Read Juan Cole's very good and knowledgeable blog.
He is not the only one to report today that the US plans to sell $9 billion in weapons to Iraq. As he says,
"This sort of thing, if it continues, would make the Iraq War worthwhile
to the Military-Industrial Complex. If you want to turn an enemy into a
customer, nothing does the trick like conquering the difficult
population..."
I would imagine the military-industrial complex would do very well under a John McCain presidency, especially since he has proposed that he would use similar techniques in US cities to those used in the surge. How giving city police in the US more and bigger weapons, some humvees, some apache helicopters and those Star Wars-type uniforms the soldiers wear?
Here's what ABC's David Wright reported about McCain and high crime neighborhoods:
"John McCain suggested that military strategies currently employed by US troops in Iraq could be applied to high crime neighborhoods here in the US. McCain called them tactics 'somewhat like we use in the military...You go into neighborhoods, you clamp down, you provide a secure environment for the people that live there, and you make sure that the known criminals are kept under control. And you provide them with a stable environment and then they cooperate with law enforcement.' The way he described it, his approach sounded an awful lot like the surge. As part of his argument, McCain praised the crime-fighting efforts of former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani; Urban League president Marc Morial countered that while New York did experience a drop in crime under Giuliani, there were several major instances of police misconduct."
By the way, McCain's talk at the Urban League was substantive. He did talk in a bit of detail about what he'd do about education. He is for school choice. This would be an excellent topic for the candidates to debate in detail. I wish they would.
I would like to add that many, many people think Giuliani gets way too much credit for the decline in crime in NYC and that many of his tactics were regarded as questionable. Also, he overcleaned NYC. AND please remember, he basically conned Mexico. He took a lot of money for accomplishing virtually nada.