Well, looky, looky.

Despite denying that he meant what everyone took him to mean when he said it, (that he would meet w/the President of Iran for talks "without preconditions"), as of 1:00 pm today, his website still says exactly that.

You see it for yourself here (if they haven't taken it down or changed it)...or see the copy from the screen shot I took of his site below.

As was rumored to happen several weeks ago, it is now becoming a certainty that one of the biggest issues the Democrats were hoping to run on over the next 2 1/2 months is now a moot point.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced today that the United States and Iraq have now reached agreements on "time horizons" in which U.S. troops will begin staggered exits from Iraq.  While the final deal is not totally complete, the withdrawal plan and strategic framework pact is close to final completion.

This from Fox News:

"We have agreed that some goals, some aspirational timetables for how that might unfold, are well worth having in such an agreement," Rice told reporters after meeting with Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"This agreement determines the principle provisions, requirements, to regulate the temporary presence and the time horizon, the mission of the U.S. forces," Zebari said.

A draft agreement announced Wednesday would have American troops leave Iraqi cities as early as June 30. Rice flew into Baghdad on an unannounced trip on Thursday to hammer out unresolved issues.

Zebari said the pact has to go before Iraq's Executive Council for Review, but, "really, we are very, very close to closing this agreement."

Besides spelling out that U.S. troops would move out of Iraqi cities by next summer, the Iraqi government has pushed for a specific date, most likely the end of 2011, by which all U.S. forces would leave the country. In the meantime, the U.S. troops would be positioned on bases in other parts of the country to make them less visible while positioned to help Iraqi forces as needed.

This news could not have come sooner, though ideally maybe it should have come a few days later.  It would have been great fun to watch Obama in Denver have to quickly rework his acceptance speech, especially on the fly, if this news would have come out during the Democratic Convention's final evening.  Talk about losing the wind in their sails! 

I guess, however, that would have been politicizing the Iraqi strategy a bit much.  And while tossing about that sort of rationale may be fine for the pundits, it's clear this administration would never behave in that manner.  But, alas, I am not a part of the administration, am I?

This news is very good politically for the GOP on several fronts but mostly due to the fact that it plays up to John McCain's insistence on certainly leaving Iraq, but doing so with the qualifier that it does, indeed, occur on the heals of victory!  Also, it takes one of the Democrats' very top issues away from them that they intended to use against the Republicans... and that is never a bad thing to happen!

Isn't it so interesting how that, more often than not, what is a good thing for America, is a bad thing for the DNC?!?

John McCain has taken many lumps from the liberal and misguided mainstream press during his campaign. But some of the worst criticism has been due to his hawkish statements made about Russia.

With regards to Russia, McCain has called for dropping the nation from the G8 group of world economic leaders. He has also called for a quick expansion of NATO to place nations such as Georgia, which lie directly on the Russian border, under the protective arm of the alliance.

With the invasion of Russian forces which has begun taking place today against the former Soviet Republic, Georgia, it is painfully obvious just who has been out in front on this issue the past year. And even more so, just whom was wrong in their criticism of McCain.

By way of a Salon.com featured article from June 9th, we have an interesting perspective back into time, giving us the ability to study the type of criticisms the liberal media used against McCain on this particular issue:

This kind of talk -- in particular the call to oust Russia from the G-8
-- has given pause to seasoned experts on that part of the world, who
tend to emphasize engagement with Russia. McCain's harsh rhetoric and
tough proposals led Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria to write an April column
titled "McCain's Radical Foreign Policy." If McCain were to pursue his
Russia agenda as president, Zakaria wrote, it would be interpreted by
much of the world as an "attempt by Washington to begin a new Cold
War."

Continuing a very old tactic by the MSM,  Mark Benjamin went on to  place McCain's ideological position under the suspicion of simply being penned by those scary former lobbyist advisers, who obviously only made such proposals, without merit, due to their obvious ulterior motives. 

Not so much... The reality of the situation is more like, sometimes people are advisors in a various field (or lobbyists on behalf of certain issues, for that matter) because they are experts at making analysis within those fields!

The article, which in the perspective of such a short matter of history, humorously goes on to read:

During the presidential campaign, the presumptive Republican nominee
has shown remarkable interest in Scheunemann's client, Georgia, a
country of 4 million. In his statement last month on the inauguration
of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, McCain said he hoped the new
president would "take steps to ease tensions with Georgia by reversing
recently announced measures that undermine Georgia's internationally
recognized sovereignty which have rightly caused great concern among
our European allies."

McCain might take his hard line on Russia because it plays well with
some of the GOP base. Experts on Russia say some of those Republicans
harbor nostalgia for being tough on the Soviet Union. Or perhaps he
simply believes Russia will respond best to threats. But there is
little doubt that McCain's rhetoric and policies would please the
countries Scheunemann has worked for.

"Those are countries whose advantage it is to point the finger at a
Russian threat, particularly Georgia," explained Thomas Simons,
ambassador to Poland under George H.W. Bush and to Pakistan under Bill
Clinton.

There is no way to tell if Scheunemann has influenced his boss on
behalf of his clients, or if McCain and Scheunemann simply share a
common get-tough-on-Russia philosophy. But when there are lobbyists on
a candidate's campaign staff, it's hard to distinguish chicken from egg
when it comes to policy.

Whatever the reasons behind McCain's hawkish tones, despite how any microanalysis of his position statements may wish to explain how they came about, at the end of the day... they are simply right.  And the events that are transpiring today in the Republic of Georgia, simply gives even more credence to the Republican nominee's foreign policy bone fides.

Now we all just sit back and wait for the spectacle of Barack Obama's attempts at standing equal to McCain on foreign policy, within the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Georgia.  I'm sure that Vegas would take 2-to-1 odds on Obama making mention of the Georgia republic's capital of "Atlanta".

Earlier today we saw a notable sign that North Korea is falling in line regarding their nuclear program, with the demolition of a 60-foot tall nuclear reactor cooling tower at the Yongbyon complex.  The achievements of the six-party talks are becoming more and more apparent by the day.

After this highly-visable action by North Korea, President Bush moved quickly to lift many of the trade sanctions against the country.  President Bush also will remove North Korea from the list of nations that sponsor terror.

It's hard to believe that we are less than seven years removed from President Bush's 2002 State of the Union address, where he lumped the nations of North Korea, Iran, and Iraq into the 'Axis of Evil'.  In the present situation - with North Korea's removal now from the state sponsors of terrorism list - Iran now stands alone from that former 'axis' today!

Iran was once a nation that was comfortably buffered on both the east and the west by two countries that were also highly antagonistic towards the U.S. - Afghanistan and Iraq.  But, due to the Bush Doctrine, Iran now finds itself a country that is geographically and ideologically isolated.  To put it in simple terms, it's clear where we can find the present location of the bull's eye.

We, as Americans, should all celebrate our foreign policy success.  The sad fact is that, in this day of partisanship and the politics of personal hate from the left, that will not happen. 

But, to those who can recognize what has taken place on the foreign policy stage during Bush's time as President, it's obvious that our President has been playing some great 'chess' - And Iran would do well to realize, as well, it is now 'checkmate'.

On Wednesday, John McCain, in his first major policy speech since securing the GOP nomination, called upon the democratic nations of the world to join the United States in the formation of new and improved "global alliance" - what he called the "League of Democracies".

McCain stated, "We have to strengthen our global alliance as the core of a new global compact, a league of democracies that can harness the vast influence of the more than 100 democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests."

“It’s not just [a commitment of] mine. President Sarkozy of France is talking about the same thing; Prime Minister Brown of England, Chancellor Merkel is another talking about the same thing,” McCain said in response to a question about containing an Iranian nuclear program, arguing that a coalition of democratic countries could be more effective in pressuring the Iranians to abandon their nuclear ambitions.

It was pointed out on Wednesday evening's Special Report with Brit Hume by Charles Krauthammer that he had proposed the same idea about six years ago.  A highly appealing aspect of such an organization - what he called a "hidden agenda" of such an idea - would be that it would it would "essentially kill the U.N.".

Krauthammer: How do you kill it? You establish a parallel institution of democracies that actually does stuff, that actually acts in the world, and that is not acting either against our interests or doing nothing, as the U.N. almost all the time does. And that's a good idea.

Krauthammer's caveat to the "League" - which seemed to be in parallel to McCain's idea as well, considering he did not include nations such as Russia or Venezuela in his proposal - is that it must consist of "real democracies".

Krauthammer: The problem is if you include everyone, Cuba, Chavez and all these guys, it's going to end up either useless or bad, as we've learned in the U.N. experience, so the new idea, which is 50 years late, but I think is coming now, is establish institutions of real democracies and act together with them in that structure.

It's ironic that, just yesterday, there were several words of praise for Krauthammer's great conservative mind here at Conservative Outpost - the same day in which Sen. McCain was taking one of his great ideas and introducing it into his foreign policy vision for his future presidency.  Like I said in my comment yesterday, "'Of all the great minds in the conservative movement, he's the one that I constantly keep telling myself, "I'm glad he's on OUR side!'"