Ben Smith is reporting that John McCain is making an issue out of suggestions by Obama in a position paper/statement on the relationship between the US and Ireland.

One matter covered in the paper raises the possibility of abolishing the post of Special Presidential Envoy to Northern Ireland.

McCain says that Obama's policy paper is evidence of Obama's foreign policy inexperience. However McCain is wrong, and is misrepresenting what Obama has said. Nonetheless there is some evidence that the way in which Obama's policy is being represented may hurt him with the :Irish" vote in the US.

Folks may be interested in new data on foreign policy "messaging" and Americans' foreign policy preferences released by the United Nations Foundation and The Better World Campaign (which sponsor UN Dispatch.)  

You can check out the press release for highlights. But more interesting, I think, is this power point slide which goes through some of the key findings.  On the polling side, it is interesting to note that energy security is by far voters' greatest concern, easily trumping terrorism (which used to hold the top spot.) On the "messaging" front I'll just say that "international cooperation" will forever replace "mulitlateralism" in my lexicon.        

Don't miss slide 15.  

There's one argument for Barack Obama's readiness to be commander-in-chief that Keith Obermann raised once or twice, but otherwise, I haven't heard a lot of, that I'd like to hear repeated, and OFTEN:

Has anyone else noticed, that the Bush administration is co-opting Barack Obama's foreign policy positions, and that this undercuts the Republicans' argument?

Time to get back to the business of endlessly pointing out just how wrong John McCain is on foreign policy.

Ya'll remember the SURGE, don't you?  You know the tactic that McMilitary single-handedly forced the Bush Administration into.  He has that much power and creds at The White House, you know.  The man is a walking marvel.

Well, it seems that one of McPander's three people he would call on if he were pResident (and possible Veep shortlister, yeah right) Gen. David Petraeus simply will not say that the progress in Iraq was due solely to the SURGE.  Did Petraeus mention the Anbar Awakening?  Why, yes, children he did.  The one that occurred before the SURGE?  Right again.

Please come along for some pie (in Johnny's face)

In just a few minutes at 4:30pm Eastern Time, I'll be appearing on a panel with MoveOn.org's Eli Pariser at the Big Tent in Denver. The panel is part of the Campaign for America's Future's Take Back America forum.

The focus of our panel is the war and foreign policy, so we'll be discussing ending the wasteful war in Iraq, forging a new foreign policy, and constructing a positive global economic strategy.

You can watch a live stream of the event below:

If this isn't the type of issue to McCain on, then I don't know what is.  Via TPM, McCain's chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann (you know, the one who was on the payroll of Georgia), actually lobbied AGAINST a bill that would close a loophole allowing those on the terrorist watch-list from buying guns.  

Newsweek reports that, according to registration documents filed by Scheuenemann's lobbying firm, Orion Strategies, Scheunemann lobbied on behalf of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) against a bill that aims to close a gun-control loophole that inhibits the government from stopping people on terrorist watch-lists from buying guns. According to Newsweek, "the bill was inspired by an official audit covering a five-month period in 2004 which found that, because of the loophole, the Feds had to greenlight 35 out of 44 cases where a gun buyer was on a terrorist watch list."

Again, to make this crystal clear: John McCain's top foreign policy adviser lobbied against a bill that would prevent terrorists from buying guns.

The Democratic Party’s buzz word for the 2008 convention is "unity." But when it comes to the important policy decisions a President must make, how united are Barack Obama and Joe Biden?

A brief overview of eight domestic and foreign policy positions shows that they are indeed united on those issues that will be on Americans minds when they pull the lever in November.

In this diary, I will take us back a decade (almost to the week, in fact). To show just how good Joe Biden is with foreign issues. Perhaps the biggest foreign issue of our time. A Saudi millionaire by the name of Usāmah bin Muḥammad bin `Awaḍ bin Lādin.

More, below the fold...

The emperor has no clothes.  The notion that John McCain has some amazing foreign policy credentials is nothing more than a lie that has been perpetuated by the "liberal media."  

Sort of lost these past few weeks has been a change in the dynamic, made to accommodate the next phase of growth of the military industrial complex.

A resurgence of the Cold War, thanks to Vladimr Putin, he of excessive holdings of ever more expensive oil and gas resources is just around the corner. It appears that Americans aren't afraid enough of 'Islamo- Fascists'. Bin-Laden's busy growing felafel for Bill O'Reilly's loofah.

The vacuum is ruining the "terra, terra, terra" narrative.

For Putin, saber rattling is all advantages.
There are no downsides for Putin and his puppet Medvedev [who?].  

There's little an emasculated US State Department can do to counter Putin, and short of full scale nuclear war, there's no scenario envisioning a military entanglement involving NATO and Russia, or the US and Russia. The US has already overspent it's diplomatic pouch.

The faint whining sounds coming out of the US State Dept are greeted with knee slapping hilarity in every capital on the planet. Deficits do matter when it comes to diplomatic argot. There's no such thing as going to the well and borrowing some. Dick Cheney's dream of destroying the State Department and American diplomacy has become reality.

I was afraid this was going to happen. On the face of it, Biden has a wealth of experience and might be seen as a good VP choice. Even I have stated in the past that he wouldn't necessarily be a bad pick. But on the same token, Biden was not the best choice that Obama could have made....not by a long shot. Biden was near the bottom for me.

List of reasons below.....

Yeah, I know this is 'how many houses' week. But once the smoke settles from McCain's multiple chimneys and the McMSM tires, says their yeah, but's, and returns to the CW of war mongering as an indispensable characteristic of a commander-in-chief, I just wanted to bring Georgia back up. This is my first. evar. diary. And, just to be sure I don't run afoul of the DMCA, I'll be cut & pasting from myself, from an article published in the Carolina Independent Weekly.

Can the media still play up the meme that McCain's strong point is foreign policy?  After months of gaffes from not realizing the difference between Sunni and Shia, not knowing that certain countries don't exist, etc, this may be the most damning blow:

Iraq and the Bush administration have reached a preliminary agreement to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraqi cities, where most of the fighting has taken place, by next June. It would link troop reductions to achievement of certain undisclosed security milestones. The deal also would require the endorsement of top Iraqi leaders and the Iraqi parliament, which is far from certain.

McCain repeatedly has said that events on the ground in Iraq should dictate any pullout schedule. He once suggested, however, that troops would come home, victorious, by the end of his first term, in early 2013

CHARLES BABINGTON
AP News

You gotta get your ducks all in a row there before tooting those horns:

At a press conference she and Zebari said the negotiators were close to signing the deal but cautioned it had not yet been clinched.

Everyone says how intelligent you are, and after all you're the Secretary of State with a whole department working for you, or are they being allowed to.

When the conflict between Russia and Georgia flared up, many of us concluded that John McCain's knee-jerk bluster in trying to reignite the Cold War with Russia had something to do with the fact that Randy Scheunemann, McCain's chief foreign policy advisor, had been paid approximately $270,000 in lobbying fees by Georgia during an 18-month period in 2007-2008.

But an Architectural Digest feature that has been making the rounds since John McCain's ownership of lord-only-knows-how-many houses became a huge campaign issue earlier today points to another possible reason for McCain's bellicosity toward Russia and his outspoken support of Georgia: exotic carpets.

After HAMMERING McBush all day on forgetting-how-many-homes-he-owns-GATE, Obama is now SLAMMING McCain on foreign policy!

Was gonna send this letter to Indiana newspapers. Already had one published last month. Suggestion? Comments?

Many of you have heard of the Obama campaign effort to point out that John McCain is a reckless hotheaded, especially on the foreign policy front. Josh Marshall has been really riding this meme and for good reason:

Will the McCain as trigger-happy hothead work? I suggest a different calculus. Is it true? I would suggest that it definitely is, both in personal temperament and policy prescriptions. And I believe that is the better metric, both practically speaking and morally.

Morally, the case is pretty straightforward. McCain really is a hothead. Everyone seems to agree that's true on an interpersonal level. But I don't really care about that. I don't care who he swears at. But over his time in the senate and now as would-be president, he's shown a tendency always to jump to the most confrontational and military-based responses to foreign events, often to almost ridiculous levels. And I think because of that temperament, he's fallen in with and become a useful tool of the DC neoconservatives who view acting crazy and getting people killed as a matter of principle.