I just find John McCain hard to stomach sometimes:

Sinking in polls and struggling to reinvigorate his foundering presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) delivered a robust defense of the war in Iraq on Wednesday, declaring that President Bush and the conflict's supporters are on the right side of history in the struggle against terrorism and extremism.

Dismissing public opinion polls as offering nothing but "temporary favor" to the war's opponents, McCain directly confronted the biggest obstacle to his White House ambitions: his unyielding support of a war that more than two-thirds of the country has turned against.

"I sympathize with the fatigue of the American people," he told cadets at the Virginia Military Institute. "But I also know the toll a lost war takes on an army and a country. It is the right road. It is necessary and just."

McCain offered a blistering critique of Democrats in control of Congress. He accused them of being reckless in their foreign policy by attempting to set a deadline for withdrawal in legislation intended to provide money for the war effort. And he said those who control the legislature are "heedless of the terrible consequences" of failing in Iraq.

"Democratic leaders smiled and cheered as the last votes were counted," he said. "What were they celebrating? Defeat? Surrender?"

Maybe the possibility that one more of their relatives won't meet his bloody end in a Fallujah alley somewhere? Maybe the joy of hope of seeing their loved ones alive? Just a couple guesses.

What did he call this half-trillion-dollar war? Necessary? Just?

In the text of his speech given at VMI, one finds such vignettes we have come to expect from the neocons:

In the early days after 9/11 our country was united in a single purpose, to find the terrorists bent on our destruction and eliminate the threat they posed to us.

In the intervening years, we've learned the complexity of the struggle against radical Islamic ideology. The extremists, a tiny percentage of the hundreds of millions of peaceful Muslims, are flexible, intelligent, determined and unconstrained by international borders. They wish to return the world to the seventh century, and they will use any means, no matter how inhumane, to eliminate anyone who stands in their way.

McCain also referenced "the struggle for the soul of Islam, of which the war in Iraq constitutes a key element."

We're fighting for the soul of Islam? American troops are fighting a just war, in a key element in the struggle for the soul of Islam?

Support the troops, and not with PR-driven blatant lies. Bring them home alive from a region on its way to stability. How does McCain live with himself?