Iraq War Refresher Course

It's impossible to keep track of everything written about the war, but as Petreaus and Crocker prepare to brief Congress this week, Frank Rich at the New York Times gives a good summary for us — and John McCain, not that he'll listen, of course.

But Mr. McCain’s bigger strategic picture, immutable no matter what happens on the ground, is foggier still. Like Mr. Bush, he keeps selling Iraq as the central front in the war on Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda was not even a participant in the Basra battle, which was an eruption of a Shiite-vs.-Shiite civil war. (Al Qaeda is busy enough in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the actual central front in the war on terror.)