Left guard Obama

Tuesday night, during the Democratic candidate debate, one of Tim "I'm famous - right?" Russert's many annoying hypothetical questions to Obama was about what he would do if Al-Qaeda returned to Iraq after our withdrawal. Obama said this:

"As commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al-Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad."

Pretty straightforward, right? Standard response to meaningless hypothetical.

Well, John Sydney McCain* thought he would score some cheap points on Obama at a rally the next day with this:

"I have some news. Al-Qaeda is in Iraq. Al-Qaeda is called 'al-Qaeda in Iraq.' My friends, if we left, they wouldn't be establishing a base. . . . they would be taking a country. I will not allow that to happen, my friends. I will not surrender."

Slam dunk, right? Okay, he traveled a little on the way to the basket, but who calls traveling anymore? No one. So, two cheap points, right?

Except Obama, later that same day, did this: exactly what you would want him to do. Exactly what you wanted Gore to do about that whole inventing the internet malarky. Exactly what you wanted Kerry to do about that goddamn swift-boat crap. He called bullshit, my friends, and he did it in a fairly kick-ass kind of way:

"McCain thought that he could make a clever point by saying, 'Well let me give you some news, Barack, al-Qaeda is in Iraq.' Like I wasn't reading the papers, like I didn't know what was going on. I said, 'Well, first of all, I do know that al-Qaeda is in Iraq; that's why I've said we should continue to strike al-Qaeda targets.

"I have some news for John McCain, and that is that there was no such thing as al-Qaeda in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq. I've got some news for John McCain. He took us into a war along with George Bush that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged. They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11, and that would be al-Qaeda in Afghanistan that is stronger now than at any time since 2001.

"So John McCain may like to say he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but so far all he's done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq that's cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars."

Boo-yah, my friends. Boo. Yah.

If this is any indication of how Obama's campaign will bring the noise if he becomes the Democratic candidate, then I am heartened, dear readers, I am indeed heartened.

Now if we can only get that fat-faced fame monkey Russert to realize that he's not "asking tough questions that spur a national debate" but "whacking off on television while making an extremely unattractive 'O' face," then we might really gots us something here.



*I am using McCain's middle name, heretofore unknown to me, because representatives of McCain's campaign keep insisting that their use of Barack Hussein Obama's middle name is not politically motivated, and that they, as do all Americans, routinely use the middle names of presidential candidates in casual speech.