Yesterday, the McCain campaign held a press call trying to make an issue of former U.S. ambassador to Israel/current Barack Obama adviser Daniel Kurtzer’s attending a legal conference in Damascus. McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann and Ru9y Giul1an1 both did their best to spin Kurtzer’s presence in Syria in the most sinister way possible, but unfortunately for Team McCain, the only traction the story has gotten thus far has focused on reporter Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency being cut off when he confronted Scheunemann and Giuliani on their history of lobbying for various foreign interests.

The McCain campaign’s own incompetence appears for the moment to have thrown a wrench into their attempt to throw dirt on the reputation and judgment of a respected former ambassador to Israel. Scheunemann and Giuliani strongly implied that Kurtzer was involved in “covert” negotiations with the Syrian regime on Obama’s behalf, when in fact all Kurtzer appears to have done was voice his support for continuing Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations. Joe Klein writes that “the McCain campaign and its neoconservative allies have expanded their foolish bellicosity to Syria and are now criticizing a sometime Obama adviser for…saying that it wouldn’t be a bad idea for the next U.S. President to promote an Israel-Syrian peace accord”:

In this case McCain and the neocons–with their extremely warped view of Israel’s best interests–are considerably to their right of the Israeli government, which has been negotiating with the Syrians under Turkish auspices.

Heather Hurlburt adds:

When the McCain campaign goes after an Orthodox Jew, former dean of Yeshiva U., career diplomat who was the Bush Administration’s ambassador to Israel on 9-11, was caricatured in anti-Semitic cartoons in the Cairo press during his tenure as Ambassador to Egypt, where he bravely was a public face of Orthodoxy, and is the Commissioner of the Israeli Baseball League (you can’t make this stuff up), for doing something the Israeli government is already doing (talking to Syrians), will someone please tell me exactly how this country is supposed to have a diplomatic establishment?

As Steve Benen and Max Bergmann both note, John McCain was for engagement with Syria before he was against it. Currently, the only sort of US-Syria relationship that John McCain supports involves rendering CIA detainees to Syria to be tortured.

Our guest blogger is Colin Cookman, Special Assistant for National Security at American Progress.

In the deadliest ground combat exchange between international forces and Afghanistan insurgents since the 2001 U.S. invasion, 10 members of an elite French paratroop unit were ambushed and killed in fighting with over a hundred Taliban fighters. Another 21 French soldiers were wounded in the battle, which took place only 30 miles east of Kabul. The French casualties coincided with another sustained Taliban attack, as a group of Taliban fighters launched waves of mortar and rocket attacks on Forward Operating Base Salerno, in eastern Khost province, as cover for attempted suicide bomb attacks by between 10 and 15 militants. On Monday, Afghanistan’s independence day, a suicide car bomber attempted to breach Salerno’s gates, killing at least a dozen Afghan laborers near the entrance.

The sophistication and scale of these attacks are another sign that the security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating badly. This deterioration has been borne out in public opinion: a new CBS News/New York Times poll found that 58% of those surveyed believe the conflict in Afghanistan is going badly, compared to 28% who perceived it to be going well. Contrast that with the situation in 2003, when only 14% believed things were going badly and 76% thought they were going well, and it’s apparent how much has changed in the five years since the Bush administration diverted its attention to Iraq. 2008 is on track to surpass 2007 as the deadliest year in Afghanistan since military operations began there in 2001, and international coalition death tolls there have surpassed those in Iraq for the past two months, a trend likely to continue through August. Read more

Today, the Wall Street Journal joins Sean Hannity and Karl Rove in promoting Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) for Secretary of State in a McCain administration, praising his “first-rate” national security judgment:

Our own view is that Mr. Lieberman would make a fine Secretary of State, and that, given the political risks, making him vice president would probably be too great an election gamble. But Mr. Lieberman’s national security credentials are first-rate, and we’ve known him long enough to remember his opposition to an income tax in Connecticut, and his support for lower capital gains taxes, school vouchers and private Social Security accounts. Liberated from having to run as a Democrat, he might recall those policy instincts.

Today, Lieberman showed exactly what type of diplomacy he’d practice as Secretary of State. Speaking in Poland after a trip to Georgia with fellow McCain ally Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Lieberman proposed kicking Russia out of the G-8:

“We’re not going to let Russia, so soon after the Iron Curtain fell, to again draw a dividing line across Europe,” said Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut and close friend of Republican presidential hopeful John McCain. “It is simply unacceptable.” [...]

“The G-8 should become for a while the G-7 until Russia proves that it is capable of being a law-abiding member of the international community,” he said.

McCain first proposed this idea in October 2007, and again in March. Not only do senior government officials consider this plan to be “dumb,” it’s also most likely “impossible,” as most other developed nations would never go along. In April, the LA Times reported that McCain was beginning to back away from the plan because it was greeted with alarm by his supporters.

Much of the McCain campaign’s condemnation of Russia has been based on hyperpbole and inaccurate facts. On Tuesday, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney blasted Russia for deciding to “act militarily against a sovereign nation.” Last week, McCain declared that “in the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.”

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