A right-wing co-worker of mine — I'll call him Steve — has got those sneaky Democrats figured out. He told me today that Barack Obama used the phrase "victory in Iraq" during his speech after winning the Iowa caucuses. I don't know if it's true, and I've given up fact-checking guys like Steve. Refuting ridiculous Republican talking points gleaned from talk radio is both time-consuming and unfulfilling.

The latest turd Steve is flogging goes something like this: "Now that things have improved politically to the point where we can probably declare victory and pull our troops out of Iraq in the not too distant future, the Dems will start using the word "victory" in their speeches so they can try to take some of the credit or gain some sort of prestige from said victory." I'm paraphrasing there, but that is essentially the argument Steve ran past me today. When I pointed out to him that there had really not been any political progress in Iraq; that, in fact, the Iraqi government is so divided they can't even reach a quorum to do any government business whatsoever, he pulled a weird, little logical reverse no-take-backs switcheroo on me, saying the facts I was stating about the condition of Iraq's government had nothing to do with what he was talking about.

Steve explained to me that the political progress he was talking about was taking place here in Amurka. Really. That's what he said. An interesting bit of honesty there. See, Steve is one of those Republicans for whom political victory trumps all else. For him, conditions on the ground in Iraq are no longer relevant. It doesn't matter whether The Surge itself is successful, as long as the selling of the Surge was.