Victory in Iraq Will Balance the Budget, McCain says.

McCain recently unveiled a new plan to balance the budget by 2013, and it includes a statement so bizarre that it makes the gas tax holiday seem like effective, substantial policy. His big plan for eliminating the national deficit is....

....winning the war in Iraq. Apparently by combining two issues that Republicans lose on this year, the economy and the Iraq War, McCain hopes to magically create a winning policy. The tenuous connection between victory in Iraq and the budget rests on the concept that we could erase deficit after the war by taking the money we would funnel into Iraq and putting it elsewhere. Of course, McCain's plan doesn't specify how he plans to accomplish the feat of concluding the Iraq War by 2013.