Read it. McCain’s piece is not an OP-Ed article; it is a response to Obama’s OP-ED.

As such, I would have treated it as exactly what it was–a letter to the editor–and then followed the stated guidelines:

Letters to the editor should only be sent to The Times, and not to other publications. We do not publish open letters or third-party letters.

Letters for publication should be no longer than 150 words, must refer to an article that has appeared within the last seven days, and must include the writer’s address and phone numbers. No attachments, please….

As a courtesy to McCain, I would have informed of said intention, and if he was not happy with it, he could respond accordingly by actually submitting an OP-ED piece.

That is essentially what they did, but because they got caught up in WHO it is from, they allowed this to become a squawk box for the right, who are using this to martyr McCain.

That’s pretty ironic when one considers that McCain has been given nothing but love taps for years. This is not McCain being mistreated; it is McCain not getting his usual adoring treatment from the media.

jimmy, I thought you voted for Nader?

I did, but politics in 2000 was all “Lockbox” and “Strategery” back then. I thought it would be cool to shake things up and get someone with actual measurable intelligence like Nader in the debates.

Also, after 2001 I decided to read the Koran and study the life of Mohammad. That’ll change your whole outlook on things if you are honest with yourself and are not a slave to politically-correct, multiculti nonsense.

I read McCain’s piece and the Times rejection, but without reading Obama’s piece, I don’t really understand very well what their objection is. And even if it’s valid, as Alan suggests, I still think they ought to have kept it to themselves, or pointed it out in their OWN editorial. Once they give candidate A x column inches to expound on his foreign policy vision, their policy ought to be to give candidate B x inches as well. And they ought not to expect that they have a right to guide the responding essay.

It would be much better to print that essay, and if they have issues with it, they ought to point those out in their own editorial. That would have been a much better approach.

Of course, it is QUITE possible that the NYT expected to ultimately print a McCain essay after some back and forth, and the McCain campaign saw advantage in making the NYT the issue instead of revising their essay. If they did, then that’s well played. I have to think that ultimately now MORE people will have read McCain’s essay, _and_ they’ll have read it with a sympathetic eye.

All THAT said, I think it’s quite legitimate, in the abstract, to expect John McCain to provide more detail into how he expects things to unfold in Iraq. IMO, the timetable-no-timetable issue is a binary red herring. Regardless of who the next President is, it seems clear that the withdrawal wheels are in motion and that we’ll have to be ready to adjust our plans as circumstances require. I’ve said for some time that the withdrawal would come with some sort of US declaration of as much victory as possible along with noticing that the burden going forward would be upon Iraqis themselves.

It boils down to beginning to make the shift of the burden to Iraqis while we draw down troops, and seeing how that goes. The only real question is what we expect to do if at some intermediate point Iraqi security conditions begin to deteriorate? Does McCain stand ready to flood troops back into Iraq in another surge at the first signs of trouble? Only if things get really bad? Does Obama view the withdrawal as an irrevocable trend?

“…a clear plan for achieving victory — with troops levels, timetables and measures for compelling the Iraqis to cooperate.”

How can this be interpreted as anything else but political bias? Apparently, you need to believe in a fixed timetable for withdrawal of American troops in order to be published in the New York times. This is silly anyway because David Brooks and Tom Friedman have both published editorials explaining why timetables are a mistake. So only Republican candidates for President are not allowed that opinion.