On Easter Sunday, Sen. McCain tries to resurrect his Presidential campaign with an op-ed in the Washington Post regarding Iraq. In the article, he unleashes this beauty.

"Markets in Baghdad have faced devastating terrorist attacks. A car bombing at Shorja in February, for example, killed 137 people. Today the market still faces occasional sniper attacks, but it is safer than it used to be." (emphasis mine)

I mean, what's a little sniper fire between hagglers, right? Is he for real? Has he been seriously damaged, or what?

McCain may be right to say that the surge has calmed the violence in Baghdad, but elsewhere, the violence appears to be, well, surging.

"Yet, outside the capital, sectarian violence is unabated, 19 tortured bodies found in Diyala Province Monday morning. And, in the border town of Tal Afar, praised by President Bush as a model of U.S. success, reclaimed from al Qaeda, Iraqi officials say suicide bombings one day last week slaughtered 152 mainly Shia Muslims, prompting some officers in the Shia-dominated police to execute up to 70 Sunni Muslims later that night.
It's this violence Senator McCain hopes more U.S. soldiers can stop, even though more Iraqis died in March than in February. Just last week, the senator claimed reinforcements had already made parts of Baghdad so safe, an American could now walk them, something even an Iraqi journalist had to question."

It appears that the insurgents are playing a version of the game "Whack-a-mole." As we drop the hammer in one place, they disappear and pop up in another. And McCain must know this, so either he's trying to shift attention to the America media, or he's just disingenuous. Either way, he's eaten up all the remaining goodwill he built up with the press in 2000, and he seems to be sliding further in the Presidential race.