Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says an agreement could have been reached to keep more American troops in Iraq into next year.

Citing a trip he recently took to the country, McCain said on ABC’s “This Week”: “[The Iraqis] were ready to negotiate. The United States didn’t have a plan as to how many troops should remain behind. How could we expect the Iraqis to sit down and agree?”

And McCain said the issue of immunity for American troops could have been resolved.

“It could have been negotiated, I know because I was there at the time,” McCain said. “The question of immunity could have been resolved. The question of immunity is being used as an excuse.”

Leave it to a cranky old maverick to rationalize that the Iraqi’s request for justice and accountability when it comes to troop misconduct is an excuse and not a valid motive in itself. Anyway, his stance shouldn’t be too surprising, because he infamously said in 2008 that “it would be fine with me” if the United States stayed in Iraq for 100 years. I guess he won’t be so lucky as to get his wish.

McCain wasn’t just completely wrong, as usual, about the facts. He also appeared to be lying. That is to say, unless he’s gone senile and lost most of his marbles, he had to have known that he was making statements that were not, in fact, true.

Here’s McCain on Tuesday afternoon, vehemently insisting to two reporters — Kerry Eleveld of The Advocate and Chris Geidner of Metro Weekly that the military doesn’t actively go after gay soldiers who Don’t Tell:

MCCAIN: We do not go out and seek. Regulations are, we do not go out and seek to find out if someone’s sexual orientation. We do not!

ELEVELD: But senator, that’s not…

MCCAIN: That is the fact! That is the fact. Now ma’am, I know the military very well, and I know what’s being done. And what is being done is that they are not seeking out people who are gay. And I don’t care what you say, I know it’s a fact.

ELEVELD: It’s not what I say.

MCCAIN: I dont’ care what you say! And I don’t care what others say. I’ve seen it in action. I’ve seen it in action. I have sons in the military, I know the military very well. So they’re not telling you the truth.

ELEVELD: Senator, just to make sure…

MCCAIN: Just to make sure. We do not go out and seek out and find out….

ELEVELD: Private emails are not being searched? Private emails are not being searched?

MCCAIN: …See if someone is gay or not. We do not go out and see whether someone is gay or not.

ELEVELD: There are documented cases…

MCCAIN: They do not, they do not, they do not. You can say that they are, you can say [inaudible] it’s not true!… Yea, I’d like to see…

GEIDNER: It is the case of Mike Almy, Senators.

MCCAIN: Bring them to our office. It is not the policy, it is not the policy, it is not the policy.

GEIDNER: But it is the case that it’s happening, Senator.

MCCAIN: It is not the policy, it is not the policy, it is not the policy You can say that it is the policy, sir if you choose to. It is not the policy. I would be glad to get that to you in writing.

Even after Geidner specifically brings up Mike Almy, McCain continues his hysterical, hectoring denial. Which has to be pretty baffling to anyone who still thinks McCain has a shred of honesty or integrity left in him. Because this was Almy’s testimony (pdf) before McCain just earlier this year:

In Iraq, during the height of the insurgency, someone in the Air Force ordered a search of my private emails solely to determine if I had violated “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, and to gather whatever evidence could be used against me.

Rachel Maddow had Almy on her show Tuesday night to respond to McCain’s performance:

MADDOW: Let me get your response to what Senator McCain said today.

ALMY: I was literally quite stunned when I first heard it. I just heard it this evening. And I was quite shocked. As you know, I testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March and told my story. Senator McCain was there. He sat 20 feet away from me and he listened to every word of my testimony. For him to make that statement today that the military does not search private e-mails, tells me that he either didn‘t listen to my testimony in this past March, he forgot what I said, or he‘s being deliberately deceptive with the American public about the true nature of Don‘t Ask, Don‘t Tell and using partisan politics over the interests of National Security. The simple truth is the Air Force searched my private e-mails in 2005 in Iraq.

During the height of the insurgency, they launched an investigation solely to look into my private e-mails, solely to determine if I had violated Don‘t Ask, Don‘t Tell and to find whatever evidence they could use against me. And those e-mails searched in Iraq were the sole basis of my discharge from the Air Force … So, for Senator McCain to make that allegation, I‘m just dumb founded about where he comes up with that type of explanation, that type of an answer to a reporter. And to be quite honest with you, I‘m very angry at that statement today.

Not half as angry as McCain was, though, at being challenged by Kerry Eleveld and Chris Geidner.

So here’s the one I want to ask: in this primary season of Tea Party Davids repeatedly toppling Republican establishment Goliaths — often, as last night, by huge non-contest margins — how on earth did John McCain manage to escape the fate he oh-so-richly deserved?

I think before last night, if you asked this question, a pretty glib answer could be constructed arguing that J.D. Hayworth did too well in the polls too early. McCain saw him coming a long way off, realized that his seat might be in danger, and spent all kinds of money mounting a concerted, determined campaign to fight him off. And Hayworth, through that infamous infomercial, certainly gave McCain ample ammunition to attack him with.

But Mike Castle and the Republican establishment weren’t exactly blind-sided by Christine “masturbation equals adultery” O’Donnell. They saw her coming a long way off, too. And fought her tooth and nail.

The GOP establishment and its preferred candidate saw this coming weeks ago, and acted quickly to prevent a disaster, attacking O’Donnell, dishing dirt to reporters, and even filing an FEC complaint against her.
[...]
The chairman of the Delaware Republican Party characterized his party’s U.S. Senate nominee as “a perennial candidate unworthy of being elected dog catcher.” Even Dick Armey‘s FreedomWorks, which rallies behind right-wing fringe candidates, wanted nothing to do with her.

So how did McCain manage to escape his karma? There must be a special god who watches over totally unprincipled hypocrites.

HANNITY: Your reaction to her? Are you likely at this point to support, not support?

MCCAIN: Well, I’ll give the process a chance to work its way through. But I am still outraged. You know the members of the ROTC at Harvard had to go to MIT to do their training. Now here’s a school — the Harvard Law School can produce all of our Supreme Court justices, but Harvard will not allow recruiters to help young men and women serve their country in uniform.
[...]
I am deeply offended that a school that models itself as the finest in the nation, at least they claim that, would not allow recruiters to come on their campus and ROTC to be conducted on their campus.

When exactly did Harvard ask ROTC to leave campus? “In 1969 … primarily out of opposition to the Vietnam war.”

And so pure and red-hot is McCain’s outrage that he has actually been engaged in doing something about elite institutions of learning that will not allow “ROTC to be conducted on their campus”.

He recently infiltrated a covert agent into just such an institution, Columbia University, an agent he provided with a perfect cover story. Purporting to be McCain’s daughter, the agent is ostensibly attending Columbia University like any other student. Her true mission, of course, must be to collect information that is deeply embarrassing or damaging to the university, information that can be used by outraged citizens to twist the university’s arm into restoring the ROTC program.

Sadly, not everyone who is aware of the underlying facts understands what is really going on. Here’s Media Matters, with a totally unwarranted slander:

McCain’s criticisms are incredibly dishonest. For starters, many academic institutions have long held bans on ROTC, including Columbia University, where McCain recently sent his daughter (and his money).

Just McCain playing 3-dimensional chess, guys. And totally faking you out.

It occurs to me it might be both interesting and profitable to make book on which Republican Senator will offer the most absurdly unfair criticism of her nomination. (I would probably back John McCain — on the principle that necessity is the mother of invention, and he seems to perceive it as absolutely necessary to feed right-wing Republicans as much red meat as possible before the primary — unless he is the odds-on favorite, in which case I might flirt with Orrin Hatch.) Please note that only original criticisms count. No credit will be given for simply repeating other people’s original material, such as University of Colorado law professor Paul Campos’ comparison of Kagan to Harriet Miers, who, for many years to come, will continue to walk away with the title of the All-Time Worst Nominee to the Supreme Court.

Talking of absurd, the most absurd comment I have read so far in a serious news outlet on the presumptive nomination came from a NYT article:

Ms. Kagan was also confirmed by the Senate just last year, albeit with 31 no votes, making it harder for Republicans who voted for her in 2009 to vote against her in 2010.

Grown men with an IQ exceeding their age are seriously postulating in print that it is reasonable to hold Senate Republicans to a standard of consistency? At this point in the ongoing Republican Clown Show?

And journalists who the NYT actually pays with real money seriously believe that if you thought someone was qualified to be Solicitor General, then you have no choice but to pronounce them worthy to sit on the Supreme Court?

I also wonder if presumptive runner-up federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland will find much consolation in this analysis:

Judge Garland was widely seen as the most likely alternative to Ms. Kagan and the one most likely to win easy confirmation. Well respected on both sides of the aisle, he had a number of conservatives publicly calling him the best they could hope for from a Democratic president. Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a Republican member of the Judiciary Committee, privately made clear to the president that he considered Judge Garland a good choice, according to people briefed on their conversations.

But Mr. Obama ultimately opted to save Judge Garland for when he faces a more hostile Senate and needs a nominee with more Republican support. Democrats expect to lose seats in this fall’s election, so if another Supreme Court seat comes open next year and Mr. Obama has a substantially thinner margin in the Senate than he has today, Judge Garland would be an obvious choice.

And for all of you who are into composition-of-the-Supreme-Court trivia:

If the Senate confirms Ms. Kagan, who is Jewish, the Supreme Court for the first time will have no Protestant members. In that case, the court would be composed of six justices who are Catholic and three who are Jewish. It also would mean that every member of the court had studied law at Harvard or Yale.

I think that’s just a back-door way of giving George Bush credit for passing up two opportunities to put a Liberty University School of Law graduate on the bench.

*** Update, 11:23 a.m. ***

I guess I’m sadly out of touch with the times.

In addition to gleefully pondering the prospect of making book on who would offer the most absurdly unfair criticism of Kagan’s nomination, I should also have been thinking of the the most absurdly stupid criticism.

I think Ed Whelan — President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and a former law clerk to Antonin Scalia — has just taken a commanding early lead by attacking her for not learning to drive until her late 20s. According to Whelan, that should count as a disqualification because it “nicely captures Elena Kagan’s remoteness from the lives of most Americans”. Good grief!

But it’s still early days. I have no doubt that Whelan will have to do considerably better than this if he wants to be a contender in the stretch.

John McCain might still beat Barack Obama handily were there a redo of the 2008 election in McCain’s home state, but the senator’s constituents now view Obama’s job performance more favorably than they do that of their longtime senator. 45% of Arizona voters like the job Obama is doing, to 51% who disapprove. While that may seem bad, only 34% approve of how McCain is handling his job to 55% who do not.

Perhaps this has something to do with the behavior that gives rise to the following joke?
Q: If McCain was a bear, what kind of bear would he be?
A: That’s easy! A pander bear!

Okay, maybe I exaggerated. Our freeways may not be full of such cars, but this is a real problem in states like Arizona. And we know this because it isn’t just people like Lou Dobbs who are saying it. We know this because a United States Senator told us so:

O’REILLY: Now, next week, the governor is going to sign, we believe, a very stringent state law that gives the police in Arizona very, very broad authority to question people. And a lot of people say it’s going to be racial profiling. You’re going to look for Hispanics, question them, to see if they’re here legally or not. And it’s just not fair. And you say why?

MCCAIN: I say that the federal responsibilities have not been fulfilled. Therefore, the states are acting — the state of Arizona is acting and doing what they feel they need to do in light of the fact that the federal government is not fulfilling its fundamental responsibility to secure our borders. Our borders must be secure.

O’REILLY: But what about the racial profiling? You know that’s going to happen has to happen.

MCCAIN: I hope — I would be very sorry that if some of that happens. And I regret it, but I also regret the — really, it’s not just the murder of Robert Krantz.* It’s the people whose homes and property are being violated. It’s the drive-by that — the drivers of cars with illegals in it that are intentionally causing accidents on the freeway. Look, our border is not secured. Our citizens are not safe.

I can only treat this as confirmation of my hypothesis that John McCain is suffering from a rare, degenerative brain disease. (If anyone else has an alternative explanation, I’m all ears.)

* Apparently, a reference to Robert Krentz, an Arizona rancher allegedly murdered by an illegal immigrant who fled to Mexico.

*** Update, 3:35 pm ***

McCain’s campaign has cleared up the whole issue.

Apparently, when McCain made this statement on Monday, he was just repeating what Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu would say today. Read it, and judge for yourself whether I’m exaggerating.

Asked about whether he’s concerned about anti-incumbency attitudes this year, McCain said, “No, I don’t worry about it. I know that I can out-campaign anybody.” Well, perhaps not “anybody.”

(I’ll go ahead and note, before someone else points it out, that I do realize that “John McCain apparently thinks” is a pretty hilarious statement just by itself.)

More seriously, maybe this explains why McCain has come across as so angry-crazy over the last year and a half. To thoroughly out-campaign somebody (oops, I do mean nobody) for President, and then be declared the loser, would make anyone angry-crazy. (Al Gore is just the exception that proves the rule.)

Last time we looked in on Gramps, he was befuddled about what it takes to repeal a bill. Or, to be fair to him, that may just have been a carefully calculated con (since the recipe essentially involved McCain telling Republicans that if they wanted healthcare reform to be repealed immediately, all they had to do was tuck some money under McCain’s pillow; the Repeal Fairy would take care of the rest).

But I don’t see how anyone can put any wait-he-may-still-have-some-marbles-left spin on this statement from a recent townhall meeting in Nashua, NH:

There’s a lot of other issues that I, we’d like to [inaudible], but I’d just wanted to say again because our veterans are here, that I’m happy to tell you that elections in Iraq went okay. Look, democracy is a hard thing, but it was a contested election and there’s no other country in the Middle East besides Israel where there’s a contested election. And the most importantly than that, now for three months, there has not been a single American servicemember killed or wounded in Iraq.

The number of Americans actually killed or wounded in Iraq in the last three months — as of March 13, when McCain made that statement — is 101 (12 dead, 89 wounded).

(Of course, by current Republican standards, McCain’s statement may well qualify as perfectly accurate — “Most importantly than that, your honor, it wasn’t a single American, it was a hundred and one” — but somehow I don’t see even McCain hiding behind the skirts of that argument.)

I am now convinced that we are eventually going to learn that John McCain has been suffering from a rare, degenerative brain disease for a while now.

I believe we must repeal this bill immediately.

He hasn’t yet got around to explaining how he plans to a) get repeal legislation passed through the House and the Senate immediately, or b) get round the obstacle of an incumbent Democratic president who will veto said legislation.

But, hey, if you’re a Republican, go ahead and send him the money first, and ask questions only afterward (or, better still, not at all).

Or maybe he has something up his sleeve? Please God, let it be the kind of stupid crazy something that would put him behind bars.

That would definitely make my day. And it might be the only way to finally get him off the Sunday morning shows, a consummation devoutly to be wished.