1115.org

Big-mouth McCain has gone and let the cat out of the bag.

All these months, the Bush administration had managed to successfully conceal — from Americans, Iraqis and the international community, from Congress and from Democrats, even from that scourge of the nation, liberal bloggers — the fact that the surge in Iraq had some secret, undeclared objectives.

All we knew was that there were clear military objectives, and there were clear political objectives. (Political objectives, of course, is a complicated phrase in the context, referring as it does to political progress that we needed the Iraqis to achieve, as well as the political objectives Bush and the neo-cons and the Republicans sought to achieve at home through the surge.)

And yet there was McCain last month going:

Anybody who believes the surge has not succeeded, militarily, politically and in most other ways, frankly, does not know the facts on the ground.

Remember that this is a guy who gets briefings. Confidential briefings. And he has a well-earned reputation as a blabbermouth. When he opens his mouth, all kinds of things tumble out before he quite knows what he has said. That is why he has a full-time rapid-response group (consisting entirely of lobbyists, of course) tasked with unsaying the unfortunate things he regularly manages to say.

McCain did manage to shut up before he started to spell out those “other ways”. But now that the NYT is seized of the matter, it can’t be long before they get someone to leak them a super-secret document, and then splash it all over the front page. And all our secret surge objectives will be aired like so much dirty laundry. And the great success we were so easily able to achieve in secret will once again be compromised by the harsh light of public scrutiny.

Iraq, which had started to look to some so much like it was going to turn into a successful transatlantic crossing, will once again start to resemble a sinking ship. They’ll try, of course, but don’t let anyone tell you it was all the NYT’s fault. We all know who’s really going to be responsible: John “Hair-trigger” “Loose-cannon” McCain.