C'Mon, Bad Guys Are Bad Guys!

The trouble with straight talk, apparently, is that it's hard to keep the details straight. John McCain was in Amman, Jordan, on Tuesday and said that it's "common knowledge" one of the problems in Iraq is that Sunnis are training Shiites to attack Sunnis. One would think that it's also common knowledge that Sunnis and Shiites hate each other, so that such an arrangement would seem quite unlikely, but I guess that's why I'm not in Big Time Politics.

What McCain specifically said was that Iran was taking al-Qaeda operatives across the border, training them, and then sending them back, but that's essentially the same as what I wrote above. He had no idea that he'd said anything wrong--twice--until Joe Lieberman whispered into his ear to set him straight. (My money's on Lieberman for Defense in a McCain administration. Anybody want in on that action?) Immediately after the whisper (which was quickly after the second time McCain made the error), McCain corrected himself: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda." Needless to say, the press immediately stopped treating McCain as the last word on international affairs. Ooops! What am I saying!? Of course they didn't.

Think Progress has a response from the McCain campaign maintaining that the senator immediately corrected his error. They've also got video to demonstrate that such a statement about McCain is clearly false.

You know that all he really wanted to say was, "Iran bad! U.S. good!" It's just those pesky details that ruin everything.