Surge suppressor
Three and a half years after President Bush's infamous Mission Accomplished declaration, the world got a true sign of the imminent end of the Iraq war when Senator Mitch McConnell set a timeline for stopping the madness within the next nine months. Naturally, McConnell is one of the last Bush bootlicks to come to terms with what the American people have known for a couple of years: the war is lost.

McConnell said Bush's urge to surge has "six to nine months to succeed" or "we'll have to go in a new direction." The McConnell awakening is significant because the Senate Minority Leader has supported Bush consistently since time immemorial. And because when Mitch McConnell hints the war should end, Cindy Sheehan's work is pretty much done. Why the sudden turnaround? '08, baby. That's when McConnell will have to defend his performance to voters, many of whom are tired of seeing such a powerful senator squander his leadership position supporting failed Bush policies and taking dancing orders from his corporate puppeteers.

It's almost enough to make you feel sorry for Anne Northup. McConnell's flip-flop on setting a timeline sounded an awful lot like Northup's heat-of-the-moment diss of Donald Rumsfeld last year. Northup was slammed for being hypocritical, whereas McConnell was widely praised for being "politically shrewd" for standing up to Bush. Can McConnell have his yellowcake and eat it too? Only '08 voters know for sure. Meanwhile, with the dead in Iraq piling up, the Senate took decisive action: It spent the week arguing about how to word a nonbinding resolution declaring that President Bush is a doody-head and that his surge plan is yucky.