War is their reaction to shame.

Wait a minute, didn't the NYT endorse McCain?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25fri2.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I particularly liked the story (on Drudge, I think) that he "begged" the NYT not to publish the story. How presidential. . . .

So McCain's a vile, shameless hypocrite who whores himself out to the highest bidder; he is a US Senator, isn't he?

well, smoke em out.

You do realize that McCain believes the War in Iraq is a huge success now?

Heh. Clinton is boycotting/whatever MSNBC, and now McCain's at "war" with the NYT. Meanwhile, Obama is gently ignoring all media and they're in love with him. (And even the "proud of my country" thing hasn't fazed him...)

I don't think Obama's strategy will work all the way through November, but getting outraged at major papers in February sure isn't helping the other candidates.

Fnarf @ 6,

Didn't you hear? The Surge® worked. They said so on the cover of Pravda/TIME magazine last week.

Jim @2: that was my first thought too. He's "going to war" with the paper that endorsed him. The NYT obviously doesn't have a mission to destroy him or they wouldn't have endorsed him.

What's strange is the right-wing reaction - they're furious at the NYT for publishing this after McCain has basically secured the nomination, accusing the paper of waiting till now so as to destroy the GOP's chances. If anything, there is the appearance of deliberately waiting in order to help the candidate they endorsed. They've been sitting on this since December but waited till now because of McCain and his camp pleading with the paper to spike it. It doesn't reflect well on the paper, for the reason that they seem to be helping McCain secure the nomination all along.

Apparently TNR will have a piece up today detailing the back-and-forth at the Times on this matter. The word is that TNR basically forced their hand on this.

Well, so much for the "Surge." From AP: "With deadly attacks against US targets increasing around Baghdad, anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr raised the possibility Wednesday that he may not renew a six-month cease-fire widely credited for helping slash violence."

Here's TNR's take.

It's not strange at all, Gabriel. The right wing HATES McCain; they would have WANTED his campaign destroyed early on rather than now. I assume that the story was fed to the Times by the right wing in the first place.

oh, goody!

I'm either hoping for a Mapp/Lucia type of war or a Bugs/Elmer confrontation. Both would be sublime!

How pissed is Mitt Romney this morning as he balances his checkbook, having spent $45 million of his own money and $56 million of donor's money on a campaign he would have won, had this story come out last month, when the NYT was sitting on this story?

"The surge is working" sounds like dirty pillow talk.

Fnarf, your point is a good one. I understand the dynamic at work there and I shouldn't have used the word "strange" to describe the right-wing reaction. More like disingenuous, but not surprising.

And the story certainly was fed by current and/or former McCain staffers, which has got to scare the hell out of McCain. And whoever fed the story to the NYT got sick of the Times dragging their feet and subsequently fed it to Drudge in December, anxious to get the news out before the primaries.

But .. how will he keep up his Hundred Years War then?

You can't fight two wars at the same time ... it's not like he'd keep us pinned down in Afghanistan and Iraq and Iran ... oh.

Snap.

In case you haven't heard before, I think he thinks he's going to war...