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Wow. This is on the front page of every newspaper in America. Can you believe the coverage Senator McCain is getting?

Senator McCain delivers a proper slap to that junior senator from Chicago, Illinois (you might know the one...that little pretentious dude who has a sum-total of 143 days of Senate experience? That little warbler who blows off our troops?)

Excerpts from Senator John McCain's speech...

"Senator Obama and I also faced a decision, which amounted to a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief. America passed that test. I believe my judgment passed that test. And I believe Senator Obama's failed.

"We both knew the politically safe choice was to support some form of retreat. All the polls said the "surge" was unpopular. Many pundits, experts and policymakers opposed it and advocated withdrawing our troops and accepting the consequences. I chose to support the new counterinsurgency strategy backed by additional troops -- which I had advocated since 2003, after my first trip to Iraq. Many observers said my position would end my hopes of becoming president. I said I would rather lose a campaign than see America lose a war. My choice was not smart politics. It didn't test well in focus groups. It ignored all the polls. It also didn't matter. The country I love had one final chance to succeed in Iraq. The new strategy was it. So I supported it. Today, the effects of the new strategy are obvious. The surge has succeeded, and we are, at long last, finally winning this war."

Hammering home the awful truth that the "Surge" worked, despite the best efforts of the Left, and Senator Obama, to stop it.

"Senator Obama made a different choice. He not only opposed the new strategy, but actually tried to prevent us from implementing it. He didn't just advocate defeat, he tried to legislate it. When his efforts failed, he continued to predict the failure of our troops. As our soldiers and Marines prepared to move into Baghdad neighborhoods and Anbari villages, Senator Obama predicted that their efforts would make the sectarian violence in Iraq worse, not better.

"And as our troops took the fight to the enemy, Senator Obama tried to cut off funding for them. He was one of only 14 senators to vote against the emergency funding in May 2007 that supported our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...

"Three weeks after Senator Obama voted to deny funding for our troops in the field, General Ray Odierno launched the first major combat operations of the surge. Senator Obama declared defeat one month later: "My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now." His assessment was popular at the time. But it couldn't have been more wrong."

Senator Obama and his leftist ilk picked the worst of times to oppose the efforts of our President and our military to stop the floods of incoming fighters and terrorists, and prevent a civil war. They, had they been true 'leaders', should have, collectively, stood behind American efforts to break the common enemy; instead, their loud, obnoxious venting and their constant drumbeat of BDS worked for the enemy, gave succor to the enemy, and probably prolonged the outcome. Their trumpeted hatred of Bush and their decrying of the Surge probably cost some of our soldiers their very lives. Can we, should we forgive them for their unspoken near-treason? And elect one of the most outspoken of the group, that junior who was proved wrong?

"By November 2007, the success of the surge was becoming apparent. Attacks on Coalition forces had dropped almost 60 percent from pre-surge levels. American casualties had fallen by more than half. Iraqi civilian deaths had fallen by more than two-thirds. But Senator Obama ignored the new and encouraging reality. "Not only have we not seen improvements," he said, "but we're actually worsening, potentially, a situation there."

"If Senator Obama had prevailed, American forces would have had to retreat under fire. The Iraqi Army would have collapsed. Civilian casualties would have increased dramatically. Al Qaeda would have killed the Sunni sheikhs who had begun to cooperate with us, and the "Sunni Awakening" would have been strangled at birth. Al Qaeda fighters would have safe havens, from where they could train Iraqis and foreigners, and turn Iraq into a base for launching attacks on Americans elsewhere. Civil war, genocide and wider conflict would have been likely.

"Above all, America would have been humiliated and weakened. Our military, strained by years of sacrifice, would have suffered a demoralizing defeat. Our enemies around the globe would have been emboldened."

Such an outcome was pursued by these Leftists, including, at the forefront, Junior Senator Obama. They wanted to give up, to retreat, to quickly withdraw, and snuff out whatever chances the very first, nascent Arab democracy would have had (that new Iraqi leadership now has an excellent chance to succeed and transform that perennially-troubled region).

"Senator Obama told the American people what he thought you wanted to hear. I told you the truth.

"Fortunately, Senator Obama failed, not our military. We rejected the audacity of hopelessness, and we were right. Violence in Iraq fell to such low levels for such a long time that Senator Obama, detecting the success he never believed possible, falsely claimed that he had always predicted it. ... In Iraq, we are no longer on the doorstep of defeat, but on the road to victory.

"Senator Obama said this week that even knowing what he knows today that he still would have opposed the surge. In retrospect, given the opportunity to choose between failure and success, he chooses failure. I cannot conceive of a Commander in Chief making that choice.

[emboldenings mine]

The Audacity of Hopelessness. That was the message that Senator Obama delivered to our troops when he and the rest of his tribe of losing leftists tried to cut their funding. The Audacity of Hopelessness is exactly what those BDS-inflamed senators and congressperps (the 'leaders') gave to the MSM, that was then packaged and broadcast and re-broadcast to the war-weary public; so much repeated negativity and hopelessness that the majority of Americans became convinced that their leader was guilty of near-war-criminal behavior and that our troops were not capable of winning the war.

These leftist Democrats, those of the Cult of Audacity of Hopelessness, should be called out on their published statements, to show Americans the real truth: that we are better as a nation that stays the course, finishes the job, and we should not give in to those whose motives are to seek power at all costs and, in the course of seeking power, provide succor for the enemy and cost better Americans their lives.

As Barack Obama did during all 143 days as Junior Senator from Illinois.