Spin Cycle

The progress of the surge and Maliki's support for Obama's time frame for withdrawal have moved the two presidential campaigns into heavy spin mode.

On the most obvious level, McCain -- who supported the surge -- argues that it has worked enough to make him right, but not enough to allow a withdrawal, which would make him wrong. Obama, who opposed it because he said it wouldn't produce long-term political stability, now says it has worked enough to make him right about withdrawal, but not enough to make him wrong for opposing it.

Beyond that, they're also skirmishing over the relative importance of the surge. McCain describes it as pretty much the central element in improved conditions in Iraq, meaning that Obama totally missed the boat. Obama says he was right about the surge alone not being enough to help, but he didn't anticipate the beneficial effects of the Sunni awakening in Anbar that put Al Qaida on its heels, and al Sadr standing down his militia.

This chronology compiled over at the Washington Monthly is a useful way to reconnect with reality:

February 2006: Muqtada al-Sadr orders an end to execution-style killings by Mahdi Army death squads.

August 2006: Sadr announces a broad ceasefire, which he has maintained ever since.

September 2006: The Sunni Awakening begins. Tribal leaders, first in Anbar and later in other provinces, start fighting back against al-Qaeda insurgents.

March 2007: The surge begins.

In other words: The surge was not, as McCain would suggest, the foundation on which everything else was built -- it was the last piece, not the first, and there were already signs of political movement that a threat to leave, which Obama favored, might have pushed forward.

But, developments with Sadr and Anbar were not -- as Obama tries to suggest -- out-of-leftfield developments that no one could have anticipated. They had already happened!! If he's such a smart leader, he would have taken them into account when considering the surge, and seen how the surge could provide crucial tipping weight for changes already in progress.

Mental exercise:

If Iraq starts to go south again in September, how will each candidate re-re-revise his spin?