John McCain must hate video

He's no Kip Dynamite, because if there's one thing John McCain must find inconvenient it is modern technology. Now I first thought Rudy would be the candidate that would grow to dislike YouTube and video in general, but it seems that the torch has now been passed to Senator McCain. From CBS News:

Standing with two of his Senate colleagues at the Citadel, a set of ancient ruins in downtown Amman, McCain told reporters that he is concerned about Iran's influence in Iraq and cited a recently discovered cache of weapons that he said could be particularly lethal in being used to target Americans in the country. 

"We continue to be concerned about Iranian [operatives] taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back," he said in comments after meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah II on Tuesday afternoon.

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it is "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 I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in his ear. McCain then said, "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."

The United States has long asserted that elements of Iran's security forces have been training and supplying weapons to Iraq's Shiite militias. Iran is an overwhelmingly Shiite country whose government has applauded the emergence of a Shiite-led government in Iraq but has denied supporting Shiite militias inside Iraq.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a predominantly Sunni militant group that has been blamed for deadly mass killings of Shiites and attacks on U.S. forces. Some Sunni extremists consider Shiites to be heretics and therefore legitimate targets of attack. The schism between Islam's Sunni and Shiite sects grw out of a dispute over the leadership of the faithful after the death of the prophet Muhammad in A.D. 632. 

Now in fairness, John McCain deserves respect. I'm sure he's worn out from the rigors of the campaign, but he's handing out fodder for anyone who wants to discredit him. And given his tendency to revert back to the foreign policy/national security narrative (since he doesn't know much about the economy), mix-ups like these don't give him much ground on which to stand. They will also make it difficult for him to separate himself from the President, which he has tried to do by emphasizing his criticism over the mismanagement of the War.

The DNC's spokeswoman, Karen Finney, immediately saw the opening in McCain's misstep, saying:

After eight years of the Bush Administration's incompetence in Iraq, McCain's comments don't give the American people a reason to believe that he can be trusted to offer a clear way forward...

Or a different path. Later in the CBS article, McCain meets with Israeli President Shimon Peres, who told McCain that "Israel needs a partner in achieving peace with the Palestinians." He went further:

"The situation among the Palestinians, they are divided, alas, which makes
them weak," Peres said. "And their weakness is our weakness because we [need a] partner."

As Simon has stated, the Bush legacy in the Middle East is not one we want to continue. If McCain continues to mix up, particularly on video where it is available for all to see and on topics on which he prides himself, I'd be interested to see how he responds to the claim that he really wouldn't be offering anything different from the current administration with regard to foreign policy.