If there were any justice, yesterday’s edition of CNN’s Situation Room would be a campaign-altering moment that would dog Sen. [tag]John McCain[/tag] (R-Ariz.) for the next two years. In just a matter of minutes, he was exposed as a fraud.
On Monday, McCain appeared on Bill Bennett’s radio program, toeing the right-wing line on “progress” in Iraq. “There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today,” McCain told Bennett. “The U.S. is beginning to succeed in Iraq.”
Yesterday, Wolf Blitzer asked McCain about the comments, and why they appear to contradict everything we know about conditions in Baghdad. McCain, with an air of smugness and condescension, basically called Blitzer an idiot and blamed the media for public misconceptions.
BLITZER: Everything we hear, that if you leave the so-called Green Zone, the international zone, and you go outside of that secure area, relatively speaking, you’re in trouble if you’re an American.
MCCAIN: You know, that’s where you ought to catch up on things, Wolf. General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in a non-armed Humvee. I think you ought to catch up. You see, you are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. You certainly don’t get it through the filter of some of the media.
Blitzer turned to CNN Iraq correspondent Michael Ware, who does extraordinary work for the network, to see if McCain’s rhetoric matched Baghdad’s reality. Trust me, you’ll really want to watch this. (transcript below)
(I had to take the clip down; I think it was messing up my server. You can still watch it here, or here, or here)
It’s the kind of exchange that should brand McCain as a hackish incompetent on the most pressing crisis in the world today.
Michael Ware has been in Baghdad for four years. He doesn’t just fly in for photo-ops, he lives there and has seen the conditions change. He experiences day-to-day life in Iraq, talks to U.S. and Iraqi officials every day, and knows of what he speaks.
One gets the sense watching the clip that he was literally offended by McCain’s stupidity. The listener can hear the painful disappointment in his voice — as if he can’t begin to understand why a respected senator would go on national television and make such demonstrably false comments about a war.
Unfortunately, it’s not complicated. McCain either believes what he said, in which case he’s frighteningly clueless, or he doesn’t believe what he said, in which case he’s a shameless and dishonest hack. Either way, as Ware put it, McCain’s credibility “has now been left out hanging to dry.”
It’s early in the presidential campaign, and it’s probably premature for Dems to start going after McCain directly, but his comments on CNN yesterday should humiliate him and undermine any hope that he should be taken seriously on the nation’s most pressing crisis.
I know a lot of readers can’t watch video from their desks, so here’s the transcript of the CNN segment.
BLITZER: Here’s what you told Bill Bennett on his radio show on Monday. “There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today. The U.S. is beginning to succeed in Iraq.”
Everything we hear, that if you leave the so-called Green Zone, the international zone, and you go outside of that secure area, relatively speaking, you’re in trouble if you’re an American.
MCCAIN: You know, that’s where you ought to catch up on things, Wolf. General Petraeus goes out there almost every day in a non-armed Humvee. I think you ought to catch up. You see, you are giving the old line of three months ago. I understand it. You certainly don’t get it through the filter of some of the media.
But I know for a fact that much of the success we’re experiencing, including the ability of Americans in many parts. Not all. We have got a long, long way to go. We have only got two of the five brigades there to go into some neighbors in Baghdad in a secure fashion.
BLITZER: Let me refer to a few of your colleagues in the Senate and the House. Chuck Hagel, John Murtha, former Senator Max Cleland, the current Senator Jim Webb, they’re all like you, Vietnam War veterans. You say this is potentially a worse situation if the U.S. were to withdraw from Iraq as opposed to when the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam.
Why are — because they’re saying, just get out, basically, and you’re saying you have got to say. Why do you think these Vietnam War veterans, decorated just as you are, disagree?
MCCAIN: Well, because I hope that all of our experience, knowledge, background and decision-making is not driven by the experience of the Vietnam War. I hope it’s an accumulation of all the training, experience and knowledge I had, including 22 years in the military and 24 years in the Congress and the Senate. But, look, don’t take my word for it that they’ll follow us home. Look at what they say. Look what bin Laden says. Look what Zarqawi says. Look at what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said at his tribunal down in Guantanamo. They all say the same things. Go on their Web sites. They’ll tell you. They want to follow us home. We’re their enemy. They’re the ones we want to destroy.
They win in Iraq the way they won in Beirut and the way that they won in Somalia, then they will be following us home.
Again, it’s not my stated — not from anything I’ve written or said. It’s what they’re saying and writing.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: So is Baghdad really getting safer? A very different view of the reality there from our own reporter on the ground who says Senator McCain couldn’t be more wrong. Let’s go back to CNN’s Michael Ware.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BLITZER: Michael, you’ve been there, what, for four years. You’re walking around Baghdad on a daily basis. Has there been this improvement that Senator McCain is speaking about?
MICHAEL WARE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I’d certainly like to bring Senator McCain up to speed, if he ever gives me the opportunity. And if I have any difficulty hearing you right now, Wolf, that’s because of the helicopter circling overhead and the gun battle that is blazing just a few blocks down the road.
Is Baghdad any safer? Sectarian violence, one particular type of violence, is down. But none of the American generals here on the ground have anything like Senator McCain’s confidence.
I mean, Senator McCain’s credibility now on Iraq, which has been so solid to this point, has now been left out hanging to dry. To suggest that there’s any neighborhood in this city where an American can walk freely is beyond ludicrous. I’d love Senator McCain to tell me where that neighborhood is and he and I can go for a stroll.
And to think that General David Petraeus travels this city in an unarmed Humvee? I mean, in the hour since Senator McCain has said this, I’ve spoken to some military sources and there was laughter down the line. I mean, certainly, the general travels in a Humvee. There are multiple Humvees around it, heavily armed. There are attack helicopters, Predator drones, sniper teams, all sorts of layers of protection.
So, no, Senator McCain is way off base on this one — Wolf.
BLITZER: Michael, when Senator McCain says that there are at least some areas of Baghdad where people can walk around and whether it’s General Petraeus, the U.S. military commander, or others, are there at least some areas where you could emerge outside of the Green Zone, the international zone, where people can go out, go to a coffee shop, go to a restaurant, and simply take a stroll?
WARE: I can answer this very quickly, Wolf. No. No way on Earth can a Westerner, particularly an American, stroll any street of this capital of more than 5 million people.
I mean, if al Qaeda doesn’t get wind of you, or if one of the Sunni insurgent groups don’t descend upon you, or if someone doesn’t tip off a Shia militia, then the nearest criminal gang is just going to see dollar signs and scoop you up. Honestly, Wolf, you’d barely last 20 minutes out there.
I don’t know what part of Neverland Senator McCain is talking about when he says we can go strolling in Baghdad.