I haven’t really talked too much about Iraq beyond “well it’s a mess” and “people are arguing.” So let’s remind ourselves that there is actually a crisis going on within the Iraqi borders. Recently, a suicide bomber (not a “homicide bomber”) detonated himself in a market and killed 135 people, marking one of the deadliest single incidents since the war itself.

The Health Ministry said more than 300 people were injured in the thunderous explosion that sent a huge column of smoke into the Baghdad sky on the east bank of the Tigris River. The nearby al-Kindi hospital — quickly overwhelmed — began turning away the wounded and directing ambulances to hospitals in Sadr City.

I think at this point we should take a gander at the latest National Intelligence Estimate report. I’m not going to quote too much of it here, but needless to say it’s not good. At the time when Bush is trying to rally support behind his “surge” plan, the NIE is suggesting things are extremely brittle at best and something like this doesn’t help.

If Bush wants a surge, send in a real surge. Put in another 100,000 troops, put the country on lockdown, quit cutting taxes and take this thing goddamn seriously. If he’s not going to do that, form a plan to get the hell out and start that pronto.

He doesn’t want to buckle down and get anything done, he doesn’t want to start a pullout. A casual observer might think he just doesn’t want the war to end at all, no matter which way it happens to do so.

At this point repeatedly point out that the “Straight-Talk Express” is more like the Double-Talk goes without saying, but I’ll say it again anyway. Today’s example comes in the form of McCain hiring all of the people he previously lambasted for the negative ads they made. Forgive me a long quoted passage.

In 2000, Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, said the advertisements run against him by George W. Bush, then the governor of Texas, distorted his record. But he has hired three members of the team that made those commercials — Mark McKinnon, Russell Schriefer and Stuart Stevens — to work on his presidential campaign.

In 2004, Mr. McCain said the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement asserting that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had not properly earned his medals from the Vietnam War was “dishonest and dishonorable.” Nonetheless, he has hired the firm that made the spots, Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, which worked on his 2000 campaign, to work for him again this year.

In October, Mr. McCain’s top adviser expressed public displeasure with an advertisement against former Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., Democrat of Tennessee, that some saw as having racist overtones for suggesting a flirtation between Mr. Ford, who is black, and a young, bare-shouldered white woman, played by a blond actress.

The Republican committee that sponsored the spot had as its leader Terry Nelson, a former Bush campaign strategist whom Mr. McCain hired as an adviser last spring. In December, just weeks after the Ford controversy broke, Mr. McCain elevated Mr. Nelson to the position of national campaign manager.

John McCain, you are a fraud and you have no integrity. You have sold your soul for political purposes and still carry on the charade that you’re a maverick. The fact that anyone believes your BS is probably the most depressing part.