4000

Last March is was the movie 300. This March it's the real-life nightmare of 4,000 soldiers and counting dying for Presidente George W. Bush's lie.

How about that surge..."success"?:

As many as 20 mortar shells were fired Sunday at the heavily fortified Green Zone, one of the fiercest and most sustained attacks on the area in the last year.

The shelling sent thick plumes of dark gray smoke over central Baghdad and ignited a spectacular fire on the banks of the Tigris River. It ushered in a day of violence around the country that claimed the lives of at least 58 lraqis and four American soldiers. According to a tally by The Associated Press, those military deaths pushed the number of American service members killed in the five-year-old Iraq war to 4,000.

Haven't had enough yet? There's a Presidential candidate for you:

As America's war in Iraq enters its sixth year, Sen. John McCain is hoping that his long effort to send thousands more U.S. troops -- a "surge" that has helped lower casualties -- will propel him into the White House.

But McCain's record on Iraq is decidedly mixed. If the Arizona Republican proved prescient in his calls for a military buildup, many of his other predictions and prescriptions turned out wrong.

Before the war, McCain predicted a quick and easy victory, not a vicious insurgency. He issued dire warnings about Saddam Hussein's supposed weapons of mass destruction but didn't read the full 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that showed gaps in the intelligence.

That's right, vote for "Wrong."

Meanwhile, the other remaining candidate who voted for the war, didn't read the NIE and claimed Saddam had vast weapon o' mass destruction may be losing from the inside:

On Chris Matthews' show, panelists Norah O'Donnell, Clarence Page, and Elisabeth Bumiller all basically agreed that Clinton was nowhere near the point where she'd be thinking about leaving the race. But there was one outlier: New York Magazine's John Heilemann, who echoed some of the things Noonan would say on Meet The Press:

HEILEMANN: I think that one thing that's happening internally is that some of her top people are starting to say to her, "We won't stick with you. We won't keep working for this campaign if it's going to destroy Barack Obama." She's starting to hear that from her people and she's starting to kind of see it.

MATTHEWS: How do you know that?

HEILEMANN: [archly] How do I know that? Reporting.

Videos like this aren't doing her any favors, either:



Is the plot quickening? What with even a prominent rightwing theological lawyer endorsing Obama:

Today I endorse Barack Obama for president of the United States. I believe him to be a person of integrity, intelligence and genuine good will. I take him at his word that he wants to move the nation beyond its religious and racial divides and to return United States to that company of nations committed to human rights. I do not know if his earlier life experience is sufficient for the challenges of the presidency that lie ahead. I doubt we know this about any of the men or women we might select. It likely depends upon the serendipity of the events that cannot be foreseen. I do have confidence that the Senator will cast his net widely in search of men and women of diverse, open-minded views and of superior intellectual qualities to assist him in the wide range of responsibilities that he must superintend.

This endorsement may be of little note or consequence, except perhaps that it comes from an unlikely source: namely, a former constitutional legal counsel to two Republican presidents.

Here's to Pennsylvania joining in the emerging consensus four weeks from Tuesday, and none too late.