Obama: “A nuclear Iran would be a game-changing situation”; Flashback: Obama on “tiny” Iran’s non-serious threat

Wes Clark on the surge: It was a Saudi payoff that worked

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But when he was confronted this week by ABC News' Terry Moran with the success of the surge, asking if he would have supported it knowing what he knows now, Obama's answer was "no."

Along with his refusal to admit the mistake came something else: an endless stream of double talk obviously designed to distract from our military's successes in Iraq. Obama spoke of "a combination of political factors inside of Iraq that then came right at the same time as terrific work by our troops." He added that "it wasn't any doubt that you have an additional 20,000 troops, and where they are right there, it is going to have an impact."

So after insisting the surge "will do the reverse" of quelling "sectarian violence," Obama now claims what he really said was that it would "have an impact" — meaning a positive impact.

As craftily worded as this may be, it's simply a lie. Moreover, the "political factors" Obama refers to — the Anbar Awakening in which Sunni chiefs turned against al-Qaida — were, in fact, primarily engineered by the U.S. military's dealings with those chiefs.

Obama's claim that "the Sunnis might have made the same decisions at that time" is no less than an insult to the U.S. commanders who worked so hard to convince the Iraqis it was in their interests.

No wonder the Obama campaign earlier this month removed the anti-surge statements from its Web site, and stopped listing the surge as part of "The Problem" in its section on Iraq.

Obama's "problem" turned out to be the solution, proving again how feeble his foreign policy judgment would be as commander-in-chief. His dishonesty about it disqualifies him all the more.

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But the prevailing gloomy consumer sentiment seems to be at odds with what's actually happening right now in the economy, at least as far as the data go.

John McCain's adviser, economist and former Sen. Phil Gramm, got canned for suggesting that the only recession we had was "mental."

Turns out, he's right.

The U.S. in the second quarter, while not booming, seems to be growing quite nicely, thank you. Not even close to recession.

A consensus estimate of economists by Bloomberg puts second-quarter GDP at about 2.2%. First Trust Advisors' Brian Wesbury, who is admittedly at the extreme end of the expectations spectrum, thinks GDP growth will be 3%.

Not only not a recession, but quite respectable.

In short, people may think we're in a recession, but we aren't.

The New York Times' refusal to publish John McCain's rebuttal to Barack Obama's Iraq op-ed may be the most glaring example of liberal media bias this journalist has ever seen. But true proof of widespread media bias requires one to follow an old journalism maxim: Follow the money.

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An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans .

Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans — a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.

Searches for other newsroom categories (reporters, correspondents, news editors, anchors, newspaper editors and publishers) produces 311 donors to Democrats to 30 donors to Republicans, a ratio of just over 10-to-1. In terms of money, $279,266 went to Dems, $20,709 to Republicans, a 14-to-1 ratio.

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This comes to mind as Russia's Izvestia newspaper this week quoted an unnamed senior Russian air force official as saying his country is considering flying its TU-160 supersonic bombers to Cuba on a regular basis in response to our deployment of missile defense radars and interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Last February, two Russian Tupolev-95 bombers buzzed the U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Nimitz and its guided missile cruiser Princeton at an altitude of 2,000 feet.

As part of that exercise, another TU-95 flew over the rocky Japanese island of Sofugan for three minutes. The Japanese are full participants in U.S. missile defense plans, having acquired American Aegis destroyers as well as the latest Patriot anti-missile batteries.

This year a fleet of Russian warships, supported by jet fighters and long-range bombers, held the largest naval exercise in the North Atlantic since the end of the Cold War. The exercise in the Bay of Biscay, off the French and Spanish Atlantic coasts, included two long-range supersonic Tu-160 Blackjack bombers that test-fired nuclear capable cruise missiles.

Would a President Obama call the Russians' bluff or trade U.S. missile defense in Europe for a promise to not fly Russian bombers out of Cuba? It's 3 a.m., Barack, and the phone is ringing.

Scarborough: Certain unnamed people knocking McCain for his Anbar comments don’t know what they’re talking about

Scarborough vs. Olbermann  

Game on:

Cable networks MSNBC and CNN have aired segments discussing McCain's "misstep" today, while Joe Scarborough talked about the media angle of the story this morning, and had some harsh words for his fellow MSNBC host...

"I know a couple of hosts ran this last night, made a huge deal because a liberal blogger picked it up. I will guarantee the host that ran it, waving their arms had no idea whether the Sunni Awakening or the surge began at the same time," Scarborough said.

"Anybody that would argue that the Sunni awakening would have survived in Al Anbar Province without the surge, anybody that would make that argument, is so ignorant of the facts on the ground in western Iraq, in Al Anbar Province and what the Sunni Sheiks were doing throughout 2007, that they are too stupid to be on TV. So I hope they don't carry that argument much longer because it is laughable."

The Washington Post: "[B]y Mr. Obama's own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq's principal political leaders actually support his strategy."

Max Boot in the Washington Post: Behind Prime Minister Maliki's Games

Joe Klein melts down over McCain’s shot at Obama on Iraq

The predictable fake outrage over Maverick’s comment yesterday that Barry would rather win an election than win a war is duly summoned, setting up Ann Althouse for a righteous takedown on which I can’t improve. Takeaway: “[I]t’s a strong line. I can see why Klein and his ilk are trying to scare McCain out of using it.” Yeah, tsk-tsking people out of using effective talking points against Obama is a Klein specialty; revisit this clip from May, when he and Anderson Cooper decided it was outside the bounds of polite discourse to remind CNN viewers precisely what it was that Reverend Wright had been preaching from the pulpit at Trinity. Klein was also the guy, you may recall, who worked himself into a lather at the idea that Obama was ever willing to meet with Ahmadinejad, even though (a) that’s a perfectly fair assumption based on Ahmadinejad’s role within the Iranian regime, and (b) Obama himself once suggested as much at a press conference. If the rest of the media is chest-deep in the tank for Obama, Klein’s already fully submerged. No sense getting worked up over what he thinks any more than the average nutroots blogger.

Let me pick up on this line from his post, though, because it shouldn’t pass without comment:

The reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Nouri al-Maliki nor most anybody else believes that the Iraq war can be “lost” at this point.

Really? Tom Maguire knows someone who does. I know someone too: H.R. McMaster, the military’s resident counterinsurgent genius. From a May symposium at AEI:

In terms of the perishable conditions, I think it is related to the point I made in the beginning about the misperception. The war in Iraq doesn’t end if we leave prematurely. It gets worse. I think we’ve got a glimpse of that before. The key is answering the question how resilient is it? Can it be maintained? Have we sustained the effort and are stabilizing efforts in Iraq long enough so that that kind of confidence building from the top down reinforces the kind of bottom political accommodation that has occurred…

I would focus on not disengaging prematurely … before the kind of confidence has been built between Iraqis and their government, Iraqis and their own security forces.