The US is like an incoherent drunk ….

I think Iraq will prove to be the source of its destruction. It has lost its capacity to reason; its capacity for insight. It’s ruled by fakes & phoneys on all sides of politics, with the corporate-controlled media acting as willing accomplices.

On Monday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) told radio host Bill Bennett that President Bush’s escalation is working. “There are neighbourhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today,” he said.

Yesterday, when CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked McCain why Americans still aren’t able to safely leave the Green Zone in Iraq, the senator replied that Blitzer was giving three-month-old talking points: "General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in an unarmed humvee," McCain said. "I think you oughta catch up. You are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. We certainly don’t get it through the filter of some of the media."

But according to CNN reporter Michael Ware, who has been in Iraq for four years, McCain is “way off base.” He stated, “To suggest that there’s any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I’d love Sen. McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.” Ware also rebutted McCain’s assertion that Petraeus travels in an unarmed humvee: “[I]n the hour since Sen. McCain’s said this, I’ve spoken to military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly the general travels in a humvee. There’s multiple humvees around it, heavily armed.”

And then, late yesterday, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey released a report based on a recent trip to Iraq that included meetings with Gen. David Petraeus and 16 other senior U.S. commanders. McCaffrey - who previously served in Vietnam and commanded a division in the first Iraq war - described the situation in Iraq as a "low grade civil war" that has "worsened to catastrophic levels."

Contradicting statements made by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) yesterday, McCaffrey found that "no Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, report, foreign NGO, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi, without heavily armed protection."

The report, which was presented to White House officials late yesterday, stands in "sharp contrast" to his previous assessments which include a statement after a trip just last year calling the "progress" in Iraq "very encouraging." As the Washington Post reports, McCaffrey found his "bottom line" in this most recent report to be that "the U.S. military is in 'strategic peril.'" The retired general, who is opposed the President's continuing escalation plan, called the insurgent militias "'in some ways more capable of independent operations' than the Iraqi army."

In concluding the report, he said the "vocal opposition" of Congress could "actually provide a helpful framework" for the U.S. government to help the Maliki administration "understand their diminishing options." But he added that "we have very little time left."