AWOL

The 2008 presidential hopefuls who have seats in the U.S. Senate are scrambling to change their weekend campaigning schedules in order to register a vote- for or against- the increase of troops being sent to or forced to stay in Iraq.

Suspiciously absent will be John McCain, a leading proponent of the Bush "troop surge."

Perhaps he has calculated that neither attending the vote nor missing a single day on the campaign trail would be all that good for his presidential aspirations. He has continued to drop in the polls in the weeks since he tightly hitched his wagon to the miserably unpopular Bush team.