The Maverick. Yeah, Right.

The more I read about John McCain and his campaign -- and his record -- the more he scares me.

First, he's another one running for Bush's third term. "Bomb everybody" seems to be the basis of his foreign policy, and look who's advising him:

McCain's advisers are reluctant to criticize President Bush, even in private. But they suggest that while their candidate agrees with many current White House policies, he's critical of how they've been implemented. . . .

McCain's foreign-policy team is sprinkled with people, including Scheunemann, who were ardent backers of the 2003 Iraq invasion and who dismissed critics who warned of unintended consequences. They include former CIA Director James Woolsey, an adviser mostly on energy security, and William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard.

There you have it -- more of the same, masterminded by the very people who advocated the mess we're in in the Middle East now. Whether the "surge" -- which McCain supported -- is working or not is a side issue. The underlying and much more serious issue is our position in the Middle East, which has been badly eroded over the past five years. McCain wants to continue the policies that put us there.

McCain is extending the Kool-Aid vision.

At a January town hall in New Hampshire, McCain told a questioner that it "would be fine with me" if the United States had a military presence in Iraq for 100 years. He stressed that he meant a peacetime presence like that of U.S. troops in Germany and Japan.

I'd like for him to explain to me, given the state of the Middle East and our role in creating the problems, just how that's going to be possible. Are we going to conquer the entire region, the way we did Germany and Japan? And are we going to do it all by ourselves?

NP (which, since most of you have never seen this before, stands for "now playing." Sometimes I may think of a song that fits the situation.): Foreigner, "Double Vision." Of course, that's the theme for the last seven years.