Is John McCain Secretly Dumb?
How is is possible that after eight trips to Iraq and decades of foreign policy experience that John McCain still can’t tell a Sunni from a Shia, or understand that Al Qaeda and Iran are on separate sides of a schism that has existed in Islam for the last 13 centuries or so?
From the washingtonpost.com
[McCain] said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda. In fact, officials have said they believe Iran is helping Shiite extremists in Iraq.
Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives “taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back.”
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said 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. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”
This reminds me of how terrible McCain was debating George W. Bush in the 2000 campaign. Here was a guy who should have made Bush look like a chucklehead on national security issues, and yet repeatedly proved incapable of spiking the ball.