McCain Smokes Crack

Long War: All of a sudden its gotten real hairy in the LW. In Thailand and Malaysia we have seen low level Islamic insurgencies blaze up to the size of the big bad guerrilla conflicts of the Mideast, especially in Thailand where innocent civilians are starting to get mowed down, buildings blown up, cops killed in gun battles, bad stuff.

In Mali we find out that French fighter-bombers are only hitting paper targets in the deep desert where the bad guys are holed up. And a new guerrilla war has taken root in Mali with suicide bombers hitting soft targets. Many of the bombing victories from the early stages of the Mali War were also cardboard and paper targets, fake training camps, and other artful devices. AQIM is not hurt as bad as we thought, although it did get kicked out into the desert, it did lose to the French in stage one of the conflict, there is no denying that. However it was more of a strategic retreat than a total rout.

One of the reasons for much of this bad news is that the CIA has returned to wandering the wilderness, rudderless without a permanent, kick-ass, Director. When it wanders the wilderness, the CIA loses its mojo, bad things happen on planet Earth.

A cabal of Senators has put a "hold" on Brennan's nomination as CIA Director. A hold is like a filibuster and theoretically has no time limit. Obama is getting boxed in a corner. Before they will green-light Brennan the Senators are asking the White House to release crucial classified information about the CIA attack drone program, this information can be used to challenge the drone program in US civilians courts. If civilian courts start ruling on the legality of the drone program, it will immediately cease to exist. The drone program may be the most awesome forc on Earth, but we just found its version of kryptonite (the US Court system). So Brennan is at risk of having his nomination jerked away if Obama really is forced to release classified info to these Senators, because he will probably not release anything.

The President then will have to put up a weaker candidate for CIA Director because the doves are ruling the roost over the hawks.  This is only possible beause Senator McCain has become a big dove and is throwing his weight onto the wrong side of this arguement within the Senate.

One explanation for McCain's behavior is that he has started smoking crack. This explanation polls highest among the analysts at Dave's Market Update. The chief analyst recently said, "Hell yes, McCain is smoking crack, look at the burn marks on his hands, crack-pipe burns."