claims about his supposedly central role prosecuting the 1985 murder case of Leon Klinghoffer by PLO terrorists aboard the cruise ship Achille Lauro, the former New York mayor favorably compared himself to World Trade Center rescue workers on and after 9/11:

"I was at ground zero as often, if not more, than most of the workers...I was there working with them. I was exposed to exactly the same things they were exposed to. So in that sense, I'm one of them."

Now, it would appear, Hillary Clinton may be suffering from a less serious case of the ailment that befell self-proclaimed terror fighter extraordinaire, Rudy Giuliani.

On Friday, the Washington Post offered a devastating assessment of Hillary Clinton's claim of courage under fire during her 1996 visit to Bosnia. On March 17, Senator Clinton told an audience at George Washington University:

"I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

As it turns out, not so much. Despite her past claims that she was sent to places "too dangerous" for her husband, President Clinton, Hillary's excellent Balkan adventure was not as perilous as she advertised.

Post reporter Michael Dobbs, who traveled to Bosnia during that same time period, said "I can attest that the physical risks were minimal during this period, particularly at a heavily fortified U.S. Air Force base, such as Tuzla." Others on Clinton's trip had no memories of sniper fire. General William Nash, then commander of U.S. troops in Bosnia, concurred. (As Dobbs later reported in an update, Nash noted that "while he was unaware of any 'sniper threat'...there was a 'non-specific report' of a possible truck bomb in the area.")

The release of papers from Hillary Clinton's days in the White House is also prompting a reexamination of her retelling of another key episode, the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). In the run-up to her critical primary win in Ohio, Clinton announced she had been against NAFTA, a position essential to her win there.

The reality, it seems, is more complex than that. According to the Huffington Post, former Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor noted "Hillary Clinton long held reservations over the labor and environmental fallouts of the free trade agreement." But then-Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich concluded:

"The answer is HRC didn't want the Administration to move forward with NAFTA, but not because she was opposed to NAFTA as a policy. She opposed NAFTA because of its timing. She wanted her health-care plan to be voted on first."

Bill Clinton's one-time aide David Gergen provided Hillary with some support, noting:

"I'm not sure she objected to all the provisions of it but she just didn't see why her husband and that White House had to go and do that fight. She was very unhappy about it and wanted to move on to health care. So I do think there's some justification for her camp saying, you know, she's never been a great backer for NAFTA."

But the Clinton White House papers don't seem to square with Senator Clinton's assertion that she had "long been a critic of the shortcomings of NAFTA." As First Lady, she attended five meetings related to NAFTA. But while Clinton spokesman Jay Carson stated, "In four of the five meetings Senator Clinton was pushing back," some of the attendees paint a different picture. ABC's Jake Tapper interviewed three former administration officials and concluded the Hillary "opposed the idea of introducing NAFTA before health care, but expressed no reservations in public or private about the substance of NAFTA."

Laura Jones, executive director of the United States Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel, attended a November 10, 1993 session on NAFTA. She rejected the notion that Hillary Clinton voiced opposition to the trade bill:

"That's ludicrous. There was no question that everyone who spoke including the First Lady was for NAFTA, it was a rally on behalf of NAFTA to help it get passed. It's unquestionable. And there are many people out there who were there who remember the incident who work in this industry."

In her defense, while Hillary Clinton may be prone to exaggeration and hyperbole, hers is not Rudy Giuliani's gift for fiction. If Clinton were indeed suffering from a full-blown outbreak of Giuliani Syndrome, her claims would far more outrageous and demonstrably false. Hillary did not, after all, claim she helped wounded Army Rangers in Mogadishu in 1993. She did not assert that she donned a burka and lived among the Taliban in order to provide coordinates for missile strikes against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan in 1998.

Still, Hillary Clinton has made herself vulnerable to new charges from the Obama campaign and the media alike that she is "not trustworthy." And that's too bad, given the positive consensus over her work for New Yorkers in the Senate. Even former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, an Obama supporter, praised her tenure in Congress:

"She surprised people. There was a lot of skepticism among many of her colleagues about the degree to which she would be a team player...She was sensitive to that concern and tried to address it."

Unfortunately, the simmering controversies over her apparent revisionist histories on NAFTA and Bosnia will continue to produce comparisons between Hillary Clinton and another New Yorker, Rudy Giuliani.

In the wake of the near-meltdown of the American financial system this week, economists are finally pointing the finger of blame at Alan Greenspan. As the Washington Post details, the former Fed Chairman once lauded as the "Maestro" is now facing withering criticism for helpful fuel the twin crises of the housing market and the financial system. That can't come as good news for John McCain, who recently summed up his minimal knowledge of economics by noting, "I've got Greenspan's book."

As I noted on Tuesday, Benjamin Wallace-Wells in a stunningly prescient April 2004 article in the Washington Monthly argued that home prices were about to plummet and take the economy down with them. Over the previous five years, Americans had extracted almost $1.6 trillion in cash from refinancing and spent virtually all of it on consumer goods purchases. But as Wallace-Wells noted four years ago, "Greenspan has played enabler to this boom," and concluded:

"To get out of the recession, he had to rely on, stay mum about, and even encourage a housing bubble. Now, that very bubble may be the thing that destroys the recovery he has sought to create."

Now the Washington Post offers a devastating assessment of Greenspan's role in making possible both this week's near calamity on Wall Street and the implosion of the American housing market:

Many economists blame Greenspan for lax bank supervision and for keeping interest rates too low, too long from mid-2003 to mid-2004. That, the theory goes, fueled the housing bubble and spawned subprime and adjustable-rate mortgages for low-income people, vast numbers of whom can't make their payments now. Banks bought those mortgages in bundles that are worth far less than they originally were. That has led to big write-offs, shaking the entire financial system.

Harvard economics professor and former IMF chief economist Kenneth Rogoff, like Wallace-Wells, took Greenspan to task for not boosting interest rates during the critical 2003-2004 time frame. Greenspan instead chose to keep rates at record lows and even encouraged Americans to move to increasingly high-risk adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). Rogoff pointed out:

"If you cut interest rates when asset prices are in free fall, then when asset prices are rising while indebtedness is rising all over country, you need to raise rates. He actively chose not to do that."

Greenspan's former vice chairman at the Fed, Princeton professor Alan Blinder, deemed the delay in raising rates in 2003-04 a "minor blemish" on Greenspan's "stellar" record of managing monetary policy. But Blinder gave Greenspan "poor marks" for his supervision of the banking system:

Blinder said that Greenspan "brushed off" warnings -- most notably from fellow Fed governor Ned Gramlich -- about mortgage abuses and dangers.

"Lending standards were being horribly relaxed, and the Fed should have done something about that, not to mention about deceptive and in some cases fraudulent practices," Blinder said. "This was a corner of the credit markets that was allowed to go crazy. It was populated by a lot of people with minimal financial literacy who were being sold bills of goods by mortgage salesmen."

Greenspan's colleague Gramlich, who passed away last fall, offered a brutally frank assessment of the Fed's watchdog role under Greenspan in August. There was "a giant hole in the supervisory safety net…It is like a city with a murder law but no cops on the beat."

For his part, Greenspan remains unrepentant. Adopting the same blissfully unconcerned tone he displayed in his now notorious Financial Times piece on Sunday, Greenspan was quick to defend himself:

"Those who argue that you can incrementally increase interest rates to defuse bubbles ought to try it some time"...

...Regarding the current turmoil, Greenspan said that a market crisis was inevitable. "If it weren't the subprime crisis it would have been something else," he said.

Greenspan was especially aggressive in deflecting charges that in early 2004 he encouraged the perilous move to adjustable rate mortgages by American homeowners:

Greenspan said yesterday that he tried to correct those comments on March 2, 2004, less than a month later, in a New York speech praising 30-year fixed mortgages. "If I am guilty of encouraging people to take out adjustable-rate mortgages, I am guilty for 30 days," he said.

History, of course, will judge Greenspan's culpability in the current crises gripping the American economy. But while John McCain crows about reading Greenspan's tome, many leading economist want to throw the book at him.

What a difference a week makes, especially when it comes to the rollercoaster American economy. No where is the impact of looming recession and the near-meltdown on Wall Street clearer than on the White House web site. Just days ago, the site boasted about President Bush's glorious stewardship of the U.S. economy. Now, the White House's economy web page reflects the mad scramble to ward off the twin crises of the housing market and the financial system.

The usual fuzzy math was there as well, cynically designed as always to sell making President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy permanent:

"The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts are set to expire in less than three years. If Congress allows that to happen, 116 million taxpayers will see their taxes go up by $1,800 on average."

Some signs of the downturn were already present as well. Bush's disastrous appearance last week before the Economic Club of New York was front and center. And a run down of the steps being taken to confront the imploding housing market were highlighted as well.

But four days later, the main White House economy web page has gotten an emergency face-lift. The eye-catching animation crowing about Bush leading the economy forward is gone. After the U.S. shed 63,000 jobs in February and new jobless claims this week jumped by 22,000, the text about past job creation became history. And even the verbiage about making the tax cuts permanent has been deleted. And just days after the Federal Reserve intervened with its massive Bear Stearns bailout to halt the building Wall Street panic, the White House web site proclaims:

"The President remains deeply concerned about the housing issue and strongly believes that any government policies must be responsible. Government actions often have far-reaching and unintended consequences. Any time the government intervenes in the market, it must do so with clear purpose and great care."

Of course, this isn't the only recent revision to President Bush's online record on the economy and the budget. On its FY 2007 budget page, the White House crowed about its $163 billion in red ink supposedly meeting President Bush's bogus 2004 promise to halve the federal budget deficit:

"The deficit has been cut in half three years ahead of the President's 2009 goal. Historic revenue growth and a continued commitment to spending restraint contributed to this reduction."

But with Bush's FY 2009 budget projected to produce a deficit nearing $400 billion, that proud talk too has vanished.

Ignoring the February job losses announced the previous week, President Bush in New York still insisted that that "after 52 consecutive months of job growth, which is a record, our economy obviously is going through a tough time." No longer operative, that claim is destined for the virtual cutting room floor, just like this White House classic from December 2005:

"Unemployment rates are below the averages of the 70's, 80's and 90's."

As ThinkProgress detailed this morning, McCain's confusion over friend and foe began at least as far back as February 28th. During an appearance at the Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, McCain warned:

"But Al Qaeda is there, they are functioning, they are supported in many times, in many ways by the Iranians."

McCain's troubles started in earnest during his much-hyped Middle East tour this week. Apparently lacking the playbill or even crib notes, McCain on Monday told right-wing radio host Hugh Hewitt:

"As you know, there are al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran, given training as leaders, and they're moving back into Iraq."

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate." A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

Finding itself in a hole, the McCain campaign decided to keep digging. On Wednesday, McCain's team issued a written statement perpetuating its error:

"Al Qaeda and Shia extremists -- with support from external powers such as Iran -- are on the run but not defeated."

Seeing the distress of its man McCain, a candidate whose entire claim to the White Houe is premised on his supposed national security credentials, the right-wing amen corner rushed to his defense. The Weekly Standard and Powerline fought a rear-guard action, citing incidents of "cooperation" pre-dating the 9/11 attacks to justify McCain's repeated claims of Tehran's backing for Al Qaeda in Iraq. By Thursday, the McCain campaign itself was echoing their claims:

But while the McCain campaign is backing away from the specific claims about Iranian training of Al Qaeda, it is asserting that Iran collaborates with Osama bin Laden's organization.

Mr. McCain's national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, told The New York Sun, "There is ample documentation that Iran has provided many different forms of support to Sunni extremists, including Al Qaeda as well as Shi'ia extremists in Iraq. It would require a willing suspension of disbelief to deny Iran supports Al Qaeda in Iraq."

Scheunemann might have wanted to check with the candidate before making that statement. During an interview Wednesday, John McCain told NBC's Kelly O'Donnell he simply misspoke:

"I don't claim that I won't misspeak on occasion, but I will correct it immediately."

"To think that I would have some lack of knowledge about Sunni and Shia after my eighth visit and my deep involvement in this issue is a bit ludicrous."

Given McCain's repeated demonstrations that he doesn't know his ass from his elbow about the players in Iraq without a scorecard, the concerns are far from ludicrous. All of which raises the question: why is John McCain getting Al Qaeda-Iran alliance wrong?

I'll offer three theories, each as disturbing as the next. The first is simple ignorance: McCain simply can't track all the moving pieces in the sectarian conflict in Iraq. Second is that this foot soldier in the Reagan revolution is displaying some of the same creeping cognitive shortfalls as the Gipper himself. But just as likely is that the statements are intentional. McCain, like President Bush and the supposed leading lights of the Republican Party, is pursuing the rhetorical strategy of conflation. That is, McCain like his possible running mate Mitt Romney is fear mongering by hyping an "Islamofascism" which conflates all Muslims - Sunni and Shiite, friend and foe, guilty and innocent, and especially Tehran - into a single unified threat.

In that same interview Wednesday, McCain himself offered support for all three theories.

"Al Qaeda is military. Al Qaeda is killing Americans as we speak. Islamic extremists are being trained in Iran and they are being sent back into Iran, I mean into Iraq."

No doubt, John McCain's endless errors would get him kicked off "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." But judging by recent polls, his mistake filled, five-year record on Iraq has not yet led the Americanpeople - and certainly not the American press - to conclude John McCain is unfit for command.

Over the course of its five-year fiasco in Iraq, the Bush administration in vain has tried to sell this conflict by referencing glorious American wars past. Its revisionist history has included failed parallels to the American Revolution, World War II, Korea, the Cold War and even Vietnam. Today,