I predicted last year that Bush would try to undercut Obama’s edge on the Iraq War because, as we learned from the insiders on the ruining of intelligence operative Valerie Plame, the policy is always about the next election and our troops are pawns to be used for that above all. And once again, the new security agreement will have US troops out of some of Iraq’s key cities about as fast as Obama could make it happen, with a pullout from the country by 2011, roughly a year slower than Obama’s deadline.

As we’ve also seen in the past 6 weeks, McCain intends to hammer Obama with the claim that we won in Iraq, that he was right on the surge and Barack was -and is - wrong. The polling has reverted to normal since the beginning of the year: the Republican is now perceived as superior on national security issues because the public’s fallen for the claim that the surge succeeded.

I also predicted 18 months ago the economic mess we’re in would dominate the election and it’s clear that’s the principal strategy Obama will use. Yet he should recall the advice in The Art of War and still provide an attack on the enemy’s perceived strength. There’s plenty of ways to do that.

If John McCain wants to make the claim that “the surge worked” then let’s consider all the factors necessary to launch the surge. The Secretary of Defense, whose strategies were developed during his time in the Nixon administration during a very different war, had to be fired after years of getting things wrong. The Office of Special Plans under the leadership of the other Nixon administration escapee - Dick Cheney - had to surrender control of the war that went from bad to worse throughout the first four years.

The advice of Republican predescessors - mostly the national security experts under Bush’s father and Ronald Reagan - had to be rejected, as they advised the current president to end the war and bring the troops home. If Republicans are supposed to be superior as national defenders, Bush’s rejection of that advice suggests that many Republicans got it wrong. Was it the longtime experts? Or was it Bush and McCain and the few who chose to try the surge? Americans have to wonder about that because Republicans were very divided on that.

And voters have to wonder about a whole lot more. What was it about the surge that supposedly made it work? The decrease in US troop fatalities is the sole measure John McCain uses to make the claim that it’s succeeded. To get there, White House control of the process was lessened and our military leadership in Iraq was finally permitted to call more of the shots. The actions of the Sunni Awakening Councils that began before the surge prompted the decision by our military leaders to lend full support to that Sunni effort by funding Sunni soldiers. That provided an economic underpinning of $300 per month per soldier.

But that strategy didn’t come from the military. After the first six weeks of the war had toppled Saddam’s government, Democratic critics pointed out in the ensuing chaos that the decision by the Coalition Provisional Authority to dismiss troops and police throughout Iraq was a terrible choice as it left too many idle hands, which we all know is the devil’s playground. Al Qaida in Iraq and Moqtada al-Sadr stepped into that economic void by offering small salaries and assistance to young Iraqi men willing to fight the other forces in Iraq including US troops. So decisions made by our military leaders in Iraq in 2007 corrected the mistakes made by Republican politicians four years earlier. After four years of refusing to listen to Democrats advising the White House to provide economic sustenance for idled Iraqis, the White House finally relented. And acted like it was their original idea.

The extra US forces installed concrete barriers that turned Baghdad into a rat maze of sectarian divided neighborhoods while the majority Shias cleansed their neighborhoods of Sunnis. At least two million Iraqis had become refugees by that time. And the decline in violence against US troops began when al-Sadr declared a moratorium and urged his followers to stop fighting, content with the ethnic cleansing that was occurring as part of the surge.

All of these are the key elements that slowed the violence in Iraq. Some were part of the surge but much came from Iraqi initiatives. And the key strategy of economic support came from Democratic critics of the old failed plans of two old Nixon hands stuck on 30 year old strategies in a modern war.

On top of all that, the entire effort could unravel because the Shia government is refusing to follow up as advised and won’t incorporate Sunni fighters into Iraq’s main military force.

American officials declined to be interviewed on the issue without a pledge of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject. But privately they expressed concern.

“If they only take a portion of them it’s possible they will return to their insurgent ways,” one senior intelligence analyst said, acknowledging that most of the men now called the Sons of Iraq had been insurgents, for al Qaida in Iraq and other groups that considered themselves resistance fighters against Americans.

He called the issue the “long-term threat.”

“People need to be busy, industrious, just like us,” he said. Without jobs, he said, they’ll “revert back to how they received money before.”

About 15,000 militia members have been given security jobs since the beginning of last year, according to the U.S. military. Another 2,342 have been approved for jobs with the Iraqi police after the Iraqi army opposed absorbing them.

The United States has 103,000 militia members on its payroll.

Those numbers indicate 84% of the Sunni militia will be SOL under the Shia government. What do you think those 85,658 fighters without a job are likely to do? The Idle Hands rule still applies.

American military officials here have always said that the creation of the Sunni militias was at least as important to the precipitous drop in violence as the presence of 30,000 more U.S. troops, and that incorporating them into the security forces would go a long way toward bringing about the sort of reconciliation needed for long-term stability.

Let’s not overlook what the US General in charge in Iraq thinks. He’s fully aware the lessened violence could be quickly reversed.

And most important, let’s consider exactly what deadlines have been set. The Sunnis say their fighters have to be utilized by the previously established deadline of November 1st. Talk about a coincidence! That’s just three days before Americans vote. That pretty much negates any possibility that renewed violence will have any impact on the US election. It sure leaves the impression that the White House was instrumental in creating that deadline date. Because, as we’ve seen so many times previously, the White House puts winning in politics first and even success in Iraq can be surrendered after that.

So if McCain wants to claim the surge has succeeded in changing everything, let’s remember what their record has been in achieving temporary successes. Driving Al Qaida out of Kabul, Afghanistan is the perfect example of a temporary success. Our worst troop death tolls there today demonstrate that temporary isn’t good enough. Al Qaida leaders plotting against us in Pakistan today demonstrate that this White House has failed in anti-terrorism job number one: taking out Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri.

Barack Obama rightfully should make the failed Bush economy the top point in his campaign. But there remains a strong secondary point he should make as well: the temporary achievements made under the new military leaders we have in Iraq required the end of failed strategies conceived during the Vietnam War, the capacity to listen to political opponents, and consideration of the needs of the Iraqi people. And to make those temporary achievements permanent, we’d better be able to choose allies capable of working out their own necessary compromises.

US troops have paid a tragic price and the hundreds of billions spent to stabilize Iraq’s economy would have been better spent stabilizing our own by creating jobs for American workers. The decisions made to go to war for the wrong reasons that have cost us all too much money and cost too many families more tragic losses were avoidable. But George Bush made them and John McCain supported those decisions every step of the way. If John McCain wants credit for the temporary success made possible by US and Iraqi military leaders, he’s going to have to take ownership of all the false reasons and strategy screwups that he invested our troops and treasury in, too. And he’d better have a plan to make the temporary gains permanent because the last thing we need now is a leader with a battalion of excuses for continuing a war that never should have been fought while the leaders of Al Qaida remain untouched and plotting to harm us.

I think that’s a message that will still carry weight with voters, don’t you?