How bloggers are more on the ball than print and media journalists

I'm not counting myself in that group these days, struggling as I am with my annual case of spring fever, combined this year with the kind of hotflashes about which most women my age complain but which I've largely escaped up until now. Plus this morning I'm groggy from a too-abrupt transition to wakefulness from a dream in which I was at a birthday party for someone I haven't seen in about fifteen years and listening to John Cusack holding forth on war-for-profit.

But Blue Girl has none of these problems, and she's noticed something very interesting.

Last week bloggers were all over John McCain saying that he would let Gen. David Petraeus decide whether to move troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, even though at his Senate Armed Services Committee appearance, Petraeus essentially said that wasn't his job. This was regarded as another McCain gaffe, but as Blue Girl now points out, perhaps it wasn't.

Yesterday, Petraeus was promoted to head of CENTCOM, with Gen. Raymond Odierno now heading up the Iraq effort. So now Afghanistan IS his job... which has made Blue Girl wonder:

While everyone was absorbing the news that Baghdad's favorite couple would be separating, and a Petraeus-Crocker divorce was in the offing, I went a different direction immediately. I thought "Hmmmm...Did McCain really misspeak last week? Or did he have an advance heads up on this?"

I realize he is the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, but this is an executive decision. Was he briefed during the decision making process? If so, were other members of SASC? (Hillary Clinton sits on that committee, too.)

Or is McCain just a doddering old man with cognitive problems after all?