McCain Owns This War

New York Times:

Senator John McCain said that the buildup of American forces in Iraq represented the only viable option to avoid failure in Iraq and that he had yet to identify an effective fallback if the current strategy failed.

“I have no Plan B,” Mr. McCain said in an interview. “If I saw that doomsday scenario evolving, then I would try to come up with one. But I cannot give you a good alternative because if I had a good alternative, maybe we could consider it now.”

In a discussion of how he would handle Iraq if elected president, Mr. McCain said that the success of the Bush administration’s strategy, which seeks to protect Baghdad residents so Iraqi political leaders have an opportunity to pursue a program of political reconciliation, was essentially a precondition for a more limited American role that could follow.

Brilliant. Except, you know, Bush's strategy is a disastrous failure. So, McCain just wants to be Bush's heir to this disastrous failure.

Meanwhile...

New York Times:

Two car bombs killed 15 people and wounded 50 when they exploded in quick succession in a mostly Shi'ite neighborhood in southwestern Baghdad on Sunday, police and hospital sources said.

North of Baghdad, two U.S. military helicopters crashed near a large U.S. air base, killing two soldiers and injuring five in what appeared to be a mid-air collision, the U.S. military said.

The first of the two car bombs in Baghdad exploded at a market in the al-Shurta al-Rabeia neighborhood, while the second one went off seconds later at a nearby intersection, police said. Mortar rounds also landed in the area, police said, in an apparent coordinated attack.