With the Iraqis now calling for U.S. troops to leave, the Bush-McCain war effort is falling apart.

Even though both Bush and McCain said in the past that we would leave if the Iraqis want us to, they are now furiously trying to find a way out of this political mess.

There is a rather large elephant standing in the room here. So many people believe that Bush-McCain want to stay in Iraq because of oil. That might be partially true, but there is something even bigger at work here.

If America leaves, Iran will likely move in. Bush-McCain do not want to admit that the government they helped install in Iraq, selected by the Shia majority that they helped free from Sunni domination, is closely allied with Iran. If America pulls out, the Iranians would be happy to help their Iraqi friends keep the peace, and protect the Shia government.

If Iran moves in, then the defeat will be evident to everyone. Even if violence drops to nothing, to the point where even McCain couldn't make the case for staying, it benefits Iran far more than us.

The same official who tried to walk back PM Maliki's endorsement of Obama's Iraq pullout plan now says that the government wants U.S. troops out by 2010.

That should put an end to the Bush/McCain spin that Maliki's comments were "misquoted." We now have it on record several times that the Iraqis want us to go home, soon, which matches Obama's plan.

John McCain will have to go find someplace else to fight his 100 years war.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's comments in support of Barack Obama's 16-month withdrawal timetable are bouncing around the net like a superball.

In addition to the previous quotes, try these on for size:

"Whoever is thinking about the shorter term is closer to reality. Artificially extending the stay of U.S. troops would cause problems."

And:

"The Americans have found it difficult to agree on a concrete timetable for the exit because it seems like an admission of defeat to them. But it isn't," Maliki told Der Spiegel.

Where does this leave McCain? How can he attack Obama's plan if the Iraqi PM (and a majority of the parliament, and the population in general) like his plan? The Iraqis don't want U.S. troops to stay for 100 years, 10 years, or even two years.

Does this take Iraq off the table for McCain? And if it does, what does he have left to campaign on?

CBS' Lara Logan is one of the rare TV journalists who tries to dig into what is really happening in Iraq. She has been in Iraq and Afghanistan nearly full time for the last five years, and she talks very bluntly about the war and about American media's failure to cover it.

Watch this video and you will see what I mean.

Lost in all the coverage of the Clinton-Obama slugfest is that the Iraqi people aren't too happy about their government agreeing to a permanent American military presence. The radical cleric Al-Sadr is scoring big points by saying the agreement should be put up for a vote, which of course he knows a vast majority of Iraqis want the Americans to go home.

And that's the real crux of this conflict. If this was a war to spread democracy, and the Iraqi people want us to leave, why are we still there?

Here is a story that should be getting a lot more play, but doesn't because it makes the major news outlets look bad. It explains how the Pentagon controlled many of those military analysts who appear on TV, getting them to give a Bush-friendly view of the war, while hiding the fact that they were carrying water for the administration.

I haven't followed the story that much. What really gets me is the almost complete silence about this program on TV. Not even Keith Olbermann wants to take it on. So much for that liberal media mantra. Check out Glenn Greenwald's report, that shows, in the Pentagon's own words, how it controlled the news, and did so illegally.

Greenwald quotes from a Pentagon memo, and the words are damming. These military officials knew exactly what they were doing. If this story does anything, it should convince the networks to fully disclose the ties their talking heads have to the subjects they are reporting on.

John McCain is going to really, really wish he hadn't said he was OK with American troops staying in Iraq for 100 years. Actually, he's said it more than once, and even said 1,000 years, and 10,000 years.

And surprise, surprise, the Democrats have finally learned a few GOP tricks, and they are now using the 100 years remark over and over and over.

Republicans aren't too happy about this, and they are pushing back. They realize that this one remark could very well define McCain for this election.

Now, to cut McCain a little slack, he qualifies his 100 year statement by saying only if Americans aren't getting killed or wounded. That begs the question, how long does he think we should put up with Americans getting killed before we pull the plug?

I want to see someone ask McCain this question. Until then, that 100 year tag is going to stick.

With the price of oil triple what it was before the invasion the war, the Iraqi government is now sitting on a nice surplus of money, what hasn't be siphoned off by the insurgents or stolen by corrupt ministers. Now we have calls for Iraq to pay us to stay:

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-California, proposed the Iraqi government pay the cost of stationing U.S. troops in its country under any future agreement between Washington and Baghdad -- and said he would introduce legislation to require that.

"The United States government and the people of the United States have paid an awful price," Rohrabacher said. "It's time for the Iraqis to pay that price for their own protection."

I think Rep. Rohrabacher has a great idea. Tell the Iraqis if they don't pay up, we're leaving. I wonder what would happen if (or rather when) they refuse to pay us for creating such a disaster. Maybe this is a great way to finally get the GOP to end this war.

It's statements like this that make me wonder what's in the water supply in Washington that makes peopple so stupid:

Before testimony began, a senior official said Petraeus would likely stick to his guns and maintain that troops reductions should be dictated not by politics, but conditions on the ground.

They still have not figured out that the problem in Iraq is entirely political, that it can't be solved militarily. Before the surge, we had basically one civil war between Sunnis and Shiites, and the insurgency against the American presence. That battle has cooled down as mass areas of Iraq have been cleansed of one sect or the other, and Sunni leaders were bought off to turn against al Qaeda fighters.

Now we have a second civil war between Shiite groups battling for control of the country. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki went on the attack against Muqtada al-Sadr's forces ahead of the elections they had just agreed to hold later this year. It was a bold political move to eliminate his main rival, and it backfired. Now this fighting threatens to engulf the entire country.

What Bush & Co. don't seem to understand (or just ignore) is the role American troops are playing in the escalation of this civil war. Maliki could not have moved against Sadr without the backing of American troops. It was American military power that kept Maliki's army from being defeated outright.

It was bad enough that we had taken sides in the Sunni-Shiite civil war. Now we have sided with just one part of the Shiite majority against another. Oh, by the way, the side we are sided with is the one who is allied with Iran.

This is a political war. Try to impose a military solution, and Iraq will make 1980s Beirut look peaceful. Our presence there impedes the political process that must be made to bring peace to the country. America can't be the peacemaker her. We are an active and biased participant in this fight.

George W. Bush last week was praising the Iraqi government's crackdown on anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's militias that control large swaths of Southern Iraq and Baghdad. The Iraqi army, with a lot of help from American and British air and ground forces, tried to take out Sadr's forces, and Sadr won.

Not only did Sadr basically hold on to all of that territory, he has basically destroyed Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's credibility, and brought the Iranians in to help broker the peace.

Tell me how this is good for American interests?