Note to McCain: When you fall in a ditch, stop digging

March 20, 2008

Slowly but surely, reporters are picking up on the fact that John McCain’s confusion over Sunnis and Shia, Iran and al Qaeda, is worth a little additional scrutiny.

In an interview yesterday with NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) dismissed criticism of his multiple false claims that Iranian operatives are “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back” by claiming that he “corrected it immediately.”

“I don’t claim that I won’t misspeak on occasion, but I will correct it immediately,” said McCain.
Asked if it’s “a fair question” to wonder if it was more than “simply a slip of a tongue,” McCain replied that “to think that I would have some lack of knowledge about Sunni and Shia after my eighth visit and my deep involvement in this issue is a bit ludicrous.”

Really, “ludicrous”? After McCain has gotten several basic details of the Middle East backwards, over again, for quite a while, it’s “ludicrous” to even wonder if the senator is confused?

In the NBC interview, Kelly O’Donnell even seemed to be willing to give McCain a hand, suggesting McCain’s mistake may have been unrelated to his alleged military expertise: “When you described Iran aiding al Qaeda, does that suggest that your depth of knowledge on some of the cultural issues may not be as great as some of your military knowledge?”

McCain responded by fudging the details once again: “Al Qaeda is military. Al Qaeda is killing Americans as we speak. Islamic extremists are being trained in Iran and they are being sent back into Iran, I mean into Iraq.” So, McCain “misspoke,” but continued to intentionally blur the line, hoping people won’t know the difference.

As for this notion that McCain’s gaffe was simply a slip of the tongue that he “immediately” corrected, that’s ludicrous.

* On Feb. 28, McCain told the Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, Texas, “Al Qaeda is there [in Iraq], they are functioning, they are supported in many times, in many ways by the Iranians.”

* On March 17, McCain appeared on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show and said, “There are al Qaeda operatives that are taken back into Iran and given training as leaders and they’re moving back into Iraq.”

* On March 18, McCain held a press conference in Jordan in which he repeated the same claim, twice, including his insistence that it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known.”

* On March 19, McCain’s office issued a statement in his name suggesting al Qaeda has received “support from external powers such as Iran.”

The only “immediate” correction came after Joe Lieberman whispered in his ear that he was wrong, but this came after at least four instances in which McCain was wrong.

A verbal gaffe is hardly worth obsessing over, but McCain clearly believed the opposite of the truth, and kept repeating it to audiences here and overseas. He didn’t slip up, he just didn’t know what he was talking about.

It’s not “ludicrous” to think McCain is without a clue, it’s ludicrous to think any different.

Question #1: Does McCain know Iran is aiding AQI, but the evidence is classified?

Question #2: Does McCain believe that Iran is aiding AQI based on zero evidence?

Question #3: Does McCain know Iran is not aiding AQI, but wants people to believe it?

Question #4: Who is McCain’s tongue voting for?

  • Maybe it’s unfair, but the persistence of these sorts of “minor” gaffes is so reminiscent of Ronald Reagan during the early stages of his disease. At that time, it was considered a cheap shot to take notice of what, even then, was the slow progression of our President toward his ultimate dementia. But McCain is such a swell guy, let’s all just look the other way and honor his presumed “military knowledge”(?).

  • Ah, John, you misspoke once again. . .

    “to think the fact that I would have some lack of knowledge about Sunni and Shia after my eighth visit and my deep involvement in this issue is a bit ludicrous.”

  • He’s banking on Americans being too ignorant to realize they’re being fooled again. The best thing would be to use this series of screwups to get traction on the issue of him being mentally unfit to be president (and issue that the uninformed voter can understand and directly see in those video clips).

    Now is the time to remind the uninformed electorate that this bamboozlement is EXACTLY what happened to them in 2002-3. Remind them of all the pronouncements of Bush, Cheney, and McCain that have been proven wrong. The voters might be able to understand how dangerous ignorance can be, and they might try to figure out the basics of the shiite/sunni terrain, but I would call that unlikely. The people who have the least knowledge are typically the people with the fewest questions. Corner them with the facts, and they will find a rationalization to shore up their misperceptions. The one I hear a lot is “they all hate us, so they must be in cahoots”.

    Unfortunately the cure for stupidty is education and that takes a long time which we don’t have.

  • “On April 18, 2006, I had my first confirmed kill. This man was innocent. I don’t know his name. I called him ‘the fat man.’ He was walking back to his house, and I shot him in front of his friend and his father. The first round didn’t kill him, after I had hit him up here in his neck area. And afterward he started screaming and looked right into my eyes. So I looked at my friend, who I was on post with, and I said, ‘Well, I can’t let that happen.’ So I took another shot and took him out. He was then carried away by the rest of his family. It took seven people to carry his body away.

    “We were all congratulated after we had our first kills, and that happened to have been mine. My company commander personally congratulated me, as he did everyone else in our company. This is the same individual who had stated that whoever gets their first kill by stabbing them to death will get a four-day pass when we return from Iraq.”

    – Jon Michael Turner, 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines
    Winter Soldier Hearings – ivaw.org

  • It was not a gaffe, it’s additional ammunition McCain has been using to justify attacking Iran, another brick paving the way for more war. Lieberman was just pointed out to John that he wouldn’t be able to get away with that kind of remark in front of an international, rather than right wing, forum. The only gaffe occurred when McCain failed to take into account that there were news outlets other than Fox covering his comments.

  • The danger here goes far beyond merely confusing an ultra-extremist Sunni terrorist group with a sovereign Shiite nation. What, for example, would McLame-Oh start spouting if he received the news that “al Quaida has stolen a Russian nuke?”

    What happens to the Republic when President Hothead launches a thermonuclear armageddon military response—in the oh-so-obviously wrong direction? This, above all else, is why he cannot be president. His history of blowing up at people and refusing to take sound advice is a warning to Americans everywhere:

    DO NOT ELECT MCCAIN AS YOUR PRESIDENT

  • How unlike Obama he is. What a pleasure it will be to have a President who has a pliable and useful brain and uses it to think.

    All this Sunni/Shiite stuff would be barely relevant if we hadn’t started a war there and spent billions of dollars and thousands of lives. The result of another stupid man being in charge.

  • Someone needs to sit McCain down and explain slowly and patiently to him that defunding stem cell research will only delay a cure for Alzheimer’s.

  • Asked if it’s “a fair question” to wonder if it was more than “simply a slip of a tongue,” McCain replied that “to think that I would have some lack of knowledge about Sunni and Shia after my eighth visit and my deep involvement in this issue is a bit ludicrous.”

    Actually, to think that you’d keep making the same mistakes over and over again after your eighth visit and your deep involvement is what’s ludicrous. Kinda like someone vying to direct a hundred-million dollar budgeted picture asking what “Cut!’ means, but writ on a much larger, and more tragic, scale.

  • I’ll say (or type) it again:

    These were not gaffes.

    These were intentional and part of the GOP playbook:

    Seven Steps to Turn a Lie into Truth

    Step 1: Lie.
    Step 2: Wait for the media to report it, but not fact check it.
    Step 3: Lie again.
    Step 4: Wait for the media to report it, but not fact check it.
    Step 5: Lie yet again.
    Step 6: Wait for the media to report it, but not fact check it.
    Step 7: Lie becomes “fact.”

    We’re talking about a country in which a scary number of people STILL think Saddam was responsible for 9-11, and that wasn’t a gaffe — it was Bush Co. following the same plan as above.

    Of course, the only way this works is to have a compliant media. And given how the media loves them some Mr. Maverick, this whole thing will probably work, as sad as it is …

  • Meanwhile, today is the day McCain is supposed to report how much he has spent on his campaign and whether he has exceeded the legal limits for a candidate under the public funding rules. Could it be that Ol’ Wrong Way is just preparing for his Gonzales I-can’t-remember defense?

  • “I don’t claim that I won’t tell baldfaced lies reflexively and repetitively, but I will hope that the press will get tired of pointing them out,” thought McCain.

  • * On March 18, McCain held a press conference in Jordan in which he repeated the same claim, twice, including his insistence that it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda […] — CB

    Well, of course it “had been reported in the media”. Hadn’t he just said the same thing, the day before, on Hewitt’s show? Isn’t Hewitt’s show “media”?

    Like Mark D says, @ 11…

  • If the contest for the White House followed the rules of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” John McCain would be going home empty-handed. At last four times in the past month, George W. Bush’s would-be Republican successor sounded the alarm over a non-existent Al Qaeda-Iran alliance in Iraq. But for a lifeline from Joe Lieberman, McCain would have been booted off the stage by now.

    For the details, see:
    “Four Strikes and You’re Out: McCain on Al Qaeda and Iran.”

  • From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. [1] It is a severe and ongoing emotional reaction to an extreme psychological trauma .[2] This stressor may involve someone’s actual death or a threat to the patient’s or someone else’s life, serious physical injury, or threat to physical and/or psychological integrity, to a degree that usual psychological defenses are incapable of coping….

    The four dissociative disorders listed in the DSM IV TR are as follows:
    Depersonalization disorder (DSM-IV Codes 300.6 [2] )- periods of detachment from self or surrounding which may be experienced as “unreal” (lacking in control of or “outside of” self) while retaining awareness that this is only a feeling and not a reality.
    Dissociative Amnesia (DSM-IV Codes 300.12 [3] )- noticeable impairment of recall resulting from emotional trauma
    Dissociative fugue (DSM-IV Codes 300.13 [4] )- physical desertion of familiar surroundings and experience of impaired recall of the past. This may lead to confusion about actual identity and the assumption of a new identity.
    Dissociative identity disorder ‘( DSM-IV Codes 300.14 [5] )- the alternation of two or more distinct personality states with impaired recall, among personality states, of important information.

  • 3 AM:
    Ring, ring
    Hello?
    Hello General, it’s President McCain here. This nonsense has being going on too long, and we’ve got to show ’em who’s boss. I’m hereby authorizing missile strikes on the top five terrorist targets in Iran.

    8:30 AM
    Heh, heh, oops, Iraq. Well, Iran, Iraq, … since we’re already committed, better send in the second wave.

    Dale – that was nice.

  • If a tree falls in a forest …

    If a candidate continuously lies and the media deosn’t report it, did it really happen?

  • Here’s another big fat lie McCain is telling:

    “The Iraqi people are going about their normal lives”

    Meanwhile, outside the Green Zone, people are going about their normal lives:

    In the worst attack of the day in Iraq, at least 40 people were killed and 65 injured in the holy Shiite city of Karbala when a suicide bomber detonated herself at a crowded cafe near the city’s Imam Hussein shrine.

    …

    Police also found the bullet-riddled bodies of at least 16 people in Baghdad, Muqdadiyah, Mosul and the southern cities of Basra and Kut, where Shiite militia violence has been on the rise.

    Maybe McCain should go outside the Green Zone. Last time he went to Iraq, he claimed that there “are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.” Of course we all know McCain Stroll[ed] Through Baghdad Market, Accompanied By 100 Soldiers, 3 Blackhawks, and 2 Apache Gunships.

    http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/01/mccain-iraq-stroll/

    This time he didn’t even risk going outside the Green Zone to do another staged photo-op, and he wants us to believe that “the Iraqi people are going about their normal lives”?

    Why the hell is the stupid press corpse taking this guy seriously?

  • Perhaps it would help Senator McCain if he could memorize :”Al Qaeda has a Sunni disposition.”

  • I don’t think he believes the opposite of the truth, I think he is clearly trying to confuse people in the run-up to an attack on Iran by the administration (hey, we’re just attacking our enemies Al Qaeda in a country where they don’t exist, just like we did in Iraq and didn’t that turn out peachy for oil prices) which he hopes will be his one chance at winning in the general election as everyone rallies around the flag. Which would be sick, evil and twisted, so your explanation is much kinder to McCain.

  • Purposeful blurring?

    McCain is a fairly smart man. I don’t think he is totally ignorant of the geopolitical issues in the Middle East. Surely his staff have reviewed the issues with him.

    What I’m afraid is going on is the purposeful blurring of Al Quaeda and Iran. Just like Bush did with Iraq and Al Quaeda before the beginning of the Iraq war.

    The blurring is so effective that McCain forgets and stumbles even when he doesn’t want to.

  • McCain confuses Sunnis and Shia…

    Whoa, sorry there. Just had a huge feeling of deja vu. Isn’t that weird?

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