{"id":10786,"date":"2007-05-13T12:45:06","date_gmt":"2007-05-13T16:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10786.html"},"modified":"2007-05-13T12:45:06","modified_gmt":"2007-05-13T16:45:06","slug":"mccain-willing-to-return-to-the-infamous-market-unprotected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/mccain-willing-to-return-to-the-infamous-market-unprotected\/","title":{"rendered":"McCain willing to return to the infamous market — unprotected"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a credibility-killing moment for John McCain. Last month, the senator insisted there are parts of Baghdad that are safe for Americans to go for a stroll and that General Petraeus travels around the city “almost every day in a non-armed Humvee.” Obviously, that was wrong. McCain took this to the next step, of course, when he went to a Baghdad market, surrounded himself with 100 soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships, and then told reporters that was able to walk freely in Iraq’s capital.<\/p>\n

Tim Russert asked him about this on Meet the Press this morning. McCain responded:<\/p>\n

\n

“I’ll be glad to go back to that market — with or without military protection and Humvees, etc.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It’s hard to believe anyone will be impressed by this misplaced bravado, but it’s worth remembering that the day after<\/a> McCain took his heavily-protected stroll, 21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound, and shot from the same market.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, McCain thinks he can go for an unescorted leisurely walk in Baghdad? It’s as if he’s given up on being taken seriously on the war altogether.<\/p>\n

When a once-proud man becomes a joke, it’s a sad thing to watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a credibility-killing moment for John McCain. Last month, the senator insisted there are parts of Baghdad that are safe for Americans to go for a stroll and that General Petraeus travels around the city “almost every day in a non-armed Humvee.” Obviously, that was wrong. McCain took this to the next step, of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10786\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}